Should British military casualties be named and honoured in PMQs?
Should the Prime Minister (and, increasingly, each party leader) name and honour the recent fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan at PMQs? I had thought this quite respectful, but when I was in Afghanistan I was surprised to find a number of soldiers opposed to it. Their problem is that it reads to the nation a narrative of failure when the incredible success of the military during the turnaround against the Taleban barely gets a mention. I raised this with Brig Mark Carelton-Smith, commander of Taskforce Helmand, when I was in Lashkar Gah and I print his response in my News of the World column today. “The casualty rate is not high,” he said. “Yet a steady drumbeat of casualties does eat away at stamina and resolve that a country needs to keep its nerve.” He would not be drawn on the practice at PMQs, understandably. But let’s take his point wider. Every loss is a tragedy – yet in the standards of British conflicts, the Iraq and Afghanistan missions stand out for their low casualty rate. In f
