Johnson and Patel need to get serious
POLITICS is not a game, and cleverness and ambition are no substitute for integrity and wisdom.
Lives can be at stake when ministers step in front of a microphone or sign off on a decision.
There was dismay when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that a woman imprisoned in Iran was “training journalists” in the country.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has insisted she was in Iran so her daughter could meet her grandparents.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said Iranian officials had used Mr Johnson’s remarks to a Commons committee to justify extending her sentence.
When asked if he would apologise to the family, Mr Johnson said he was sorry “if” his words were “so taken out of context and so misconstrued as to cause any kind of anxiety”.
This is a classic non-apology apology. It is an attempt to offload his responsibility onto anyone else.
Mr Johnson needs to recognise that as the Foreign Secretary of the UK his off-the-cuff remarks have the potential to cause devastating harm. As a media performer he earned popularity and recognition by cultivating a bumbling persona but a woman’s imprisonment in Tehran is a profoundly serious matter.
If he wants to stay in the job – let alone aspire to even higher office – he needs to both raise his game and wake up to the gravity of the responsibility that comes with this role.
A stronger Prime Minister might well have sacked him for his recent interventions on Brexit. Mr Johnson seems secure at the Foreign Office but it will be a concern for the country if Mrs May’s weakness encourages her ministers to be either cavalier or complacent.
The behaviour of International Development Secretary Priti Patel is as concerning as it is bizarre.
There is consternation that she went to Israel and met figures including the Prime Minister without telling the Foreign Office, but her obfuscation about the real nature of what she described as a “family holiday” is outrageous.
She initially claimed that “Boris knew about the visit” but has since admitted that advance notice was not given.
Concerning whom she met, Ms Patel at first claimed the “stuff that is out there is it” but then published a clarification, listing an extensive set of government figures and organisations.
Again, a stronger PM at a more stable time might have responded to such foreign policy freelancing and inexactitude in statements by sending her to the backbenches. But these are days of deep turbulence in Westminster when the Defence Secretary has had to resign over behaviour he admits is no longer considered acceptable and there is uncertainty about the political future of a host of other figures.
A role in government represents a unique opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. It is an honour to be prized and a sober duty. Anyone trivialising it is letting down the country.