WATCH: Cabinet Brexiteers back Boris Johnson over Iran row
3 min read
Senior pro-Brexit figures today rallied around Boris Johnson after Jeremy Corbyn said he should be sacked for "damaging Britain".
Cabinet colleagues rushed to defend the Foreign Secretary over a major blunder that could leave a British mother locked up in Iran for ten years.
Mr Johnson caused uproar by telling the Foreign Affairs Committee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "teaching journalists" when she was detained 18-months ago.
The Iranian authorities moved to double her five-year sentence for alleged spying as a result of the comments, despite her insistence that she was on holiday at the time.
In an article for the Observer, Labour leader Mr Corbyn wrote: “After 16 months of the Foreign Secretary damaging Britain’s standing in the world, [Theresa May] should sack him.”
But Brexit Secretary David Davis and Environment Secretary Michael Gove - who both campaigned alongside Mr Johnson for Britain to leave the EU - dismissed the call.
Asked by Sky’s Niall Paterson if Mr Johnson should step down, Mr Davis said: “Why would you want to sack him? He’s a good Foreign Secretary.
“The thing to understand here is you have got a flurry at the moment of things happening in politics, but this happens to all governments at some point or another.”
Mr Gove - who has rekindled his alliance with Mr Johnson after betraying him in the 2016 Tory leadership race - meanwhile said any blame for the incident should be placed on Iran alone.
"There is an effort, somehow to shift attention and direction away from who is really at fault here, and it is the Iranian regime," he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.
"They are the people who jailed Nazanin, they are the people on whom our focus should light.
“There is no reason, no excuse and no justification for her detention and she should be released.
"We make a big mistake if we think that the right thing to do is to blame politicians in a democracy who are trying to do the right thing for the plight of a woman who is being imprisoned by a regime that is a serial abuser of human rights."
He added: "I think Boris Johnson is doing a great job as Foreign Secretary."
But Labour Shadow Cabinet Office minister John Trickett blasted: "It appears Gove is more interested in protecting Johnson's job than the liberty of a British citizen in jail in Iran.
“Theresa May must ensure Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe does not pay the price for her ministers’ bungling.”
Mr Johnson withdrew the remark about training journalists but refused to apologise, and suggested Tehran had misinterpreted what he said.
The Foreign Secretary has reportedly spoken to Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband today, with a source telling Sky News the exchange was "constructive," and that the pair had agreed to meet in person.
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