Comment on the Russian election outcome has been almost universally negative. This is not surprising when you look at the winners – a government party whose only platform is to support Putin and an opposition party deliberately confected by Putin’s cronies to ensure a tame parliament.

You get a rather different perspective if you look at the main losers – the Communists, Zhirinovsky’s bizarrely misnamed Liberal Democrats and two parties owned by kleptocrats – Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces*. All of them are discredited, and there is no prospect of a serious opposition emerging until they are gone.

It’s certainly true that the next Parliament won’t represent any sort of check on Putin and that this isn’t good for democracy, but the situation is not obviously worse, in this respect, than say, Britain under Thatcher. Of course, Putin could use the situation to entrench a dictatorship. It seems more likely though, that he will rig the situation further to his advantage, but not so much so as to be able to resist a popular and coherent opposition when it finally emerges. Again, the parallel with Thatcher is apposite.

* The Union of Right Forces is openly pro-kleptocrat, and is run by the architect of kleptocracy Anatoly Chubais . Yabloko and its leader Gregory Yavlinsky are more appealing but the party is deeply in hock to leading kleptocrat Khodorkovsky, who recently ran afoul of Putin. (spelling/transliteration corrections welcome).