In a rare moment of non-brexit-related existential dread, the United Kingdom has apparently stumbled into the role of global peacemaker, as former President Donald Trump’s ghostly spectre threatens to reanimate the corpse of the Iran nuclear deal. Yes, dear reader, while the world holds its breath, Whitehall’s finest have dusted off their best stiff upper lips and declared themselves the last bastion of sanity in a cackling madhouse of geopolitics. It emerges that Her Majesty’s Government, or what remains of it after the Great Tory Backbench Rebellion of ’23, is set to play the part of mediator between the nuclear ambitions of Tehran and the Twitter-based foreign policy of the republic’s once and future shambles.
The details, as leaked from a source who shall remain nameless but probably smells faintly of single malt, suggest a ‘grand compromise’ wherein Iran agrees to store its enriched uranium in Boris Johnson’s hair in exchange for a promise that the UK will stop scheduling crucial votes for 3pm on a Friday. But let us not get bogged down in specifics. The real story here is the sheer, breathtaking audacity of a nation that cannot manage to pave its own potholes confidently swanning into the nuclear standoff with a cry of ‘I say, steady on, chaps!
’ One imagines the Iranian negotiators arriving at the Palace of Westminster, only to be greeted by a tour group, a confused security guard, and a dusty portrait of Palmerston giving them the side-eye. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the orange golem himself no doubt grumbles into his Diet Coke about how the Brits are ruining his ‘Art of the Deal’ legacy, conveniently forgetting that his own deal was less an art and more a crayon sketch on a napkin. The stakes?
Impossibly high. The outcome? Anyone’s guess.
But one thing is certain: British diplomacy has once again proven that if you repeat ‘Rule Britannia’ loudly enough over a gin and tonic, even nuclear non-proliferation begins to sound like a jolly good idea. As the world watches, we can only hope that our leaders remember that, in the immortal words of some dead poet, ‘he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon’, or at least a very good lawyer.
