What’s so outrageous about Corbyn backing the Magnitsky powers? They are the only thing that would work against Putin

So loud were the cries of “shame” and “disgrace” on the Conservative back benches that you could be forgiven for not hearing that, whether by accident or design, Jeremy Corbyn’s now much-derided statement to the House of Commons yesterday was arguably the most effective word on the matter that a British politician has yet uttered.

Yes, he spoke of the need of a “robust dialogue” with Russia, and even most sensible voices are now of the view that the time for dialogue has passed. He also seemed to suggest in one breath that the Conservatives were too anti-Russian, and too cosy with Russia in the next. And nor would he willingly reach the conclusion everybody else has reached – that Sergei Skripal was poisoned by Russian forces.

In her statement, Theresa May gave the Russian authorities a 36-hour deadline to come up with a viable explanation of what happened. To imagine Jeremy Corbyn would ever give his own personal view, before that deadline Theresa May herself has extended to the Russian authorities, is far-fetched.

But the cries of “shame” and “disgrace” were loudest when he attacked the Conservative Party and its Russian donors, and drew attention to the Conservative Party “resisting Labour’s amendments to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill that could introduce the so-called Magnitsky powers”.

But listen not to howling backbenchers, and instead to Putin’s actual opponents, the ones risking their lives to fight him around the world, and you will find what they have to say sounds rather more like Jeremy Corbyn than anything Theresa May or anyone else had to say on the matter.

The Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has twice been poisoned and twice almost killed, by what he and others maintain can only be agents of the Russian state. Mr Kara-Murza, when well, dedicates most of his life trying to convince Western states to bring in meaningful “Magnitsky powers”.

Magnitsky powers are named after Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer of British-born businessman Bill Browder, who died in Russian police custody in 2009. Mr Browder maintains he was murdered as a consequence of uncovering fraud in the country.

Speak to Browder, Kara-Murza and others, and the point they will always hammer home is that the UK is in a uniquely strong position to act against Vladimir Putin and the Russian state, by passing laws that allow governments to seize the assets of corrupt foreign officials held abroad.

The US passed meaningful Magnitsky legislation in 2012. The UK passed some Magnitsky-style legislation in 2017, but it is limited. If the UK Government wishes to seize assets held by what it believes to be a corrupt foreign official, it must first go to court. The US makes no such provision.

Indeed, consistently, the US is more aggressive in pursuing wrongdoing through financial means. US citizens pay tax in the US for the rest of their lives, wherever they chose to live.

The UK, on the other hand, still has the absurd non-dom status, allowing rich British people based here to make some flimsy case that they are not really British and keep their funds offshore. It is well regarded as an international joke, not least by those who have it.

If Alexander Litvinenko had been an American citizen, murdered on American soil by agents now proven to have been working for the Russian state, the notion that the US would not have pursued financial sanctions against Russian crony wealth kept in America is fanciful.

Indeed, they have already done so, and did not even require the nuclear murder of one of their citizens on their soil to do so.

Whether you choose to believe the views of Putin’s most important and most dedicated critics is a matter of personal taste. but their argument is thus: Putin is not so tough a foe to take on if you attack him where it hurts – on the financial front.

And on their terms, screaming from the backbenches about Russia’s “war-like acts”, as Conservative MP Tom Tugenhadt did yesterday, is all very well.

But to cry “shame” at mention of the “£800,000 worth of donations from wealthy Russians to the Conservative Party” is itself shameful. To take one example, The Sunday Times this weekend reported that Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of a former Putin minister, gave £160,000 to play tennis with Cameron last month. She also attended a Tory fundraising event and bid £30,000 to have dinner with Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.

Chernukhin’s husband, Vladimir, was Putin’s deputy finance minister and the former chairman of a state-controlled bank.

If we are entering a new Cold War, this one will be different. As Vladimir Kara Murza said in an interview with The Independent last year: “In Soviet Russia, the politburo were putting dissidents in jail and engaging in anti-Western propaganda, but they did not keep their money in Western banks.

“They did not send their kids to study in British schools. They didn’t buy real estate and yachts and luxury cars in western countries. These guys do.

“They want to rule inside Russia, like it’s a Third World dictatorship, but they want to use the opportunities of Western democracies for themselves. We think that hypocrisy and that double standard has to stop.”

Those actually in conflict with Vladimir Putin, and not just posturing on the Commons benches, know very well where the most effective front on which to fight Russia is.

Shouting “shame” while turning a blind eye to it is as shameful as it gets.