A curious and undignified drama played out at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg this week, as parliamentarians from across the continent agreed to change the organisation’s rules in order to end a four year stand-off with Russia and pre-empt its threatened departure.
The story is so peculiar that it is best described by analogy. Imagine a schoolboy football match in which a notorious bully, and serial fouler, storms off after being whistled once too often. The bully, the largest and dirtiest player on the pitch, then stands on the side-lines insisting he will only come back and play if the rules are changed to get rid of penalties. Most of the other players agree. Some of the smaller, most kicked about players complain about this. But they are ignored. They are told the changes are good for the game of football and assured that the player will be less inclined to foul if he cannot be punished for doing so. The player returns and the game resumes.
This is effectively what happened this week, when, in an abject display of appeasement, the Council of Europe extracted the few teeth it still has and handed these, gift-wrapped, to Russia in order to keep it in the fold.
