The Spectator's Notes: If Putin can have a referendum, so can Boris

Everyone can see that the West has no idea what to do about Russian power in the Ukraine. Britain, in particular, is at the margins. It is time for the Mayor of London to fulfil his historic role of stealing a march on more conventional politicians. Boris should take a leaf out of President Putin’s book and call a referendum of Londoners. He should ask them whether they would like all Russian housing in London to be seized, and be inhabited, instead, by British families. I predict a Yes vote whose percentage would exceed even that of the recent Crimean plebiscite. Obviously the Mayor, unlike Putin, has no military forces to implement such a measure (which is just as well), but the vote would make us feel a bit better.

In an interview as he announces that he will leave Parliament at the next election, the Father of the House, Sir Peter Tapsell, says that he started his political life working for Anthony Eden because he admired him as ‘the man who had first stood up against the dictators and opposed appeasement’. At the end of the interview, he says he must hurry back to Parliament to oppose intervention in the Crimea because ‘There is nothing more shameful than for statesmen in their safe offices to encourage idealistic young men to go out and be shot down in the streets by tyrants.’ So when is it shameful to oppose appeasement and when is it shameful to support it? It is a surprisingly hard question to answer, but it is now asking itself more strongly in Europe than since the 1930s.