- Col. Richard Kemp is a former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and the author of Attack State Red, an account of British military operations in Afghanistan published by Penguin. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Disillusionment with the inability of the Kabul administration to govern fairly or to significantly reduce violence played a role in the reportedly low turnout at the polls in Helmand.

It is critical that this changes if we are to avoid another Vietnam. The South Vietnamese Army, well trained and equipped, lost heart once the U.S. withdrew, collapsing at the first push, partly because their corrupt and ineffective administration was not worth fighting for.

That an election was held at all in Afghanistan’s most violent province is an achievement. But despite a major operation to drive out the Taliban, the insurgents deterred large numbers of voters. This illustrates just how steep a mountain NATO has to climb. But it does not mean we cannot prevail against them in Helmand.

As President Obama says: "This isn’t a war of choice; it’s a war of necessity." Home grown British terrorists have only demonstrated an ability to kill our people when they have attended serious training and had face-to-face direction from war-hardened jihadists.

The Al Qaida leadership and their camps were driven into Pakistan in 2001. U.S. pursuit across the border using unmanned aerial vehicle strikes has been remarkably effective, resulting directly in the recent reduction of the UK terrorist threat level.

Al Qaida is not just a “global franchise” but also a solid organization that needs places to meet, to plan and to train terrorists. It cannot all be done on the internet.  Substantially unable to function now in Pakistan, the leadership is actively seeking a new base – perhaps in Yemen, Somalia or North Africa. In any of these they would be much more exposed. Their real desire is to return to Afghanistan. NATO forces are preventing that.

But we cannot do it forever. Success equals reducing the insurgency to a level that can be managed by a viable Afghan government backed by a capable security force which can prevent the country becoming a base for attacks on the West including Britain.

How long will this take? The answer to that is how long do we have?  The next U.S. election is at the end of 2012 and the patience of the British electorate will have no greater longevity.

Even as I have defined it, we will not achieve success fully in that time-frame. But we must be very clearly succeeding in a way that we are not now. And certainly in the British forces, we cannot continue with anything like the current rate of casualties over that period.

To counter the Taliban’s present devastatingly effective tactics of mines, roadside bombs and booby traps we need better surveillance and better intelligence, achieved in part through greater active support from the local people. We need to control the night as well as the day. While we build the Afghan army, this can only be done with more of our own troops. A lot more.

Casting aside inter-service rivalries, every sinew of strength of the British armed forces must now go into Afghanistan.  Even that will not be enough.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown must take close personal direction of this war through a war cabinet that will drive every relevant government department to achieve real progress in the short time we have left. And crucially to communicate our war aims to the British people with far greater effect.

The National Health Service (NHS) has endured a barrage of criticism from opponents of Barack Obama’s plans to push through a healthcare bill that would rein in costs, place constraints on insurance companies and expand health cover to 46 million uninsured Americans.

Stateside critics of the U.S. President’s plans — including former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin — have branded the NHS “evil and Orwellian” and said it allowed “death panels” to decide levels of care for the elderly. They see it as an overly bureaucratic, “socialised” system of healthcare and the proposals have prompted angry scenes at town halls across America.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan stirred up further controversy by describing the NHS on a U.S. TV show as a “60 year mistake” and as a service he “wouldn’t wish on anybody”.

Political leaders in the UK have been united in their defence of the NHS following the onslaught. Gordon Brown used micro-blogging site Twitter to voice his support, saying: “The NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there.”

A campaign supporting the health service on Twitter, called welovetheNHS, has received tens of thousands of messages.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, was quick to distance himself and his party from Hannan’s remarks. “Just look at all the support which the NHS has received on Twitter over the last couple of days. It is a reminder — if one were needed — of how proud we in Britain are of the NHS,” he said in a statement.

What do you think of the National Health Service? Do you agree with our country’s politicians that it is a system we should be proud of? What are your views on healthcare in the U.S?

Former civil servant Sir John Chilcot has been tasked with the latest inquiry into the Iraq war - the fifth - and has promised to investigate “as thoroughly, as fairly, as independently as we can”.

But given the rather lukewarm response from the opposition parties, Chilcot faces an uphill task to deliver on that promise and avoid accusations of a “whitewash”.

Already questions have been asked about the independence of Chilcot’s five-member panel.

