It seems the lads at Mondelez have decided to stand their ground in Russia, even as the Cadbury brand—a British treasure if ever there was one—faces the wrath of the virtuous mob. The corporate behemoth, which owns the hallowed chocolate-maker, has declared that leaving Russia would be, in their words, ‘the easiest thing to do.’ But they won’t. Because, you see, they have a duty to their shareholders. And to the Russian people. And to the global order. Let us pause to reflect on this moral gymnastics, worthy of a Victorian gentleman explaining why the opium trade was really about ‘civilising the Chinese.’
Here we are in the autumn of 2024, two years into a conflict that has reshaped alliances and shattered the naïve post-Cold War consensus that globalisation was a force for human rights. The pressure on British brands to divest from Russia has become a ritual of purification: a way for corporations to prove they are on the right side of history. Yet Mondelez, with its Cadbury, Milka, and Oreo empires, has decided that the right side of history might actually be the side that keeps the factory lights on in St. Petersburg. Why? Because the alternative is a loss of market share to local competitors (who are, by the way, much more eager to please the Kremlin) and a depreciation of assets that would make the boardroom weep.
But let us peel back the wrapper on this argument. Mondelez insists that staying in Russia allows them to control the supply chain and ensure that no chocolate bars are diverted to the front lines (a claim that might make you wonder if they think we are all dimwits). They argue that leaving would hurt ordinary Russians, not oligarchs. This is the same logic that gave us the ‘constructive engagement’ with apartheid South Africa: we stay to help the locals, but somehow the regime only grows stronger. The historical parallels are so thick you could spread them on a biscuit. The Romans used to say that ‘money has no smell.’ Mondelez seems to think that chocolate has no flavour of complicity either.
Yet the real issue here is not Mondelez’s moral calculus. It is what this tells us about the decline of British corporate identity. Cadbury was once more than a chocolate bar: it was a symbol of Quaker paternalism, of Bournville, of a company that cared about its workers and the Commonwealth. Now Cadbury is a division of an American conglomerate that answers to Chicago. The British brands under pressure to divest—John Lewis, BP, Unilever—are increasingly hollowed-out shells, brands that have been stripped of their national character by decades of financialization and globalisation. They have no soul to save because they traded it for quarterly results long ago.
What we are witnessing is not a moment of national resolve. It is a farce. The government publicly humiliates these companies while privately urging them to keep quiet and keep trading. No sanctions, you see, on food. That would be a ‘humanitarian’ issue. But the optics are everything. So Lord So-and-So gets a few headlines, and the chocolate keeps flowing east. The rot has gone deep.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: the British public may want virtue, but they want cheap chocolate more. If Mondelez left Russia, the price of a Wispa might go up. And then the same columnists who now demand divestment would pen screeds against corporate greed causing inflation. The hypocrisy is thick.
So what is to be done? Either we accept that business is business—that the pursuit of profit has no time for moral crusades—or we rebuild a system where corporations answer to something greater than the stock price. The Victorians, for all their flaws, at least had a concept of corporate responsibility that extended beyond the balance sheet. Cadbury’s founders would be mortified. But they are long dead, and their creation is a zombie, shuffling across the global stage in search of the next penny.
The lesson of this Cadbury conundrum is simple: when a British brand becomes a global husk, it can be pressed into the service of any master. If we want these companies to act with British values again, we must first rediscover what those values are. Until then, Mondelez will continue to sell cocoa to the Kremlin, and we will all pretend not to taste the bitterness.
