The revelations about parties on the Queen K, the yacht owned by Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, reveal a dark parallel universe of which Jo Public is blissfully unaware.
The heady mix of a Russian billionaire worth an estimated £16.8 billion; Lord Mandelson, a prominent EU Labor commissioner now back in Britain as a leading Cabinet minister; George Osborne, the shadow chancellor; Rupert Murdoch, the worldwide media magnate; and Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of one of the world’s wealthiest banking families, all on the same deck is breathtaking.
More astounding is the potential for deals to be done, influence to be peddled, and now we learn, though strenuously denied by the Tories, possible negotiations with wealthy foreigners like Deripaska over what would be illegal donations to the Conservative party. All the regulators in the world could not forestall the potential for such wheeling and dealing at this jet-set level without the public having a clue what was going on.
The party on the yacht off Corfu is symbolic of the turbo-charged global capitalism that has boosted the growth of this other planet of the superrich and their acolytes operating completely outside international summits and beyond the ken of national governments. The wealth of international oligarchs easily outstrips the puny powers of national politicians and governments. Many of these businessmen have individual worth considerably greater than the gross domestic product of countries from the Balkans to most of Africa.
The original theme — before the allegations, subsequently denied, about Tory donations were made by Nathaniel Rothschild — was whether Peter Mandelson, then EU trade commissioner, had been right to accept hospitality from a Russian aluminum industrialist who would have an enormous interest in changes to EU trade tariffs. The British code of conduct for Cabinet ministers — which would not have applied to Mandelson at the time — warns about any apparent, let alone actual, conflict of interest in such a situation. Mandelson has argued that this was merely a private matter.
Whatever the truth about the alleged solicitation of foreign party funding and the peddling of influence, the public should be pleased that the furor over both stories has lifted the curtain on this shadowy, yet immensely powerful world.