While Chilcot himself was a member of the Butler inquiry that cleared former Prime Minister Tony Blair of dishonesty in using intellligence in the run-up to the war, another panel member — the historian Martin Gilbert — wrote in 2004 that Tony Blair and George Bush could one day be compared to Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, while a third member — fellow historian Sir Lawrence Freedman — helped Blair develop his doctrine of liberal interventionism.

And Chilcot’s suggestion that the inquiry would occasionally hold private hearings to ensure openness from witnesses has been described by shadow foreign secretary William Hague as a “worrying new caveat”.

The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has also criticised Chilcot’s decision not to employ a barrister to cross-examine witnesses.

“This is important to ensure that as gifted a communicator as Blair is not allowed to slip off the hook.”

The inquiry is expected to last until late next year and may not deliver its report until 2011. That means its conclusions will not be published before a general election due by next June, though Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government could still be embarrassed with Chilcot’s insisting he is prepared to apportion blame.

“If we find that people fell short in their duty, made mistakes (or) acted wrongly, we shall most certainly say so and say so clearly,” said Chilcot.

Do you think there is a need for another inquiry into the Iraq war? And will Chilcot’s probe succeed in holding past and present leaders to account?

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At 27, the Conservative candidate in the Norwich North by-election Chloe Smith becomes the youngest MP in the Commons.

She turned Labour’s 5,000-plus majority in the seat into a 7,348-vote winning margin and keeps the Conservative bandwagon rolling. The election had been forced by the resignation of Labour MP Ian Gibson, who claimed almost 80,000 pounds in second home expenses on a London flat which he later sold at a knock-down price to his daughter.

What do you make of the result? Was this a clear message to Labour about its policies and its leader Gordon Brown or a protest against the ruling party in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is gearing up for his holidays, which he is expected to take mainly in his Kircaldy constituency and the Lake District.

Conservative leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg are travelling overseas for their summer breaks.

Parliament is in recess from July 21 to October 12, but Brown says he and most MPs will not use the long break as “an extended vacation,” reports the Guardian.

“The idea that people are taking 82 days holiday is wrong. I am having a few days holiday, and I am getting on with the job,” he said.

How much holiday time should MPs get?

The Media Standards Trust has begun a lecture series on 'Why Journalism Matters'. It is disconcerting that it feels we have to ask the question. The argument put forward by the British group's director Martin Moore is that news organisations are so preoccupied with business survival that discussion of the broader social, political and cultural function of journalism gets forgotten. It is a pertinent review then, given the icy economic blasts hitting most Anglo-Saxon media groups, and notwithstanding the recent examples of self-evidently broader journalistic 'value' produced by London's Daily Telegraph in its politican-shaming investigations into parliamentarians' expenses.

First up in the series was Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, who cantered through the justifications for a vibrant, independent press. Watchdog, informer, explainer, campaigner, community builder and debater - those are the roles that journalism plays. The value that it brings is most evident by comparison with the unhealthiness of states where the press is not free, noted Barber, citing the struggles of the citizenry in China and Russia to hold their leaders to account.

The FT's USP as a media group, according to Barber, is as an explainer and analyser of complicated events that play out across a global stage. But analytical reporting of global stories costs serious cash, he noted, in a question-begging aside. That you get the quality of journalism you are prepared to pay for, ultimately, is his response to the challenge posed to mainstream media by Internet-enabled communicators. For free you can have the rawness of a blog. For crafted journalism that is properly sourced, reviewed for taste and style and checked for accuracy, you must find ways to charge. At your peril do you blur the edges between the crafted and the raw world of easy comment, hasty opinion and rumour billed as fact, argues the FT editor.  (There was a hat tip, however, to the bloggers that have broken news, such as Guido Fawkes who forced the resignation of an advisor to Gordon Brown by revealing his plans for a smear email campaign.)

So a sharp distinction was drawn between the value proposition of professional journalism and its unruly blogging and twittering cousin. No such clarity yet, though, on the funding model for the former when the Internet has made audiences expect to read most general interest news and a lot of specialised niche content for free.  No secret that each and every news group is daunted by this obstacle, even the FT, which has not been immune to the downturn in advertising revenue.

We were left with a couple of clues on the way forward.  Barber predicted that within a year all news organisations will be charging for online content in some way. (The FT's model is to allow readers access to a few articles for free and then charge for further use.)  Will Google ever pay for content - unlikely says Barber. But at least they might be prepared to talk about linking via searches to articles requiring subscription, which they do not do currently.

