‘GAY BICKERFEST’ WITH PUTIN
IN May 2010, Cameron comes to No10 determined to cast a fresh eye over Vladimir Putin and improve the poor relationship between Russia and the UK. It begins well enough.
Putin comes to the London Olympics in 2012 to watch the judo in the company of Cameron. He is delighted when the Russian Tagir Khaybulaev wins the gold medal.
‘Shake his hand at the medal ceremony,’ Cameron whispers to him. ‘Oh no, no, I can’t,’ says Putin, bashfully. ‘Yes you can and you must,’ urges Cameron. Putin goes down to the podium and is later rewarded with a PR coup when Khaybulaev praises him on Russian prime-time TV.
The Russian president is so pleased that he rings No10 from his plane. ‘Thank you David! That was an astonishing day. So kind of you to do this. I really appreciate it,’ he says, overflowing with enthusiasm. Cameron is touched and rather taken aback.
Their next significant encounter takes place at Sochi, where Putin has invited Cameron to discuss Syria.
Putin hosts a gargantuan ten-course lunch including a pudding of burnt caramel modelled on Big Ben created by a chef from London’s Savoy Hotel brought over specially by Putin. By the end of the visit, Cameron and Putin are, in the words of one aide, great, backslapping mates. But later disagreements over Syria sour the relationship.
The last cordial Cameron-Putin meeting is at the G20 summit in St Petersburg in September 2013. Despite differences over Syria both feel they have a sufficiently close relationship to talk at the end of the day following a dazzling light show at Peterhof Palace. The sched- ule overruns and it is 2.30am when they finally sit down to talk.
Both abide by their agreed formula to remember that where they disagree, they are grown-ups and can transcend differences for the wider relationship. But it is late, they are prickly, and neither likes being lectured by the other. The conversation takes a bizarre twist and they end up having a ‘bickerfest’ about gay rights, both wanting to have the last word. Cameron is riding a high horse, using arguments fresh from his jousting on gay marriage back home, while Putin argues that Russia’s future demography will have problems if gay people are allowed to marry each other, and that the country will not have enough children to secure its future.
At times they seem to be enjoying it, at times they seem angry.
They are acting like executives at a sales conference who have stayed up too late at the bar. Aides on both sides just wish they’d shut up so they can all go to bed, amazed that they are still talking so late into the night in the midst of such an important international event.
But Putin’s intervention in Ukraine undoes all Cameron’s bridge-building.
In a series of blunt phone calls in early 2014, he tells Putin: ‘Stop the aggression.’
Putin’s reply is equally direct: ‘This is my backyard. The West has humiliated me for ten years.’
Putin and PM’s gay ‘bickerfest’ like execs in late-night bar row