This year, the Royal British Legion produced 38 million poppies, 900,000 crosses and 100,000 wreaths. These extraordinary figures reflect our deep admiration for our armed forces, and the desire to pay our respects to those who, in conflicts past and present, have laid down their lives to protect our freedom.

Last Sunday I attended the moving Remembrance Day service in Warlingham. Despite the damp and the cold, there was an impressive turn out of local people who came to remember.

In Surrey alone this year, there were 129 poppy appeal organisers looking after 3,750 sellers – every one of them a volunteer. Last year, the County raised over £917,000 and I can only hope that this year will be even better.

The first official ‘Poppy Day’ was held in 1921 to remember those lost in the First World War, and whilst this is not forgotten the focus is shifting toward a new generation of veterans and war dead. Every week  the House of Commons falls silent at the start of Prime Minister’s Questions as Gordon Brown reads out the names of those that have lost their lives in Afghanistan the preceding week. As the list grows ever longer, many people are quietly asking themselves the questions “is this worth it? And are we doing the right thing?”

These questions are now surfacing more openly in the media and amongst the public. 94 of our servicemen and women have died in Afghanistan this year alone, taking the total up to 231.  We honour them; we salute the injured; and we extend our sympathy to their families. We must not forget, either, the thousands of innocent civilians who have suffered from years of conflict. 

Gordon Brown recently set out his reasons for our continued engagement. He argued that making Afghanistan a safer place makes us safer back here in Britain, and he concluded that “we cannot, must not and will not walk away.” But whether  we are in fact making Afghanistan a safer place is not clear - the death toll amongst our soldiers suggests otherwise - and there is at least the possibility that the current strategy is fostering the wider cause of extremists.

We cannot just cut and run; but we do urgently need a new approach. We should start by recognising that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not the same thing; that our attackers seem to be based in Pakistan and not Afghanistan; and that attempts to impose the notion of a centralised western democracy on Afghanistan (via a corrupt regime in Kabul) will assuredly fail. 

It is a poignant irony that, eight years after the conflict started,  Afghan fields are still full of poppies. Opium poppies. The poppy fields of Afghanistan act as a powerful reminder not only of the courage and sacrifice of our forces there today, but also of how much still needs to be achieved.