It’s ridiculous. The UK government cannot control the security features applied to people in other countries. Only its own country.

As a result of this, the American government can now, through iCloud servers decrypt and read all the data from all the phones used by UK government staff. You’ve lost more than you possibly gained.

I’ve wondered what google’s position is here, because they probably came under the same pressure. It would be depressing but predictable if they just did as they were told.