Many of us over the past week have been shocked and upset to see the Taliban take over Afghanistan. Knowing their history we can expect lots of deaths as the Taliban step up the search for "collaborators".

President Biden, who I would normally agree with, has clearly made a totally reckless decision in the way that he hungered for his troops withdrawal without clearly having a coherent exit plan. To now blame the Afghanis is very offensive.

Sadly other political leaders followed like lap dogs including Boris Johnson. His actions were impulsive given what our troops did to achieve a good level of stability in the region over the past twenty years. Listening to the soldiers, including those injured in Afghanistan, shows how he has let us down.

We have seen many embassy staff, students, interpreters, journalists, aid workers and others at risk. Others have died and we fear this will be the start.

The question now comes to how we can help the Afghans who are either fleeing for their lives or are refugees. We must offer them a sanctuary; a home. Canada is a small country and has already said it will accept 20,000 refugees - we need to play our part.

These people are traumatised and we must treat them with compassion and empathy. Much mental health support will be needed but we should not shirk our responsibility.

Our country continues to evacuate nationals from Afghanistan as the Taliban made advances. Our government cannot be trusted though as when we made pledges to help the Calais migrants figures showed that only a few hundred came here when they promised to rehome many thousands.

Ealing did its bit to rehome a number of Calais migrants and my party, the Liberal Democrats, shouted strongly about how they needed our help and that as a Council we could help them. We should do the same again but this time to help refugees from Afghanistan.

The pledge from the Home Secretary of 5,000 per year is too few. We must address the situation that we did not try to avoid and make a real difference to refugees from Afghanistan.

We have all seen recently the behaviour of Dominic Raab. He has to resign for his inaction on this crucial issue.

Things did not have to be this way but we now need to take stock and do everything we can to help as many Afghans as we can.