Charm Offensive

Despite having been invited, the United Kingdom has refused to send a representative to the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran. The Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns has had a sudden attack of Europhilia and has decided to follow the EU position, which is that the ceremony will be attended by diplomats already based in Tehran. Britain has had no diplomatic representation there since a mob attacked the embassy in 2011, and the Bullingdon Club is doubtless still smarting at the fact that a few angry rag-heads can do to Britain what all Davey's forces and all Davey's men couldn't do to Ecuador. As if that were not enough, Rouhani is a former nuclear negotiator whose lack of credibility as a frothing demagogue is a gratuitous insult to the Government's crying need for a fight over Iran's hardline stance on its weapons of mass supposition. He'll have to do better than that.