Our toadying to the US kept Nazanin in jail

I YIELD to nobody in my loathing of the Iranian regime, which locked up my friend and colleague Jason Rezaian on ludicrous false spying charges. But it is still the case that the British Government badly failed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, cruelly snatched from her family by Iran’s cynical state. She could and should have been freed years ago.

I believe it was our feeble subservience to the USA which prevented us from paying the debt which was always the reason for Nazanin’s state kidnap. We did, in fact, owe the money. And now we have paid it, I cannot see what argument exists for not having done so years ago, so reuniting Nazanin with her family and especially with her daughter.

I doubt whether any other major country would have dawdled so long. It is only the utterly one-sided ‘Special Relationship’ that held us up.

RED-HOT inflation, higher taxes and rising interest rates are all here, just as I said they would be. I believe the disgraceful sacking of P&O workers has the same cause. Hardly a day goes by when I do not see a small business – a favourite cafe, a friendly local stationer, once-thriving newsagents – closing. These miseries are the direct result of our wild over-reaction to Covid. No doubt the Ukraine war and the energy crisis will make them all worse, but do not forget their real origin.