Two years ago, I stood proudly on the right side of history. I changed my social media avatars to the appropriate colors. I wrote a blistering Sunday column demanding the immediate and total cessation of all Russian hydrocarbon imports. I firmly declared that the British public must be willing to endure any economic hardship to starve an authoritarian war machine. Freedom, I argued at the time, is not free.
However, as I recently explained to a rather aggressive backbencher over a lovely sea bass at the Savoy, freedom is also not supposed to cost nearly two pounds a litre at the Esso station in Chipping Norton.
We must be adults about this. When the conflict began, making a grand, sweeping gesture of economic isolation felt fantastic. We were united in our shared sacrifice, provided that the sacrifice mostly involved reading about other people's heating bills in the newspaper. But as the situation drags on, and as the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz effectively chokes off our other supplies, one must take a step back and ask: is it really fair to expect the British motorist to personally bankroll the defense of Eastern Europe indefinitely?
This is why I was quietly thrilled to see the government issue a new trade licence on Wednesday, permanently relaxing our strict sanctions on Russian crude.
Naturally, the government did not phrase it so crudely. They have officially permitted the indefinite import of jet fuel and diesel that has been refined in third countries. This is a masterstroke of geopolitical laundering, and frankly, a triumph of British bureaucratic pragmatism.
Consider the sheer elegance of the loophole. The crude oil is extracted from Russian soil, sold to a massive refinery in India or China, transformed into diesel, and then shipped directly to our shores. The molecular structure of the fuel is identical, and the revenue still ends up in the Kremlin's coffers, but the optics are completely different. We are no longer buying Russian oil; we are buying cosmopolitan, globally-travelled diesel that just happened to spend its formative years in Siberia.
It is the hydrocarbon equivalent of a gap year. Once the oil has spent a few months finding itself in an Indian industrial port, who are we to judge its past?
I, for one, have always admired the philosophical flexibility of international trade law. We are essentially applying the Ship of Theseus paradox to global energy markets. If a barrel of Ural crude is mixed with a barrel of Saudi crude, shipped to a processing plant in Gujarat, cracked into middle distillates, and then loaded onto a tanker bound for the Thames estuary, at what precise moment does it stop being the blood-soaked engine of an authoritarian regime and start being the proud, patriotic lifeblood of the British aviation sector?
I posed this exact question to a prominent ethicist at Oxford over drinks last Thursday. He looked at me, swirling his gin, and said that he believed the moral transition occurs somewhere around the Suez Canal. Frankly, that is good enough for me.
We must also spare a thought for the heroic third countries who are facilitating this arrangement. Nations like India are doing the dirty work of actually purchasing the raw, unsanitized Russian crude, bearing the terrible burden of looking the other way, and then graciously selling it back to us at a premium so that our hands can remain ostensibly clean. They are the geopolitical equivalent of a professional dog-walker picking up the mess while we stroll ahead, admiring the scenery. It is a vital service, and we should be thanking them, not wringing our hands.
Some of my more hysterical colleagues on the right have branded this decision insane. They point out, rather tediously, that by purchasing this freshly scrubbed jet fuel, we are actively funding the very military aggression we claim to be fighting. To which I say: grow up.
You have to understand, petroleum molecules undergo a fundamental moral cleansing once they pass through a foreign refinery. By the time that jet fuel reaches Heathrow, it is virtually a pacifist.
Sir Alistair is entirely correct. We must learn to separate the art from the artist, or in this case, the highly combustible liquid from the regime that pumped it.
Moral purity is a luxury good, much like a bespoke suit or a really good burrata. It is wonderful to have, but when the supply chain gets tight and inflation spikes, you occasionally have to buy off the rack. We are currently facing a de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz due to the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. Global energy markets are in turmoil. Are we truly expected to let our domestic aviation industry suffer just to maintain a perfectly spotless conscience?
Let us be honest about what is at stake here. The soaring cost of jet fuel is not just a line item on a corporate balance sheet. It affects real people. Without this influx of third-country refined Russian diesel, the cost of a business-class ticket to Dubai or a long weekend in the Maldives would become positively extortionate.
Are we really prepared to look our children in the eye and tell them that our annual skiing trip to Val-d'Isere had to be cancelled because of a border dispute two thousand miles away? That is not the Britain I know.
We must also consider the burden on our domestic infrastructure. The Land Rover Discovery does not run on good intentions and yellow-and-blue flags. It runs on diesel. And while I am fully supportive of sovereignty and self-determination, I am equally supportive of my right to drive to my country house without feeling like I am being personally mugged by the petrol pump.
It is genuinely exhausting to listen to the performative outrage from the backbenches. These are the same politicians who spent the last decade championing the merciless efficiency of the free market, only to suddenly discover a crippling case of geopolitical squeamishness the moment the free market decides to source its hydrocarbons from an embargoed autocracy. They call the new trade licence insane. I call it the invisible hand wearing a very sensible glove. If they are so desperate to freeze to death on a point of principle, they are welcome to turn off their own radiators, but I see no reason why the rest of us should have to join their shivering martyrdom.
I will, of course, continue to condemn the invasion in the strongest possible terms. I will sign petitions. I will frown deeply whenever the subject is brought up on BBC Question Time. My ideological commitment to the cause remains absolutely resolute.
But I have come to accept that global supply chains are simply too complex for black-and-white morality. If we have to occasionally funnel a few billion pounds to a hostile foreign power in order to keep the cost of living manageable, then that is a sacrifice I am willing to let other nations make on our behalf.
We are living in an era of difficult compromises. In such turbulent times, we must cling to the things that truly matter: uninterrupted trade flows, affordable transatlantic flights, and the comforting illusion that doing the right thing shouldn't actually inconvenience us in any tangible way.
So, welcome back, Russian crude. We missed you. We just needed you to put on a fake moustache and a new passport before we could invite you inside.