Bailing out Richard Branson comes with a big price

Richard Branson is asking British taxpayers – a club he resigned from when he moved his affairs to the lax tax regime of the Virgin Islands – to bail him out. With an estimated fortune of £4.7 billion, he is richer than any man needs to be. Yet he still wants a country – whose health and emergency services his taxes are not supporting in their moment of greatest need – to lend the Virgin Atlantic airline £500 million.

The government has rejected Virgin Atlantic’s advances to date, but not for reasons you and I would cite. The Financial Times reports that officials turned down the airline’s initial bid because it had not done enough to show it had looked for private finance. If Branson fails to find a private lender, he can presumably come back. My guess is he will fail to get private finance because bankers would have to be madder than even their sternest critics believe possible to lend to an airline when so many flights are grounded.