Triple Duplicity

Begging for Oil

It has been a good few weeks for the government and Prime Minister if not for humanity. The partygate allegations at 10 Downing Street have been kicked into touch courtesy of the Metropolitan Police taking over the investigation from Sue Gray. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had resulted in opposition parties supporting the government's condemnation of the invasion and the government has aligned itself with the position taken by the USA and Europe. In times of trouble, it is not a good idea to be going it alone in full Brexit camouflage.

But then on 16 March, we had a triple whammy of events that reminded us that Boris Johnson's government will always seize the chance to obfuscate, dither and then claim the kudos for anything that tickles the fancy of the British public.

First, in order to address the shortage of oil and gas and the consequent escalation of fuel and heating prices, Johnson was off to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Republic to ask them to ramp up oil production. After all, they had been kind enough to buy our fighter planes, military equipment and weapons with which the Saudis had bombed Yemen. Their human rights record had been highlighted again by the execution of 81 people at the weekend but did not seem to bother the PM. 

Second, Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe was released after 6 years in an Iranian jail for alleged spying after Johnson had wrongly claimed she was training journalists. The release was always going to be conditional on repaying the debt for tanks that were never delivered. Five Foreign secretaries had failed to achieve her release. It should have been understood by this government, which has welcomed Russian money with open arms, that money makes the world go round, especially when dealing with autocratic or corrupt governments. However, the UK government had delayed paying the £400m debt since an arbitration by the International Court of Justice in the Hague in 2009. It is no surprise that after years of obstruction, the government now decided it was a good time to pay the debt so that the Iranians might also increase their oil production. Liz Truss claimed it was her diplomatic skills "wot done it" and will no doubt turn up for an Instagram photo to welcome Nazanin home. It will add to her impressive CV as the Foreign Secretary. She has already negotiated for Australia to import beef and lamb that fails UK food standards, mistakenly called the Black Sea the Baltic Sea and been summarily dismissed from a diplomatic meeting with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, who said that it was like talking to a deaf person.

Third, we had the claim from various ministers that the UK was leading the support for Ukraine by the PM providing more weapons than any other NATO country in Europe. The government then tried to ride the humanitarian offers by 100,000 UK people to take Ukrainian refugees, even though this was done by the people, not the government. The UK is the only country requiring visas for Ukrainian refugees and demands that these be completed in foreign embassies some of which have subsequently closed or online, whenever we get the software sorted out. It is no surprise that the UK has so far received fewer refugees than any other country and has been ridiculed by President Macron, the Finnish prime minister and numerous other European leaders.  

Is there no limit to the lengths that the government will go to claim kudos for their failures or their rapacious attempts to grab resources at the expense of other more needy nations?