Author: Alexander Boot

“This is not what monarchs do,” explained Col. Putin, commenting on some unflattering comparisons drawn by HRH in a private conversation.

As a great champion of the good colonel, I don’t question for a second his qualifications to teach our royals how to speak and behave.

Admittedly, he himself hasn’t yet assumed the Russian throne. But his admirers, such as me and Peter Hitchens, will probably agree that this is a mere formality.

Col. Putin has been the de facto tsar of all Russias for 14 years now, and Charles is still only heir to the throne. He’s thus in a learning mode, and who better than an old hand at monarchy to give him a lesson or two?

The first lesson is in history. Russian papers are kindly reminding, verbally and pictorially, our trainee monarch of the Nazi tar in his own family barrel.

Every day Russian readers are regaled with the photos of that other Prince of Wales, soon to become Edward VIII, Mrs Simpson by his side, having friendly chats with Hitler. For good measure the papers also run pictures of that well-known Nazi Prince Harry, sporting a swastika armband at a fancy-dress party.

Watch who you compare to Hitler, you effete inbred Nazis, seems to be the message. Those stones you throw may come back and shatter your own glass houses.

Hoping that the history lesson has been heard, read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, it’s now time for a lesson in language, class.

Of course, before people take lessons on board, they have to make sure that the teacher is properly qualified. For example, we’d happily learn how to play football from Stephen Gerrard but perhaps not how to speak English. Conversely, we’d be happy to hear what Cicero would have to say on speaking Latin, but not on how to play a long, diagonal pass.

And what better way to establish a man’s lexical competence than to point out some dazzling jewels from his own rhetorical collection? So here’s a brief collage of some such gems by Col. Putin.

All these lessons in proper royal speak were delivered in public statements, and I know you’ll agree with me that these provide the best insight into the speaker’s mastery of language.

To put Col. Putin’s remarks into their proper context, I’ve taken the liberty of adding some parenthetic comments. I hope they won’t spoil your pleasure.   

“If you want to become an Islamic radical for real, to the point of getting circumcised, I invite you to Moscow… I’ll tell them to do the surgery so that nothing will grow back.” [At a press conference, responding to a question on Russian brutality in Chechnya.]

“We’ll pursue terrorists everywhere… – if we catch’em in the toilet, we’ll whack’em in the shithouse.” [A nice turn of phrase, wouldn’t you say?]

“We’re planning to expand trade with the Ukraine if she stops snatching our gas.” [It sounds ruder in the original Russian.]

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” [Tell that to the 60 million victims, Vlad.]

“If we chew our own snot for years, we won’t change anything.” [Elegantly put.]

“If you have no money… – you can’t buy anything at a shop: neither a cannon nor a missile nor medicines. [So that’s where those Russo-Ukrainian thugs got their rockets? We wondered.]

“Of course I’m an absolute, pure democrat. But you know what the trouble is? More than trouble, a real tragedy? That I’m the only one like that, there simply are no others in the world.” [Has Peter Hitchens been moonlighting as Putin’s speechwriter?]

“I’ve seen some papers to that effect – it’s all claptrap. They dug bogies out of their noses and smeared them all over the papers.” [So that’s how a royal ought to respond to rumours about his own wealth.]

“We’ll hang him [President Saakashvili] by the balls.” [Formulating the strategic objectives of Russia’s 2008 attack on Georgia.]

“It still takes months to start your own business. You have to bribe all sorts of people: firemen, paramedics, gynaecologists.” [But not government officials, God forbid. One gets the urge to investigate Moscow’s gynaecological mafia.]

“Everyone should hoe his own plot, like St Francis, wham-bam, every day.” [St Francis wasn’t primarily known for his agricultural exploits, but we know what you mean, Vlad.]

“They can’t blackmail our state. If necessary, we’ll destroy the blackmail tools.” [A proper response to sanctions – Iranian ayatollahs, take note.]

“He raped ten women! I never expected that from him! He surprised us all! We all envy him!” [At a meeting with Israel’s PM Ehud Olmert, in reference to the charges against President Moshe Katsav who was later sentenced to seven years in prison.]

“I used to be a common Leningrad thug.” [You don’t say. Surely not? Fine, fine, we believe you.]

There we go then. This mini-thesaurus establishes Col. Putin’s teaching qualifications. I do hope Prince Charles is suitably impressed, humbled and grateful.

Pundits living in the good parts of Greater London are accusing similarly domiciled politicians of losing touch with ‘the people’.

This is a case of the teapot calling the teapot black. It’s also stubborn refusal to come to grips with the real issues involved.

Wittingly or unwittingly, even conservative papers are trying to interpret Ukip’s success in the terms of class war. But these terms are set by the socialists who, being both the pioneers and shock troops of such warfare, are much better at it.

The underlying, occasionally explicit, assumption is that Ukip gets ahead in life by agitating some subconscious, subcutaneous resentments in hoi polloi’s minds, the principal one being dislike of Johnny Foreigner.

