Ransom or debt? The government chooses these words for a reason

It was a debt and its repayment secured her release; the facts are now incontrovertible. But for six years, we haven’t heard that word from the government

Of course Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is frustrated that the decision to repay a decades overdue debt to Iran took so long to make (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The spectacle of right-wing ideologues policing the language of a woman who has just spent six years incarcerated by a dictatorial regime is as chilling as it is predictable.

Of course Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is frustrated that the decision to repay a decades overdue debt to Iran took so long to make: she has missed her daughter’s entire early life and is having to rebuild her relationship with her from scratch. Who wouldn’t be furious in the knowledge that the misery could have been spared if the incompetence of a revolving door of spineless foreign secretaries hadn’t got in the way?

The miracle is that she managed to stay so calm as she delivered the knockout punch: “I mean, how many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five? It should have been one of them eventually. So now here we are. What’s happened now should have happened six years ago.”

Funnily enough, those indulging in a forensic analysis of the terms and tone used by a woman whose liberty was stripped from her as a pawn in a diplomatic game seem unwilling to extend their inquisitions to the sentences uttered by members of the cabinet. There they would find some quite remarkable and troubling linguistic tricks, all deployed to cover up incompetence.

First of all there is this term “debt”. Now Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been successfully repatriated to the UK, it’s being thrown about like confetti at a celebration. It was a debt and its repayment secured her release; the facts are now incontrovertible. But for six years, we haven’t heard that word from the government. They’ve been spouting off about the payment of a “ransom”, and the unintended geopolitical consequences of following through with that.

Why? Ransom is such a loaded term, and no right-thinking British citizen would want to see their government thrown over a moral barrel in such a way. While they thought a ransom was being demanded, the public pressure on the foreign secretary over Zaghari-Ratcliffe relaxed somewhat, especially once the pandemic kept their minds distracted. The term clevely obscured the numerous failings of a series of foreign secretaries to handle the case in her best interests. It hid incompetence in plain sight. Now the money has been handed over to Iran’s abusive theocratic regime, ransom would itself sound incompetent, so back we go to “debt”.

There’s more like this, you just have to look closely enough. Last week Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, was duped into spending 10 minutes on a video call with Russian imposters whom he had been led to believe were Ukrainian politicians. He admitted there had been a security breach at the time, but this week Number 10 confirmed the Russian authorities were behind the embarrassing “hoax calls”.

The what now? It’s a strange, diminishing term to select, one that conjures the image of Bart Simpson ringing Moe the Bartender and requesting a Mr Hugh Jass. But the incident described is something much more chilling, because individuals who could be Russian state actors, at a time of conflict, were able to instigate and record a conversation which could have uncovered the depth and commitment of the relationship between the UK government and the Ukrainian leadership.

A pair of so-called Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus, claimed responsibility for the video call, but UK intelligence reportedly indicates they have Russian state links. So another interpretation of the incident is this: under the guise of plausible deniability, a Russian spook operation managed to get right through whatever (clearly insubstantial) protections surround direct lines with cabinet members and fool the minister for a good 10 minutes before something finally didn’t sound right. Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries were also targeted, but were not directly reached.

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The government had little choice but to own up to what had happened. They know there are now voice recordings of the individuals targeted in Russian hands, and these recordings could easily be manipulated to create deep fake propaganda intended for Russian and Chinese audiences. Given the size of those populations involved, and the amount of control both governments exert over their citizens’ access to information, this is an extremely dangerous misstep. It’s incompetence. That needed obscuring, hence the use of the term “hoax”, to make it all sound like a jolly good laugh.

This is not accidental, attributable only to a sort of difference in linguistic style between policy wonks and a “tell it like it is” government that speaks like an ordinary citizen. It’s calculated.

Last year, I wrote about how Boris Johnson has become addicted to the language of electioneering. He chooses his words like he’s constantly on the stump. That cropped up again this week when he ill-advisedly compared the Ukrainian resistance to the “liberation” of Brexit. That used the same tactic, but with a little bit of incompetence masking thrown in to boot.

With the cost of living crisis swelling and the potential for European conflict on the horizon, the shine on Brexit is starting to dull. Incompetence and inconsistency, the gap between the promise and the result, is becoming more visible. Johnson will say whatever it takes to disguise it.

Will a few carefully selected words help him keep voters sufficiently veiled in the run up to the May local elections? Not if he and his cabinet keep choosing them so poorly.