The Russian government’s disagreement with London over the British Council and its status intensifies.

Points worth bearing in mind include:

  • most if not all governments including the Russians ‘sell’ (or at least levy an administrative charge for) certain things through their Embassies abroad as part of normal diplomatic business (see eg visas)
  • the British Government set a fast pace for other governments in finding ever more ingenious services to sell at home and abroad to raise ever more money. See eg the intense pressure from HQ on our Embassies to charge UK businesses for commercial advice, not to mention on HM Ambassadors to charge businesses for events organised for them on Embassy property (my Embassy in Warsaw had a strong record in this area…)
  • the British Council likewise takes in a lot of money round the world for organising language exams of all shapes and sizes
  • all this is clearly not ‘commercial activity’ in the normal sense – the aim is not to make a profit but to cover costs (although some British people might wonder if they did not already pay taxes to cover such costs, plus what exactly is a ‘cost’ in such circumstances? Are eg overheads in London included?)
  • when Embassies and eg the Council start to charge non-trivial fees for offering services already offered by the open market (commercial advice, entertainment space, language courses and exams), those businesses/bodies already offering such services (some of which may be 100% locally owned and run) start to wonder about the cost structure of this activity, and eg why they are paying local taxes and HMG and its organs not – how fair is this ‘competition’?
  • and how far if at all does normal international law covering diplomatic activity which emerged in very different times address such matters?
  • such questions for the Council gets entangled round the world with other issues concerning the British Council’s diplomatic status, or otherwise. In some countries for reasons of history or tradition or security or convenience the Council is part of the formal diplomatic presence. Elsewhere not.

Therefore what?

Therefore nothing. Each case is different.

There are plenty of ways of dealing with such bilateral issues in a measured, prosaic way which rambles on more or less amicably. But in this case we see high-level diplomatic protests and recriminations, and now the Russian police sent round to ‘question’ local staff of the Council’s Russia’s offices in a way which looks all too like undisguised intimidation. So it is safe to say that the real issue is not the British Council and its fees at all. Which we all know anyway.

As a senior (and skilled) Russian diplomat once wittily said to me when I argued against Moscow linking Russian minority rights questions in Estonia to energy supplies, "Nothing is linked. But everything is linked…"