Trapped in an Afghan war we can never win

Fox's problem is that his party backed the war in Afghanistan, just as it's backed the rest of Labour's foreign adventuring. His party is still more in thrall - if that's possible - to the "special relationship" than Brown or even Blair.

The Tories may complain about the 30,000 shed from the armed forces since 1997, but good free-marketeers that they are, they daren't take a stand on the rise of "private contractors" (mercenaries, to you and I), who offer better emolument and ensure that skilled British soldiers think twice before re-enlisting. Why fight an unwinnable war for Queen and Country, when you can be well paid and not have to bother with tiresome ethics?

The attrition rate for skilled personnel continues to rise, with the latest figures showing that there are barely enough medical staff, intelligence operatives, or pilot trainers to go round. The lack of medics is particularly worrying for the infantry in Helmand, who face a 50 per cent likelihood of illness or injury on any given tour of duty.

I don't doubt that US air strikes have, overall, saved British lives and that last week's "friendly fire" incident has to be set against this fact. But Gordon Brown also has to ask himself - as does the fantastic Mr Fox - some tough questions. The reason why fighter-bombers are regularly used to dislodge three or four Taliban armed with RPGs, is because the "hearts and minds" we're in Afghanistan to win have fled.

Meanwhile, the British-led opium interdiction programme has been a failure, succeeding not in destroying the crop, but increasing it - while destroying our credibility and increasing the power of the Taliban.

Of course, if our American allies had their way, they'd spray the whole country with herbicides; they're also past-masters at calling in air strikes to attack guerrilla fighters. Both are tactics that helped them lose in Vietnam.

At that time we had a Prime Minister - Harold Wilson - who whatever his other failings, at least had the nous to keep away from a conflict that had no moral justification and no prospect of success. But with the corpse of New Labour's "ethical foreign policy" impaled on the bayonet of Iraq, and regime change imminent in the US, Labour and Tory politicians resemble the proverbial bald men.

Neither party has so much as a hair to cover the bareness of their foreign policies, while the comb they're fighting over - the armed services - is steadily losing its teeth.