It was a useless gesture, rejected, then half accepted, then rejected again, both by British Muslims and by the Iranian leadership. The strong position would have been to refuse to negotiate with intolerance. He had taken the weak position and was therefore treated as a weakling.

It’s hard to know what to invest in these days. The stock market is turbulent and interest rates are low. But investors in killing Salman Rushdie would be making a killing because the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Khordad Foundation has kept the reward for killing Rushdie well ahead of inflation.