Spend any amount of time working in government and it can feel extraordinary that anything gets done. Have a shiny new policy? Is it costed? Does your junior minister/Secretary of State/Prime Minister agree or even care?
Congratulations! Now go forth and hold a call for evidence, then a consultation, slip it into a white paper while no one’s looking and, oh I’m sorry, the parliamentary session has expired.
So securing the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori from Iranian detention stands as a major achievement for Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and others who worked tirelessly to get the deal over the line.
But amid the relief and joyous scenes as Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was pictured making pizzas with her daughter at the Chancellor’s country estate, questions are being raised about why it all took so long.
Speaking publicly for the first time at a press conference today, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe asked why she was left in Iranian detention for six years. She went on to criticise previous foreign secretaries for their lack of action in securing her return and revealed she stopped believing promises from the UK about her release.
“[H]ow many former secretaries does it take for someone to come out? Five? It should have been one,” she said.
The answer to that query and the uncomfortable questions surrounding how Iran might spend the money (the UK government insists it will be used only for humanitarian purposes), is likely to linger for some time, even as the Ratcliffe family ‘retire’ from public life.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, military chiefs in Mariupol – which is being bombed to the edge of existence by Russian forces – refused to surrender this morning following a Russian ultimatum.
As we set out in today’s leader column, what was until recently a thriving port city now embodies the Kremlin’s indiscriminate violence. There are also reports of Ukrainians being taken over the border into Russia, where an uncertain but terrifying fate awaits them. “If war is hell, there must be another, more ghastly term to describe what the people of this city are enduring.”
Health Secretary Sajid Javid has backed considering a Nuremberg-style trial to try Putin in his absence for war crimes in Ukraine.
In the comment pages, what was the Prime Minister up to by comparing Ukraine’s fight for survival with the UK’s referendum on leaving the EU? Philip Collins explains that Brexit may have been Boris Johnson’s magic wand, but we’re now in a totally different world.
City Editor Oscar Williams-Grut warns not to expect any showers of cash from Rishi Sunak in the Spring Statement (a 74 per cent Universal Credit taper rate for anyone who calls it a Budget).
While Dr Daniel Goyal, an NHS medical consultant, says letting Covid rip has brought the health service to its knees.
And not forgetting the beavers. Enfield councillor Ian Barnes invites you to meet London’s hottest new residents: Sigourney and Justin Beaver.
Finally, say goodbye to free-range eggs. From next week they’ll no longer be on the shelves, replaced by ‘barn eggs’ following an outbreak of bird flu which has forced farmers to move all their chickens indoors.
