Alex Massie Alex Massie

Never mind fake news, this is fake government

There’s a line in ‘All the President’s Men’ which seems dismally appropriate for our current government: ‘News that would have occasioned banner headlines a few weeks ago was now simply mentioned in a larger story’. When things fall apart, boy they really fall apart. 

This is not Watergate, of course, and Brexit must happen because that is what the people have commanded. Nevertheless, this is not a government that inspires confidence even on its own benches. And by God there is too much news. More, certainly, than can fit in a single story or be the subject of its own banner headlines. 

Up until now, the standard view has been that Boris Johnson is less trouble in the Foreign Office than he would be were he left to prowl the back benches. Never mind the insult this represents to the FCO, ask the family of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British citizen now looking at a decade in an Iranian prison, at least partly because of the Foreign Secretary’s carelessness.

To put it another way, it is hard to imagine the circumstances in which previous foreign secretaries such as Malcolm Rifkind, Douglas Hurd or Jack Straw would have made quite this kind of blunder.

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