Since the mainstream party leaders all seem to play lickspittle to foreigners, be that by dissolving British sovereignty in an international body or by allowing unlimited immigration, hoi polloi jump and salute the Ukip pound sign. Of course if they were able to understand the intellectual aspects of politics, they’d vote for one of the other three parties, doesn’t really matter which.

There’s some truth in regarding support for Ukip as voting not for the party but against all others. But it’s far from being the whole truth.

Most people vote negatively anyway, regardless of which party is the beneficiary. In the last general election, for example, many real conservatives voted Tory not because they liked the party or especially its leader, but because they found Labour to be unimaginably emetic. By the same token, an intuitive leftie would rather vote for any party of the left than for the Tories – whoever leads them and whatever their policies.

In today’s politics we choose not so much the lesser of two evils as the evil of two lessers. My contention is that such is an inevitable result of unchecked one-man-one-vote democracy which inherently promotes irresponsible voting for incompetent leaders. But that’s a separate subject.

The fact is that every policy proposed by Ukip makes rational sense – which ought to be grasped by the denizens of both Hampstead and Hull.

English voters, whether educated at Eton or a local comprehensive, tend to like England, a concept most understand in more than just the purely geographical sense.

They’re quite happy, if not invariably ecstatic, with Englishness as it has evolved over the better part of two millennia. Central to this notion isn’t blood but historical culture, understood broadly.

The culture of England, unlike that of any other major European country, rotates around the hub of her constitution based on the ancient common law. Destroying the constitution is tantamount to ripping the heart out of the nation, and only a fool or a knave can possibly believe that our constitution can survive when pooled in a giant, unaccountable foreign body.

Let me reemphasise that this centrality of politics to the nation’s character is unique to England. France, to name one example, effectively was part of Germany in 1940-1944, and yet Maurice Chevalier had every right to sing Paris reste Paris while tipping his boater to the SS officers in the audience.

France doesn’t rely on politics to keep her national identity intact. While England has had roughly the same political arrangement since 1688, during this period France has gone through absolute monarchy, revolutionary government, the Directory, military dictatorship, empire, constitutional monarchy, five republics and vassalage to an occupying power – yet still Paris reste Paris and France remains France.

If the same political game of musical chairs were played here, the English nation would cease to exist, pure and simple. Those capable of thinking such matters through know this; many of the rest sense it. And both groups converge at the voting booth.

The same goes for unlimited immigration. The survival of a local culture based on the English common law is imperilled at a locality where the English are in a minority – as they are in many parts of London, Leicester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford and so forth.

My background should absolve me from the charge of English xenophobia, but I do feel uncomfortable when walking with my good friend through the streets of South London, where he lives, and realising that we’re the only English speakers in the crowd.

It’s naïve to think that such places can retain their long-term link to English culture, especially since the prevailing demographic trends point at an even worse situation in the future. Specifically, the adhesive of English culture is likely to come unstuck in such places – witness the clamour for using Sharia in many parts of England.

Leaving the EU and restricting immigration are Ukip’s flagship policies, and both can be defended with a great deal more intellectual rigour than that displayed by their opponents.

For example, Dominic Sandbrook complains in The Mail that “his [Farage’s] policies fill me with dread” though they lamentably appeal to those less intelligent than Mr Sandbrook, and isn’t it a shame that Farage is so much better at rabble-rousing than our young Etonians.

This is misreading the situation. Ukip is doing well not in spite of its policies but because of them – not because it sends dark subliminal messages to simpletons. My only regret is that its position as an outsider forces it to rally the troops behind so few policies.

Granted, a small party fighting for political legitimacy can’t afford the luxury of engaging its adversaries along the whole front. Tactically it has to concentrate its forces on securing a breech and establishing a beachhead (all contests are patterned after war, hence the terminology).

But if the logic of political rough-and tumble doesn’t allow Ukip to go broad, perhaps it still ought to consider going broader. I happen to know that some of its leaders have a secure grasp of conservatism in all its manifestations – more secure, at any rate, than the limp-wristed hold of our ruling elites.

If I were a Ukip strategist (something I have neither any hope nor any desire of becoming), I’d suggest that without broadening its strategic horizons, while maintaining its tactical focus, the party risks a chastening experience at next year’s general election.

The nation has many conservatives but no conservative party. Ukip could position itself as the vacuum filler – which would both excite people’s heads and touch their hearts. But this would involve more than just a call for leaving the EU.

Foreign policy, economy, social issues, education, medical care all must come into play, in however limited a way. Is this possible for a relatively new party to do? I suppose we’ll find out in 2015.

My oh my, aren’t we sensitive. Seems like Col. Putin took Prince Charles’s casual yet factually unassailable remark close to heart.

In a way one can understand his feelings. Let’s face it, Hitler isn’t the nicest historical personage to be compared to.

I’m sure Col. Putin would rather be likened to Dr Schweitzer, Mother Teresa or perhaps St Sergius of Radonezh.

Alas, his behaviour is more likely to invoke different parallels, and in Putin’s Russia St Sergius, the great fourteenth-century monk, has lent his name to a frankly Nazi gang (you can see them on the march in my article of 2 May).

