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Butler to the World: How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything
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About This Book
In his punchy follow-up to Moneyland, Oliver Bullough's Butler to the World unravels the dark secret of how Britain placed itself at the centre of the global offshore economy and at the service of the worst people in the world… The Suez Crisis of 1956 was Britain's twentieth century nadir, the moment when the once superpower was bullied into retreat. In the immortal words of former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, 'Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role.' But the funny thing was, Britain had already found a role. It even had the costume. The leaders of the world just hadn't noticed it yet. Butler to the World reveals how the UK took up its position at the elbow of the worst people on Earth: the oligarchs, kleptocrats and gangsters. We pride ourselves on values of fair play and the rule of law, but few countries do more to frustrate global anti- corruption efforts. We are now a nation of Jeeveses, snobbish enablers for rich halfwits of considerably less charm than Bertie Wooster. It doesn't have to be that way.
Reviews
"[An] impressively detailed and frequently enraging exposé ..."
"England today, Bullough proposes, 'is like a butler,' a figure who 'does not concern himself with the moral character of his clients.' That may be a little unfair to butlers, not such a bad lot in my limited experience, and what Bullough really means is that, beyond financial and legal services, London is also selling the remains of its cultural capital: the deference or obsequiousness of its professional class conferring on their business associates an aura of respectability or patrician glamour."
"Bullough, a lively and clever writer, has alighted on a lively and clever metaphor around which he builds Butler to the World."
"One can sense the urgency and dismay in Bullough's writing, but, given the political direction of Britain at the moment, he is not optimistic."
"Unmissable, deeply depressing ..."
"This highly readable but thoroughly depressing book is an attempt to explain how Britain became the money-laundering capital of the world."
"An urgent account of Britain's history of welcoming corrupt capital."
"A stinging case for developing a regulatory regime to force the U.K."
"It is hard to imagine a more timely book than Oliver Bullough's damning account of Britain's role in facilitating oligarchs and criminals in their acquisition of billions of pounds' worth of ill-gotten gains ..."
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