APRIL is here, the clocks have jumped forwards, the sun is out occasionally and there’s still daylight when nine-to-five workers head home.

We’re entitled to declare that spring has arrived. But it was a very dark, gloomy March this year. I only hope it isn’t remembered in history the same way as August 1914 or September 1939.

Reflecting on it, I could only think of one item of good news, one silver lining to its clouds. After nearly six years in prison in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released.

Boris Johnson was wise – not four words you see together often – to keep away from the event and not try to use her release as a photo opportunity.

Then of course he’s rarely interested in photo opportunities that don’t allow him to wear a hard hat or dress up as a paramedic. Every time I see him I think how embarrassing it must be to be a Conservative MP and have to defend him.

But he had to keep away – and keep his head down – because he is partly responsible for her imprisonment. That shouldn’t be forgotten.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained by the Iranians in 2016 on the grounds that she was a spy, “plotting to topple the Iranian government”. Her defence was that she was only there on holiday, to let her Iranian parents see their grandchild.

However on November 1 2017 Johnson, who was then foreign secretary, gave the Iranians another reason to detain her. He stupidly said: “When we look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism as I understand it.”

That statement was cited by the Iranians as more evidence against her. They said she was training people to produce propaganda against the Iranian regime, and she was locked up for another four-and-a-half years.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s employers, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said Johnson should “immediately correct the serious mistake he made”, explaining: “She is not a journalist and has never trained journalists at the Thomson Reuters Foundation.”

But the damage to her reputation was done.

That’s why I dislike this broad tendency to indulge Johnson as a bit of a clown with a love of colourful language, which might be misjudged sometimes but adds to the gaiety of the nation. He can be dangerous and offensive.

It was his former best friend Dominic Cummings who revealed that – when considering another lockdown last year – Johnson said: “Let the bodies pile high.”

I’m sure that went down well among all those who lost loved ones to Covid.

Most recently he has insulted 48 per cent of the British population – those of us who voted to remain in the European Union, and who have been proved right as the Brexit chickens come home to roost.

Last week he declared that Brexit showed that Britons shared the same instinct for freedom as Ukrainians resisting the Russian invasion.

In a speech to the Tory conference in Blackpool, Johnson said it was “the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom every time”.

He cited the Brexit referendum in June 2016 as a “famous recent example”, declaring: “When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don’t believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners.

"It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself.”

Let’s leave aside the fact that people didn’t vote Brexit in "such large, large numbers”. It was just over half of those who turned out to vote. If the EU referendum were run again, remain would win.

But it was deeply insulting to remain voters to compare them to the murderous Vladimir Putin, and to compare Brexiteers to Ukrainians.

The comments were widely condemned, although our shiny Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said his boss did not consider the two situations comparable. So why did Johnson say it then?

In any case, comparing remainers to Russia is getting in the wrong way round.

What we should remember is that one of the biggest Brexit supporters beyond our shores is Vladimir Putin. He is only too happy to undermine unity among European liberal democracies.

And we should remember that Nigel Farage said Putin was the international leader he admired the most.

Insults from Johnson are nothing new. He insulted our intelligence by expecting us to believe he went to a party but didn’t realise it was a party.

But on the whole I think it would be safer if he kept his mouth shut.