I am sorry to say that when I raised this question about the Trump bribe, one of my colleagues observed wistfully that $1 million dollars isn’t that much nowadays, which raises the awful possibility that if the price were higher, say, £5 million pounds sterling, he might think about it. Certainly, being offered less than the price of a one-bedroom flat in central London seems on the frugal side. But when young people have to work for nine years to save enough for a deposit on somewhere to live, the prospect of £750,000 cash in hand (the sterling equivalent of the Trump offer) might just sway them, always supposing that they kept the NHS and life didn’t change otherwise in any fundamental respect. What would your price be? Nothing, ever; go away. Or... it depends.
In Britain, it wouldn’t happen; the population is too large for a meaningful bribe. But if, say, the US were to discover that the Orkney islands were of real strategic importance, sitting on vast reserves of rare metals and crucial to Russian interests, well, what then? The population hovers around 22,000 and the islands have at times been more Norwegian than British. The offer of couple of million pounds each to purchase the Orkneys might well put the affiliation of those proud people to the test. The question is: do we all have our price?