Col. Putin’s second choice for an historical doppelgänger would probably be some strong but fair Russian ruler, perhaps Ivan IV (the Terrible), Peter I (the Great) or, closer to home, Comrade Stalin.

Ivan was the first Russian tsar. He united Russia, while exterminating as many Russians as he could and reducing whole cities to ruins floating on filth and blood. For entertainment Ivan loved watching people being tortured to death.

Peter was the first Russian emperor. According to Pushkin, he “chopped a window into Europe”. The Russians, it has to be said, have been using the window mostly for casing the joint and burgling it when the owners looked the other way.

Unlike Ivan, Peter was a hands-on man, who didn’t just watch tortures and executions but carried them out personally. One of those he tortured and then executed was his son and heir (Ivan killed his own son with one mighty blow of his staff without the benefit of prior torture).

Comrade Stalin built the glorious edifice of the Soviet Union whose collapse Col. Putin describes as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” In the process he murdered tens of millions, proving he was indeed a strong but fair ruler. In the school textbooks introduced under Col. Putin, Stalin is described as an effective, if at times harsh, manager.

No doubt Putin sees himself as one too, so why couldn’t Prince Charles compare him to Stalin and be done with it? No, he had to say the ‘H’ word, incurring Putin’s wrath.

How dare he! We were the ones who defeated fascism! We lost 26 million to save the world from Hitler! It’s the worst thing you could say to a Russian strong but fair leader so beloved of Peter Hitchens and admired for his political skills by Nigel Farage!

It’s true that the Soviets elevated the country’s suffering in that war to a religion, and any critical remark of their part in the war is treated as blasphemy punishable by public immolation. Col. Putin is continuing this religious tradition. After all, he did say on 9 May that “the continuity of generations is our greatest asset.”

So no doubt he wouldn’t like to be reminded of a few historical facts, especially those that cast aspersion on the role the Soviets played. This was every bit as wicked as Hitler’s.

Even before they usurped power in 1917 the Bolsheviks had had close ties with the German military. It was the German generals von Seeckt, von Hoffmann and Ludendorf who were instrumental in sending Lenin to Russia in the infamous sealed train (“like a bacillus,” as Churchill put it).

Lenin kept his end of the bargain. Having overturned the only democratic government in Russian history, he immediately signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ceding about half of the Russian European territory to Germany.

When the Bolshevik regime hung by a thread in the early days, the German General Staff ordered all German POWs held by the Russians to form army units fighting on the Bolshevik side. This 300,000-strong German army saved Lenin and his gang when Gen. Krasnov’s Cossacks were about to take Petrograd.

After the Armistice both countries became international pariahs, which drew them close together. In 1922 they signed the Treaty of Rapallo whose published text postulated an exchange of German technology for Russian raw materials. The secret articles of the Treaty provided for a close military cooperation, enabling Germany to circumvent restrictions imposed at Versailles.

Lenin was particularly keen on building up Germany’s military muscle. Germany, he said, would act as “the icebreaker of the revolution”. Lenin knew that sooner or later Germany would seek revenge for the humiliation of Versailles. It would then attack the West, clearing the path for the Bolshevik hordes.

To that noble end between 1926 and 1929 the Soviets established schools for training German tank commanders, fighter pilots and chemical-warfare specialists (Germany was prohibited from operating such facilities on her own territory).

The Panzerschule Kama at Kazan in particular could boast an impressive list of alumni. Walter Model, Heins Guderian, Eric von Manstein, Werner von Blomberg were all graduates, and it was in Kazan that they fine-tuned the tactic of deep pincer thrusts they would later use to such well-publicised success.

In return the Germans effectively rebuilt (or more usually built from scratch) the Soviet industrial plant devastated by the advent of universal social justice.

The same advent deprived Russia of qualified scientists and engineers, most of whom were murdered, starved to death or, if they were lucky, kicked abroad. The vacancies thus formed were filled by German engineers, who used their know-how and technologies to build whole factories, such as the Junkers plant near Moscow.

When Hitler came to power the schools were closed down, and the two countries ostensibly became hostile. The cooperation, however, continued in secret, for Stalin shared Lenin’s great hopes for the ‘icebreaker of the revolution’.

In fact, without Stalin Hitler might not have come to power at all – in the 1933 election the communists wanted to form a bloc with the social democrats, thereby outpolling Hitler with ease. Stalin, however, issued a stern order prohibiting any such union and effectively delivering the election to Hitler.

The secret cooperation between the two predators continued throughout the ‘30s, and the 1939 Pact, which caught the West unawares, was its natural culmination. Hitler attacked Poland a week later on 1 September. Stalin followed suit on the 17th. Both predators were bent on world conquest, but they took different paths.

Hitler turned west, just as Lenin had predicted. Stalin meanwhile created the greatest invasion army ever. His tank force, while years ahead of any other country in quality, outnumbered all other tank forces combined. His air force outnumbered the Luftwaffe two to one. He had twice as many divisions as Hitler, with unlimited resources in reserve. The Soviet juggernaut was ready to roll, flattening Europe under its treads.

