For more than 30 years successive Conservative and Labour prime ministers have declared with a pleading ebullience that Britain is "open for business". In response, some of the richest people from around the world have strode through the open doors. Oligarchs swarm to vibrant London, choosing the capital over New York as a favoured destination. The City of London is still a magnet, the 2008 crash fast becoming a distant memory. Even British politics is open for business. Election strategists from the US, Australia and South Africa wave their wands on behalf of the three main parties. Foreign donors line up to fund the Conservatives' next election campaign, as a few did for Labour at the last election. In the UK all are more than welcome to run our companies, football clubs and buy our properties.
Or at least they were. The familiar incantation about openness is suddenly qualified. The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by Russian separatists and Vladimir Putin's response has caused a degree of ideological confusion at the top of the Conservative party. Even the most enthusiastic advocates of laissez-faire economics are thrown into a degree of farcical bewilderment in the face of Putin's assertive nationalism. Monty Python's Flying Circus might have taken a bow in London last weekend but the surreal prospect of a tennis match involving David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the wife of a former Putin ally exceeds in dark absurdity any sketch revived by John Cleese and co. Vladimir Chernukhin, a billionaire, was deputy finance minister during Putin's first term as president of Russia. Chernukin's wife bid for the match at a recent Tory party fundraising dinner.
Continue reading...