Tobias Ellwood has been forced out as chairman of the Commons defence select committee, it has been reported - two months after calling on the UK to reinstate ties with the Taliban.

The MP visited Afghanistan over the summer and in a video posted on Twitter he said the country had been “transformed” since the US-led pull-out - and that it was now time for Britain to re-open its embassy.

The video sparked outrage, with one Tory colleague on the committee likening it to a clip from the ITV travel show Wish You Were Here…?, presented by Judith Chalmers. 

Last night, it emerged that Mr Ellwood had resigned the chairmanship of the committee to avoid a potential no confidence vote in the Commons.

No other members of the committee would comment.

Mr Ellwood, who had been chairman of the defence committee since 2019, used his video to praise infrastructure improvements since the US-backed government fled two years ago.

The video, uploaded in July, said: “All that’s happened here since 9/11 - this is a very different country indeed. It feels different now that the Taliban have returned to power.

“It may be hard to believe, but security has vastly improved, corruption is down and the opium trade has all but disappeared. Pylons distribute electricity to the cities, solar panels are now everywhere, powering irrigation pumps, allowing more crops to grow…

“After Nato’s dramatic departure, should the West now engage with the Taliban?”

A Taliban spokesman retweeted the video and said it was true that “many positive things” had been done.

Speaking later the same day in the Commons, committee member Mark Francois called the video “utterly bizarre”.

He criticised him for not mentioning that the Taliban are still hunting for Afghan citizens who helped our armed forces, or that young girls cannot go to school.

Mr Francois said: “Something which was described by a fellow member of the defence committee to me barely an hour ago as a ‘Wish You Were Here…?” video, in which he made no mention of the fact that the Taliban are still attempting to identify and kill Afghan citizens who helped our armed forces, and also makes no specific mention of the fact that young girls in Afghanistan don’t even have the right to go to school under that government.

“I wish to make plain, on behalf of the committee, he was speaking for himself, even though he used the title of chairman of our committee in a number of associated articles. Not in our name.”

A day after the furore, Mr Ellwood apologised, saying he had “got it wrong” with his remarks.

In his controversial video, he said that Afghanistan was a “war-weary nation” which was accepting a more authoritarian leadership “in exchange for stability”.

In Kabul, he said, the streets are “relatively” safe, the checkpoints have all gone, businesses are reopening - but “unfortunately”, the British Embassy is closed.

“There is a calm though to the country that local elders say they’ve not experienced since the 1970s,” he said. “That’s how long ordinary Afghans have experienced war.

“So do we shout from afar and risk another era of instability, a rise in terrorism and mass migration, or re-engage?

“If the EU’s embassy can open up, so can ours. And incrementally we can encourage the progressive changes to the economy and critically for girls’ education and female workers that we all want to see.”

Mr Ellwood concluded: “I depart Afghanistan with a better appreciation as to how we can help this vulnerable country that feels abandoned by the international community.  

“It is time to re-open the embassies, it is time to re-engage, and Britain should lead the way.”