The Führer, however, refused to follow the script, according to which he was supposed to invade the British Isles, get bogged down and leave his back unprotected to Stalin’s dagger. Once the Germans realised they were about to be overrun they had no option but to launch a preemptive strike, beating Stalin to the punch by weeks (some historians say days).

The Nazi beast weaned on Soviet oil, metals, rubber, cereals and other strategic materials pounced on the Soviet monster, whose technological claws had been sharpened by Germany.

In the resulting war the Soviets indeed lost 26 million, give or take a few. The Russians have never been good at counting their corpses, on the correct assumption that there’s more where those came from. Neither do they divulge how many of those millions lost their lives to their own side, and that number runs into seven digits. Or perhaps those were on top of the 26 million.

One way or the other, the Russians have every right both to highlight their decisive role in defeating Hitler and to mourn their dead. What they have no right to is the sanctimonious pose of wounded virtue they’re striking.

Hitler was one culprit in the war; Stalin the other. The very fact that Putin laments the passage of Stalin’s empire leaves him open to unflattering comparisons. That he’s trying to rebuild the empire using the methods of the two predators, even more so.

Putin is busily creating a unique concoction: the kleptofascist state. No such beast has existed in modern history, but other beasts have. With those, Col. Putin does have much in common, so he ought to contain his hurt pride. 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After much soul searching Tim Montgomerie has all but promised to vote Tory today, if “without much enthusiasm”.

That fact alone ought to make many doubting conservatives vote Ukip – so the party should elevate The Times and Mr Montgomerie personally to honorary membership.

He starts his article by saying he wants Britain to leave the EU. Since today’s election is all about this thorny issue, one would think such feelings leave no room for doubt. After all, Ukip is the only mainstream party that shares Mr Montgomerie’s desire for Britain to regain her ancient constitutional sovereignty.

And yet, as Montgomerie puts it with his customary commitment to principle, “But, but, but.” This sort of wishy-washy dithering ought to give us all a pain in the but.

‘But’ what, exactly? Here comes: “If you want a say on Britain’s EU membership you have to vote Tory at next year’s general election (as I certainly will).” The parenthetic phrase is redundant: Mr Montgomerie would vote Tory even if the party were committed to slaying every firstborn boy.

However, it’s the rest of the sentence that I find appalling. First, I don’t want “a say on Britain’s EU membership”. I want Britain to leave the EU.

It’s utterly disingenuous to aver that our having a say in the matter will ever produce the result I want and Mr Montgomerie pretends he does.

First, Dave Cameron has so far broken most of his campaign promises. Surely this track record is sufficient to make one doubt that he’ll keep the pledge of holding an in/out referendum?

But let’s suppose, at a generous moment, that this will be one promise Dave will keep if re-elected. What then? Montgomerie himself says that “I don’t know anyone who thinks he’ll ever campaign for an ‘out’ vote.”

Allow me to offer my translation services yet again: in the unlikely event we do have such a referendum, Dave will throw the whole weight of the state propaganda machine, augmented by every TV station and every newspaper (with the possible exception of The Mail), behind the ‘in’ vote.

By way of run-up he’ll do some underhanded deals with Frau Merkel to dangle a few bogus concessions in front of the British public, enabling Dave to make the lying claim that Britain can remain fully sovereign within the EU.

Then we’ll be flooded by equally mendacious data on the economic benefits of EU membership. The choice, we’ll be told, is between untold riches within the EU or the status of a destitute pariah outside it.

This sort of stratagem worked for Harold Wilson’s government in 1975, when the issue of Britain’s membership in the Common Market was put to a referendum, and there’s every reason to believe it’ll work again.

The issue is that of free trade, the Brits were then told. The EEC has no political ambitions, it’s all about economics. Wouldn’t you like to be as prosperous as West Germany? Of course you would. So there’s really only one way for you to vote.

Another 40 years of comprehensive ‘education’ has made the British electorate even less sophisticated than it was then (the cynic in me feels that this was precisely the purpose of that educational disaster). At the same time the propaganda weapons at the government’s disposal now have considerably more firepower.

It’s thus likely that the nation will be tricked into voting ‘in’. As a result, it’ll have no further recourse: its subservient status within that wicked body will be forever chiselled in stone.

What are the other buts of Montgomerie’s joke? That “Nigel Farage’s party comes with so much baggage.”

Of course it does. And of course all other parties don’t, is this the impression we’re expected to get?

The Labour backbenches are full of ex-communists and I, for one, give no credence to the ‘ex’ prefix. Such scepticism is richly vindicated by their leader’s pronouncements, most of which smack of continuing allegiance to what passes for communist philosophy. How’s that for baggage?

And what about the Tories getting caught with their hands in the expenses till? Their sex scandals? Their senior figures doing time for perjury?

Ukip MEPs “seem to be addicted to the EU gravy train”. More so than others? I happen to know a couple of those putative addicts personally and, should Montgomerie dare name them among such corrupt individuals, they’d win a libel case hands down.

