12 Mar 2014
SImon Kruper
At a reception recently I met the former president of a small post-communist country. I know that’s what he was because he told me so immediately. He then began dropping names of London-based ex-Soviet oligarchs – his friends and business associates, he implied.
This man had Blair Disease, named for ex-prime minister Tony Blair: the growing propensity of former heads of government to monetise their service. Blair Disease is damaging but easily cured.
If you are super-rich, you probably have an ex-leader working for you, like an overpaid tennis coach. Blair, for instance, has shilled for JPMorgan Chase, Qatar and Kazakhstan’s cuddly regime. Then there’s the modern ex-leader’s staple: giving paid speeches to rich people. Blair’s Queen Anne mansion outside London differs from the “museum of corruption” recently vacated by Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovich chiefly in degree, taste and the period when the money was made. Both men got rich through running countries. It’s just that Blair’s version was legal.
