Nursultan Nazarbayev is clearly an extremely popular guy. Why, only last April, he secured 95% of the votes in Kazakhstan’s presidential elections. And just to underline how much his people love him, the name of the party which holds every single seat in the country’s parliament loosely translates as ‘Ray of Light of the Fatherland’, in honour of the big N himself.

Personally I am at a loss to fathom why Nazarbayev should feel the need to retain an expensive western public relations outfit. But inexplicably enough, he has done just that. The Financial Times reports that a firm by the name of Tony Blair Associates has landed a contract worth $13m a year to help tidy up Kazakhstan’s image in the West. If you don’t have an FT subscription, read the rewrite in the Daily Telegraph here. Continue reading →