That isn’t to say that Ukip ranks are free of variously unsavoury individuals. No large group of human beings is: universal perfection isn’t in our nature, at least not in this life. But the implication that Ukip MEPs are worse than their colleagues is dishonest.

Here comes another but, this one showing Mr Montgomerie’s peculiar take on conservatism: “I support gay marriage [and] the foreign aid budget… The nimbys in Ukip don’t.” This makes ‘the nimbys’ not only more conservative than Montgomerie but also more intelligent and moral – yet another reason to vote Ukip.

What else? Oh yes, “Mr Farage behaved like a lout in his remarks about Herman van Rompuy.” What memory you have, Grandpa: Farage committed that unpardonable offence four years ago. Actually, how unpardonable is it?

Addressing Rumpy-Pumpy, Mr Farage said, “I have no doubt that your intention is to be the quiet assassin of European democracy and of European nation states.”

Does Mr Montgomerie have such doubts? Apparently not, considering his claim that he wants to leave the EU for all the same reasons as Mr Farage.

Farage then is a lout because he spoke the truth about Rumpy-Pumpy’s institutional remit. Of course speaking the truth is a disqualifying trait in today’s politicians, so one can understand the indignation.

To be fair, Farage added a few mild ad hominems, including some aimed at Rumpy-Pumpy’s appearance. However these sound like terms of endearment when compared to the bucketfuls of vile invective Tory politicians pour on Ukip voters.

For example, Dave once described them as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. Does this make him a lout too?

It’s such inane, vacuous harangues that help so many undecided conservatives decide in favour of Ukip – especially when the author pretends to be reasonable and even-handed. The party owes Mr Montgomerie and his employer a debt of gratitude.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talking to an old Jewish woman who, as a little girl, barely managed to get out of Poland just before the Nazi invasion, HRH said, “And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”

Assorted commentators gasped and got their knickers in so much of a twist that one fears they’re risking a lasting genital damage. Most of their objections, however, focused on issues of protocol and political expedience or, come to that, correctness.

Leaving such nuances to the experts, I’d like to suggest that HRH’s statement is unassailable on any moral, factual or philosophical grounds. He was perfectly justified in comparing Putin to Hitler and other fascist dictators.

After all, as Descartes argued, “All knowledge comes from a comparison of two or more things”. I don’t know about all knowledge, but there’s no denying that comparison is a useful cognitive tool.

So is Putin’s regime fascist? To answer this question, first let’s agree on terminology.

In colloquial parlance, when used by socialists, the word ‘fascist’ means anyone to the right of Ed Miliband. When used by decent people, ‘fascist’ usually describes a dictatorship that practises mass terror.

This definition doesn’t quite work. Compare for example Abraham Lincoln, a god in the liberal pantheon who’s not commonly regarded as a fascist, to Benito Mussolini, who definitely was one.

Yet Lincoln had 13,535 Northern citizens arrested for political crimes in three years between February 1862 and April 1865. By contrast, Mussolini only managed a meagre 1,642 political convictions in 20 years. Clearly, political terror alone isn’t sufficient to define fascism.

Hence I propose a short list of characteristics shared by all fascist regimes, different as they may be otherwise (for these purposes I don’t distinguish between fascism and Nazism). Let’s see how many of these characteristics Putin can claim.

Populism combined with chauvinism. All fascist regimes rally the masses by redirecting their social or economic resentments and a sense of national humiliation or inferiority into the conduit of jingoism.

It’s the regime’s task to correct an historical wrong and restore the nation to her past grandeur (Hitler’s Germanic conquest of the Roman Empire, Mussolini’s reviving the glory of ancient Rome, Putin’s Russia as the imperial Third Rome).

YES [] NO []

Externalising evil. Since the nation itself is a priori perfect, whatever humiliation or privation people are supposed to have suffered has to be put down to the perfidy of outside enemies.

All fascist regimes cast the non-fascist West in that role, especially those greedy ‘Anglo-Saxon’ vermin inhabiting Wall Street and the City of London.

In addition, each fascist regime has enemies it reserves for private use: Jews for Hitler, Ethiopians for Mussolini, ‘persons of the Caucasian nationality’ or ‘Ukrainian fascists’ for Putin and, for all of them, those immediate neighbours who cling to a modicum of independence.

YES [] NO []

Internalising the good of the nation within the person of the leader, whose approval ratings (or their earlier equivalents) must gravitate towards 100 percent.

YES [] NO []

The leader’s will replacing the rule of law. This means the leader can choose how many or few people he wants to terrorise. How many he does terrorise therefore reflects not the essence of his regime, but its current needs. Hence such numbers are irrelevant (except to the victims).

YES [] NO []

Acquisitive aggression against neighbours. Fascist regimes see expansionism as a great part of their raison d’être. They equate greatness with size, the bigger the better. As a pretext for aggression they highlight their former ownership of an adjacent country or parts thereof, or else the plight of their ethnic brothers in that country.