And his flippant response to the demographic challenge posed to a print-based news organisation by the emergence of a generation of youngsters who get all their information from screens? People are living longer - they will still buy newspapers.

Gordon Brown is counting on a swift economic turnaround. It’s probably his Labour Party’s only hope of avoiding a humiliating electoral defeat to the Conservatives next year.

The latest news on the economy has certainly got people in Downing Street smiling. The housing market is stabilising and some commentators are even talking about Britain becoming the first major country to pull out of the recession.

Treasury forecasts of reasonable growth that were derided just two months ago suddenly don’t look so bad.

The Number 10 dream scenario is that the economy recovers strongly, Brown takes the credit and the polls turn in time for a May election.

But what happens if the economy does turn around by the end of the year and the polls don’t get any better?

If that happens, some party strategists are wondering whether that might be a good time for Brown to step down, say in January.

He could say he did what he set out to do — get Britain through the recession — and it was now time for a new face.

The honeymoon bounce could end up being Labour’s only hope.

The government’s planned Iraq inquiry has come under withering fire on several fronts, notably the lack of consultation with other political parties, its apparent careful timing to avoid any possible political embarrassment just before the next election and for what several commentators feel is a hand-picked establishment team in charge of proceedings that is unlikely to rock the boat.

But the main criticism has been the fact that it will be held in private.

That way, the government says, witnesses will be more likely to be candid, the whole process will be quicker and, above all, it will obviate the need to have legions of expensive lawyers accompanying every witness.

Doubtless Gordon Brown had in mind the example of the Saville Inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland which had been going on for 10 years and which has so far run up costs of almost 100 million pounds in lawyers’ fees.

The overall cost of that inquiry had reached 182 million pounds by the end of last year. It is not expected to report now until 2010.

Do you believe the government has a point in that respect or should it have given in to the repeated demands to hold an inquiry in public?

Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meetings are usually drab affairs. The leader turns up, listens to a few grumbles from backbench MPs, a few reporters hang around outside hoping to grab a half-decent quote and in the end a Labour apparatchik puts a rose-tinted spin on proceedings.

Not so on Monday night, one of those rare “crunch time” events for a party leader that creates such a frenzy inside and outside the venue. Parliament’s committee room 14 was so full one MP of robust stature tried to force not one, but two doors in an attempt to get in, and ended up with a sore shoulder. Veteran party member Greville (now Lord) Janner, a member of the Magic Circle, gave up trying to get in and instead entertained reporters with a couple of magic tricks. His skills may have been of more use on the other side of the door.

Gordon Brown, we were led to believe, faced being sawn in half by his own party after a disastrous showing in local and European elections. However, as so often is the case, the reality did not live up to the hype and the prime minister slipped away via a trap door, but not before making a speech telling everyone how humble he was and how he promised to listen in future. This is a classic leader’s smoke and mirrors trick, show them you’re listening, come out with a few “reform” initiatives in the ensuing days and when the air has cleared go back to whatever it was you were doing that upset them in the first place.

Leaders are not unseated at PLP meetings, despite how many times you read that these events are a firing squad. In fact, Brown strolled down the long, dark committee corridor, beamed at reporters and threw them a cheery “hi guys”. His predecessor Tony Blair used to do the same thing ahead of a tricky PLP, the final time with his suit jacket casually thrown over one shoulder like a model from a menswear catalogue.

Brown knew what he had to do, and for now he has bought himself some time. He also knows that the odds of a full blown rebellion are slim. It’s easy to go on television and say “Gordon must go”, it’s another matter to get that anger and dissent distilled into something more potent and then pour it down the throat of a potential challenger. The point is not lost on Labour members. They know they are on the rack, but any change of leadership now will only hasten electoral defeat. The public won’t tolerate another unelected prime minister installed at Number 10 and nor should they. Brown may still be in one piece, but it will take more than magic tricks and humility to save him if he doesn’t make sure his party is in the same state fairly soon.

Reuters UK Chief Correspondent Keith Weir assesses the European election results and the challenges facing Prime Minister Gordon Brown after support for the Labour Party plunged to its lowest level in a century in European elections.

The collapse in the Labour vote in the European Parliament election, which followed a dismal showing in local government elections last week, helped the far-right British National Party win its first two seats in the European Parliament.

Labour won 15.7 percent of the European vote, behind the anti-EU UK Independence Party on 16.5 percent and the Conservatives on 27.7. Labour’s vote was about seven points down from the 2004 European election.