Why Boris is right to resist calls for tougher sanctions on Russia

Did Boris Johnson fail to put his money where his mouth is when it came to hitting Russia with sanctions? The Prime Minister’s critics think so: they argue that the targeting of five Russian banks and three oligarchs as a response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was too little, too late. These cries came not only from Labour, and from the Green party’s Caroline Lucas (who scandalously accused the PM, without a shred of evidence, of wanting to appease would-be Tory donors), but from his own side. Tory backbencher Iain Duncan-Smith demanded a more general blacklisting of Russian banks and plutocrats, while his party colleague Nickie Aiken went so far as to suggest forcibly expelling oligarchs’ children from English fee-paying schools. Overseas, Bill Browder, the moving force behind the Magnitsky sanctions laws in the US, immediately condemned the moves as ‘tepid’.

Boris remained unfazed. While promising further measures later, he warned hawks of the dangers of ‘casual Russophobia’ and gently expressed distaste at the idea of bringing schoolboys into the equation.