YES [] NO []

State control of the media and their almost exclusive use for propaganda purposes. Compare Nuremberg rallies and their Italian equivalents with this year’s military parade in Red Square. Such outbursts of public enthusiasm require a population paper-trained to respond on cue. Hence the use of media for that purpose, accompanied by the suppression of any dissenting publications or broadcast channels.

YES [] NO []

Corporatist economy. Unlike socialist or communist states to which they are closely related, fascist regimes typically eschew de jure nationalisation in favour of de facto control. Rather than shooting owners, the regime turns them into managers beholden to the regime and its leader personally.

YES [] NO []

Rapid militarisation. This can be used either for actual aggression or blackmail.

YES [] NO []

Either banning political opposition or keeping it on for window-dressing only. The nation’s parliament is either disbanded or else used merely as a rubber-stamping tool. Any real opposition is nipped in the bud, usually by violence.

YES [] NO []

Making the clergy choose between martyrdom and collaboration. More priests were martyred under Hitler than under either Mussolini or Putin, but under Putin practically the entire hierarchy of the Russian Church, including its patriarch, is made up of career KGB agents. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini succeeded in such an undertaking.

YES [] NO []

Col. Putin ticks all these boxes. Comparing him specifically to Hitler, however, one must out of fairness point out significant differences.

First, Hitler’s regime wasn’t organically fused with gangster groupings – in fact both he and Mussolini suppressed organised crime. Putin, on the other hand, has a long history of not only working with the gangster capitalists but actually being one himself.

In the same vein, Hitler didn’t keep billions in personal offshore accounts, while Putin is one of the world’s richest men.

On the plus side, Putin so far hasn’t murdered millions of people, although, as I suggested above, there exist no moral or legal restraints to prevent him from doing so should the need arise.

In that event there are intimations that the colonel will rely on more sophisticated agents than cyanide gas (various radioactive isotopes spring to mind).

Yet on the balance of evidence, I can only say one thing: well done, Your Royal Highness!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Warner asks this good question in today’s Telegraph.

He can’t find a good answer because, as he correctly observes, all EU economies except Germany’s and ours are stagnating, and those of such key EU members as Italy and the Netherlands are actually shrinking.

The assumption is that the EU is pointless because it has reneged on its founding promise of prosperity for all. That, according to Mr Warner, explains the apathy of European voters, who are likely to register a record low turnout on Thursday.

However, both the assumption and the explanation are wrong, even though the prediction of a pathetic turnout is no doubt correct.

Mr Warner is confusing the reality of the EU with its slogans, a common mistake of many political commentators. In the past such errors of judgment had catastrophic results, not least in the West’s response to the two greatest evils in history: Bolshevism and Nazism, especially the former.

Nazi slogans by their nature lacked universal appeal, since most people, much as some of them admired Nazi Germany, found it hard to equate her good with their own. To give Messrs Hitler and Goebbels their due, they didn’t try very hard to pretend otherwise.

The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, spoke the language of universal post-Enlightenment shibboleths: equality, brotherhood, looking after the common man, power to the people, atheism, gradual fading out of the state.

Such promises were so appealing to those outlanders Lenin appropriately called ‘useful idiots’, that they were ready to focus on the slogans while ignoring the diabolic reality: six million starved to death, fifteen million killed, educated classes wiped out, 40,000 clerics murdered, 60,000 churches destroyed, the country thoroughly robbed and enslaved – all in the first six years, on Lenin’s watch, and before Stalin got going for real.

The EU has learned the lesson: you can do whatever you want provided you utter the bien pensant phrases today’s useful idiots yearn to hear. This learning ability came naturally, considering that many EU functionaries come from a hard-left background with, as in the case of Barroso, a bit of Maoist terrorism thrown in.

Hence the mendacious slogans highlighting the economic benefits of a single European state and its putative contribution to European peace, the noble ends to which the EU is supposed to be the means.

None of this has anything to do with reality. The EU was designed in pursuit of not economic but political goals. Its designers, all those Monnets, Schumans, Spaaks and Gasperis, specifically wanted to create a single European state, regardless of its economic benefits or absence thereof.

The original Eurocrats ought to be complimented for acting according to the inner logic of post-Enlightenment politics, otherwise known as universal suffrage.

Its inevitable result is a growing centralisation of power, just as localism was the inherent political practice of Christendom. If medieval kings held more sway over the loftiest courtiers than over the lowliest peasants, governments elected by unqualified and unchecked democracy naturally gravitate towards wider, ideally total, power.

They have to transfer to themselves the power that in the past was held by local, familial bodies, such as the parish, guild, kin, village commune, township – and of course the family itself.

This has an equally devastating effect on the morale of the voters and the morals of the politicians. The former sense each individual vote is meaningless, the latter know it is.

What matters is vast, impersonal blocs of atomised votes, and today’s politicians specialise in putting them together – to the detriment of statesmanship. (An American reader of mine recently mentioned a popular bumper sticker: “If our vote really counted, they wouldn’t let us do it.”)

Hence the calamitously low grade of the human material one finds in today’s politicians, and hence also their desire to remove themselves as far as possible from their constituencies. Short on intellect but long on cunning, these chaps realise that the closer they stay to the people, the sooner they’ll be found out.

