RUSSIA is a nasty, brutish state that treats its own people, never mind other countries’ citizens, with contempt. Sadly, it has been ever thus, since the days of the Tsars. But faux outrage over Jeremy Corbyn or Alex Salmond is an attempt to distract from how the monster was unleashed, and how it is sustained.
The fulmination of Ruth Davidson and the bellicosity of Boris Johnson is simply an attempt to move the focus from how the “New Russia” was established and the way the oligarchs run it, never mind the UK’s uncomfortable relationship with it, through its open courting of Russian wealth and a failure to question the source of so much of it.
The response by Boris Johnson as to why someone would want to pay £160,000 to play tennis with him was frankly laughable, and Ruth Davidson has yet to explain a £20,000 dinner date. Actions against some individuals and belatedly on shell companies in Scotland is long overdue, but frankly tokenistic.
For sure, the nerve agent attack cannot go unanswered, but Mr Corbyn’s question on evidence was perfectly legitimate. It almost certainly was the Russians but just how complicit was Vadimir Putin is harder to say. Russia is now almost a mafia state, though it’s still hard to see how the nerve agent could have been acquired let alone used without some tacit consent. But proof for international action will still be required and, in that sphere, increasing bluster by Mr Johnson will not suffice. Likewise, RT is regulated by Ofcom, though it looks increasingly likely it will wilt under political pressure and close the station down.
But RT is but a bit part of the Russian influence in the UK. The real influence is through the money that has been invested and laundered there. Transparency International reckoned that between one-quarter to one-fifth of the dirty money in London comes from there.
In London recently, I was being driven through hugely wealthy parts that the cab driver said were all now owned by absentee foreign investors, many Russian. The tumbleweed could almost be seen blowing through the deserted streets, in a city where there’s homeless living rough and an acute housing crisis across its length and breadth.
Like it or not, Mr Putin was re-elected but that’s the democracy that that’s been established there. Some of it, perhaps, was always likely to happen, others aspects though were encouraged by right-wing forces in the west.
Many years ago, I was friendly with a diplomat from abroad who was then working in Edinburgh but had been based in Russia at the time of the fall of the USSR. He explained how the whole nature of Soviet society had mitigated against individual action. When democracy and an open economy came people were almost frozen from generations of never having acted spontaneously. Accordingly, those who took power and seized assets were the KGB and criminals. One used to acting and directing, the other to simply taking opportunities when they arose. Everyone else awaited approval that previously would have taken years and been required in triplicate, if granted at all. And, so they took over.
Into that vacuum went western forces to apparently assist in democracy. A friend of mine who worked with a major think tank and with the great title of being a “sovietologist” sent me a DVD of the Heritage Foundation’s activity before the first democratic elections were held in the Russian Federation. Two aspects shone through the lectures that were given to a selected group, and many would go on to become the oligarchs we know today.
First, the American advisors made it clear that turnout didn’t matter. Indeed, they said the lower the turnout the better as it increased leverage for you if you could maximise your own support. Secondly, they said picking on minorities was often helpful in motivating your own core vote and referenced blacks and Hispanics in the United States. That legacy could be seen not just in the election but in Russian society today where democratic participation is discouraged and minorities are preyed upon.
So, that’s the Russia that has been unleashed not by Mr Salmond’s show on RT or perceived acquiescence by Mr Corbyn but by Mr Johnson and his ilk. Rather than seeking to restrain what they have helped create, he and his kind have sought to benefit from it by actively encouraging Russian money into London and then asking few questions about its legitimacy.
Cabinet ministers will castigate a few but connive with others, for the City of London and the post-Brexit Britain they dream of is dependent not just on Russian oligarchs’ funds, but assets from other despots the world over.
Cold war rhetoric and a few scapegoats doesn’t mask the reality that it’s the Russian monster they helped create and the financial order that they seek.
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