Negligence kept Nazanin locked up in Iran – and it’s taken root at home

Ignore the histrionics online. Ignore what others might tell you. It was shocking to see Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe reveal herself to be just a little bit ungrateful after returning to the UK. It was hard, in fact, to watch the press conference and imagine the kind of character required to show that degree of hostility after all the British government had done to secure her release during six long years of imprisonment in Iran.

Many people in her position would have started the press conference on a different note. Some might have thrown a chair through a window. Others might have spray-painted a vulgar motto along King Charles Street, telling Boris Johnson where to find (and then where to stick) the contrition he has been typically unwilling to show. Had she vented the anger she has every right to vent, the earth would have split asunder leaving a lava lake where the Foreign Office now stands.

It was this Prime Minister, remember, back when he was bumbling around as Foreign Secretary, who became chief-witness for the prosecution in Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s “trial” after his ill-considered comments gifted the Iranians the “proof” needed to “convict” her.

All things considered: Boris Johnson has got away lightly for his cock up… yet again.

We have, instead, the perverse situation in which it’s the victim of Johnson’s incompetence who is receiving abuse. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has landed in the middle of a culture war that wasn’t raging when she left England to visit her mother six years ago. Her mild criticism, utterly benign in its impact, has now been spun and vile hashtags (“#ungratefulcow” and “#sendherback”) have started because she is that potent mix during potent times: being an articulate woman who is also a dual national.

There will always be a deeply muddled “dimographic” who will see these things through partisan beer mugs, suspicious of a woman with a foreign-sounding name who doesn’t appear to appreciate good old Blighty or wrap herself in the flag. It doesn’t figure in their maths that a mother missed six years of her daughter’s young life and a daughter spent much of her childhood without her mother. Not do they seem to understand how all this was avoidable.

It is to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s credit that she returned to England showing considerable poise in the face of the government’s indolence. She had a few words to say about former foreign secretaries but it was a fair point softly made. Did it take the genius of Liz Truss to work out the bit of this where the UK paid back the money that was never ours and which we owed Iran? Why had this matter confused Messrs. Hammond, Johnson, Hunt, and Raab before her?

Dare one wonder why UK relations with Iran warmed at precisely the moment when our relations with Russia went cold?

And, Debbie, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?

One might suppose that necessity is the mother of intervention, given that the energy crisis does seem to have changed the government’s thinking about Iran and, more specifically, its oil. Yet it is also very consistent with what we know of this government, which has made a habit of shirking responsibility… until there’s something in it for them.

Johnson has proved incapable of apology and, under his premiership, the party of “small government” has become the party of “no government”. The vein of shirking responsibility runs thick through the cabinet. Rishi Sunak constantly opts to “choose to recognise that government has limits”; an especially pernicious reading of his role during an energy crisis when other governments have stepped in to address the imbalance between price rises and the soaring profits earned by energy companies. Sajid Javid, when business secretary, admitted that “[t]here are limits to what the government can do in response” to the situation at Tata Steel and has continued to embrace this philosophy through his work at the Department of Health. Even in the face of the Ukrainian refugee crisis, the government tried to offload the burden onto individuals, only for tens of thousands of people to offer to take refugees into their homes. The government response: continue to do nothing.

Still. Not. Their. Problem.

Throughout every crisis and the repercussion of every bad decision, Johnson’s government behaves as if it wasn’t in government and the things that happened on its watch didn’t happen on its watch. The spectacle, this past week, of Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke joining protests against P&O after they fired (to rehire) its staff, was indicative of the bigger picture. She even joined in a chant of “shame on you” until she realised that the shame was directed at her. It was under Johnson that the government had opposed a bill to outlaw so-called “firing to rehire” last October.

But again. Not. Their. Problem.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has the right to be angry but the negligence that left her locked up in Iran was the same negligence that took root at home. The government ignored the looming problem of our energy security, offering meaningless eco-messaging instead of protecting us from what was coming down the line. It ignored Covid-19 until the very last moment and, even now, refuses to acknowledge the scale of Russia’s corruption of London and our politics. The only politics it appears impassioned about is when it involves protecting second incomes for MPs (proposed legislation quietly dropped during the current crisis). But perhaps that is part of the same puzzle. If the ministers care about second incomes so much, perhaps it’s because they’re not entirely committed to earning their first income.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe has the right to be angry, as do all of us who would welcome a little competence in government. If the Prime Minister doesn’t want to govern, maybe he should make way for a leader who does.