However, this unspoken but keenly felt imperative has geographical limitations built in: once political power is more or less concentrated within a small elite in the nation’s capital, there seems to be no farther to go.

It’s to overcome such limitations that supranational organisations, all those UNs and EUs, were created. If within a nation power can only go so far, then it has to be removed from the nation.

Thus we have a proliferation of variously useless international bodies, all reflecting the in-built logic of the post-Enlightenment state: a single world government. Of these the EU is the most pernicious because it’s the most successful.

Its success, however, isn’t measured by economic indicators, Jeremy Warner is right about that. Nor should it be, for the definition of a successful political body has to be based on a comparison between its aims and its results.

The EU is successful in brainwashing Europeans to accept its PR effluvia and ignore its actual performance. The first part is crucial; the second irrelevant.

This is demonstrated by the EU’s stubborn clinging to the euro. Any moderately bright child knows it’s impossible for such diverse economies as, say, those of France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Ireland to perform well with the yoke of a single currency around their necks.

There are enough people in the EU hierarchy who can match the intellect of a moderately bright child, which means they know all that. They also know that a single currency can only work in a single state. So if you want the euro to work, you must have a single European state. QED.

The euro, indeed the EU, isn’t an economic but political tool. It’s a chain designed to bind European nations into a single state ruled by an unaccountable supranational elite.

That’s why it’s pointless to complain, as Mr Warner does, that the euro undermines the strength of European economies. It’s like complaining that lupine carnivorism undermines the strength of ovine herds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putin’s government is using the media it controls, which is to say the Russian media, to whip up the kind of jingoistic, militarist psychosis neither I nor my Russian friends ever saw even in Brezhnev’s Russia.

One sees nothing but war films on TV, interspersed with documentaries extolling Stalin’s leadership and managerial skills.

Musical programmes are solely dedicated to the kind of songs that make Horst-Wessel-Lied sound like a lyrical ballad.

Talk shows are wholly given to Russia’s martial glory and vile attacks on Ukrainians, which in any civilised country would get their purveyors arrested for inciting radial hatred: the Ukies are all fascists, thieves, Banderites (followers of the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera murdered by the KGB in Munich in 1959), grave desecraters and so forth.

The country stands up and salutes: this sort of thing caters to her historical sense of inferiority vis-à-vis the West. As any psychologist will tell you, such feelings are readily transferred into xenophobia, aggression and self-glorification.

Hence Putin’s popularity: the KGB colonel can’t provide bread for his countrymen, a third of whom live below the poverty line (and it’s drawn much lower than in the West). But he’s adept at serving the circus of ‘Russia getting up from her knees’ – meaning making the world scared of her again.

This the Russians tend to equate with respect: the world sees them as a threat, rather than a sideshow. What else can a nation possibly wish for? Considering that leading a normal, free, prosperous life isn’t an option for 95 percent of the population? So beat the drum and blow the bugle – we’re on the march!

True enough, neither my friends nor I ever witnessed this sort of thing delivered at the same fervour pitch back in the USSR. But our fathers did – in the ‘30s when the whole country was being turned into a huge military-labour camp in preparation for Stalin’s war of conquest.

Then too every film, every newspaper article, every song reeked of cordite, then too the nation was being primed to march, murder and maraud. Hitler’s counterpunch that cost Russia 26 million lives prevented Stalin’s juggernaut from rolling beyond the eastern half of Europe – who’s going to do our fighting for us next time?

Anyway it’s better to show than to tell. So, by way of illustration, here’s a song performed on Russian TV by Zhanna Bichevskaya, commonly described as the Russian Joan Baez (minus the musical ability, as I’m sure you’ll agree).

The Russophones among you can enjoy not only the amateurish music but also the rousing lyrics in the original: http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4400379.html

The rest have to make do with my translation, and I’m only rendering the words, not the metre and rhyme. The cultural references that may go past those who didn’t attend a Soviet elementary school are to Mamai, the Tartar military leader of the Blue Horde, Kulikovo Field in which the Russians defeated Mamai in 1380, and the Khazars who fought against the Russians in the ninth and tenth centuries:

1. The banners are moving in the morning mist// The firmament will soon tremble in battle// The field of Russian Glory, the field of Russian Battle,// The field of Russian life vanquishing death…

2. How have we allowed this, brothers?// Russia’s moaning under the yoke of black locusts// This means the Russians again must go to arms// This means the Russians will again have to brandish their swords…

3. The anti-world is fanning new fires,// It’s again conquering the glorious city of Muscovy,// New Europes, new Khazars,// New Mamais are threatening the Motherland…

4. Russia will be strong and free!// Russian strength will make Satan shudder!// And leading the troops will be our legitimate Tsar!// The whole country will be turned into a Kulikovo Field!

5. A powerful pleading voice sounds// The glorious Russian voice will thunder over the world// Holy Russia will come out again under the Saviour’s banner// Kulikovo Field lies ahead for us!

