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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy

you and I'm joined by James Versaith and Isabel Hardman. So we talked a little bit about Afghanistan on the podcast yesterday,

but somehow overnight the situation has got even worse.

James, what has happened?

So the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.

Last night, the New York Times broke the news that in a sign of how bad the situation is,

that the US has started

discussions with the Taliban about how its embassy will be treated if Kabul were to fall to the

Taliban. And it is clear now that the Taliban are making even more rapid progress than people

expected. We know that there is a US intelligence assessment suggesting that Kabul could be

cut off or in danger within a month. And the situation, it is, and we also know that the UK

government is sending a small number of troops to Afghanistan to assist with the evacuation of

British nationals from Kabul and with some of those Afghans who have had their asylum claims

approved for coming here because of the help that they gave to British forces. The one thing

that worries me in particular is obviously there is the broad humanitarian situation. But I also

think that there are real questions to be asked about how restrictive the British policy is about who is allowed to come here.

It is one thing to allow, obviously it is right to allow interpreters who've worked with British forces and British diplomats and other Western nations to come to so that they can escape the Taliban. But I also think there is that

there is a case for allowing their families to come true too. It is, it is not a, their families will

be exposed to huge risk if they are left behind. And I think we have a moral obligation to people

who took these risks to help us, to help not just them, but also their families. Isabel, do you think we will see further softening of the British position on this and also

a bit more soul-searching about why we withdrew? I mean, we had Ben Wallace this morning saying

...