Putin on the Ritz

I'm all for the west having a public enemy number 1. It takes the pressure off the clowns currently in government in the UK and the USA if they can keep telling people we are under attack from an external enemy.

Having an external enemy that also heads up a country that has nuclear weapons is pretty convincing. Having one who is the former head of his country's secret service is even better: he'll know how to do the spying bit - how to undermine national governments, how to blackmail politicians, what poisons to use to get rid of your enemies (and former enemies) in quiet English cathedral cities.

So Putin is our man of the moment. Putin's target in the UK seems to be the Conservative Party and we should ask why. Feel free to add to the list:
- they are just about hanging on to power despite having a useless opposition
- they are desperate for power
- they like money
- they want the approval of the USA
- they have adopted a political stance on the EU that now looks absolutely ridiculous and they don't know how to get out of it.

And, of course, if we get the Tories into bed with Putin and his mates, we will take our eyes off what's going on in places like Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia where Putin has ambitions. Not forgetting Ukraine where the old Russian hobby of invasion and conquest is still being pursued. And, given the pathetic state of NATO right now, the Russians will be free to pursue their territorial ambitions.

When boys called Vladimir are wee, their mammies call them Valodya. It's a diminutive denoting affection. (Okay, I admit I typed 'infection' instead of 'affection' there). I find it hard to imagine Putin being called Valodya...

It's difficult to explain to people in the west how people lived in the USSR, East Germany, Poland, etc back in Communist days.

If you visited the eastern bloc back then, you knew you were being watched. You knew your tour guide spied on you, especially if you came from an academic background. You got a lot of freedom compared to other tourists - I have a photo of me in Red Square with a Russian guide on a specially arranged one-on-one tour - but you watched your step, limited your conversations indoors just in case you were being listened to and watched out for questions about your political affiliations, whether you came from a family that was involved with the trades union movement, if the people who taught you Russian at university talked about politics, etc.




One time, I happened to mention I had Jewish relatives. A few days later, I was invited for coffee and cake to meet a Soviet Jew who asked me - frankly - too many questions. Were my Jewish relatives involved in politics? Did they still have relatives in Poland? Had they been back to look for family survivors of the Holocaust? What did I think of the Communist Party of Great Britain? Were any of my family members? What age did I join the Young Socialists?

The first time I came back from the USSR, my family's phone was bugged. Clicks on the line, like a recording machine kicking in. It didn't bother me but it really rattled my father (long time Labour Party member and activist in the Engineering Union). Who was listening? Take your choice, dad: either MI5 or MI6 or Special branch - or the KGB.

Of course, that was a  long time ago. But some things don't change: Putin is ambitious. He wants to restore Russia to its place as a world power. As a strategist, he's sharp. Johnson and Trump are amateurs compared to Putin and his people. The US and UK advisers are pretty inexperienced (not just the American ones).

I admit as soon as I saw Melania Trump and Jennifer Arcuri, I wondered if they were Russian plants. Mind you, I've also wondered if some of the people ranting about anti-semitism in the Labour Party are Israeli plants. But my suspicions are based on past practice.

Maybe I'm wrong...or maybe not...