6. We’ll catch up with the enemy following his own footsteps// And rip him to shreds for the glory of God,// Kulikovo Field – Russian victory// Kulikovo Field – Russian land!

7. We’ll return Russian Sebastopol to Russia,// The Crimean Peninsula will again become Russian,// Ours are the majestic Bosphorus, ours is Constantinople// And the world’s relic Jerusalem!

8. And to spite the Masons and other villains// And those seething with hatred to Christians,// We’ll recall Kulikovo Field and the scales will fall off our eyes// And this holy relic will unite us all!

The friend who has sent me this clip limited himself to a brief comment: “Right. It’s clear. Turks and Israelis, brace yourselves. Seems like it’s your turn after the Crimea.”

But I relish my role of self-appointed translator too much to let it go at that, and I do understand Fascist perfectly. So here it comes:

‘Black locusts’ and ‘Satan’ refer to anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the sentiment of this rant. In particular, Europe embodies this evil, which is why it’s metaphorically equated to Mamai and the Khazars.

‘Legitimate tsar’ is a clear reference to Putin. In the actual Kulikovo battle the Russians were led not by a tsar, but by Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy, the Prince of Vladimir. No Russian tsar existed at the time because Russia hadn’t yet united into a single country.

 ‘The whole country will be turned into a Kulikovo Field’ and ‘Kulikovo Field lies ahead of us’ hold a lovely promise both for Russians and the rest of us, as do the words ‘The glorious Russian voice will thunder over the world’.

I’ll let you guess who the enemy is that will be ‘caught up with’ and ‘ripped to shreds’. There are many likely candidates, including us.

‘We’ll return Russian Sebastopol to Russia, the Crimean Peninsula will again become Russian’ is accurate reportage, while ‘the majestic Bosphorus, Constantinople and the world’s relic Jersualem’ are a statement of geopolitical intent.

As to who ‘the other villains’ are, those mentioned in conjunction with the Masons, you can draw your own conclusions. It’s not difficult.

Allow me to reemphasise that this isn’t an underground tape of a crazy old woman spewing chauvinistic hatred, but a hugely popular Russian idol performing on one of the best-viewed TV shows. Moreover, this sort of thing isn’t just typical but dominant in all Russian media.

Can you read the signs? If not, I’ll be happy to translate. 

 

 

 

Professional titillater Pamela is no boob, she knows which side her bread is buttered.

Pamela’s a ‘celebrity’ (God knows she’s no actress) and wants to remain one, which is why she’s duty-bound to keep abreast of mock-worthy fads.

(My wife has just peeked over my shoulder and told me not to indulge my ‘puerile appetite for idiotic puns’. Sorry, darling, it’s a kind of Tourette’s, nothing I can do about it.)

The list of the mock-worthy causes Pamela supports is long. It includes veganism, animal rights, anti-fur, climate change, seals, anti-Kentucky Fried Chicken, AIDS (which we all know is a conspiracy on the part of the conservative establishment – as, truth be told, are all the other affronts that excite Pamela so). 

It was in her capacity as campaigner for mock-worthy causes that Pamela appeared yesterday on a yacht in the French Riviera, her white dress revealing more of her menopausal charms than most women have altogether. By Pamela’s standards this represented demure attire, certainly as compared to her erstwhile appearances as a Playboy centrefold.

The occasion for which Pamela undressed in her finery was an extravaganza for Cool Earth, a charity whose real object seems to be celebrities striving to assuage their guilty consciences, while at the same time coming across as caring-sharing humanitarians. Good for the old box office, that.

On this occasion they were acting not as humanitarians but rather as arboretarians, for this time they chose the rain forest to communicate their being in touch with the innermost cravings of mankind. Saving those tracts infested with wild animals, deadly insects and snakes, they claim, will solve most of our problems, both physical (such as global warming) and moral (such as not giving two flying, well, hoots about global warming).

Pamela’s speech took everyone’s breath away, and for once people looked at her face. For the fading beauty laid bare some harrowing experiences of her childhood.

“I was molested from age six by a female babysitter,” sobbed Pamela. One would have expected that a link to the plight of the rain forest would then be found, such as, “And now ranchers and loggers are doing the same to the Amazon.”

But nothing like that ensued. You see, Pamela evidently suffers from the disease that has reached pandemic proportions in the West: mental (in her case also physical) exhibitionism, metastasising into emotional incontinence.

Hence she continued in the same vein. At age 12 “I went to a friend’s boyfriend’s house and his older brother decided to teach me backgammon which led into a back massage, which led into rape.” Going from a back massage to rape is easy enough, but how did they make the transition from backgammon to a back massage, is what I want to know. 

A tragic experience no doubt, but what makes Pamela think this would interest anyone other than Pamela and some of her more onanistic admirers? Perhaps it was for the sake of the latter that she enlarged further on her difficult childhood:

A few years later a school boyfriend, she complained, “decided it would be funny to gang-rape me with six friends.”

The lad certainly had a strange sense of humour and probably Pamela suffered a  lasting trauma, but really she ought to be suffering in silence, especially 30 years on. Such revelations would be impossibly embarrassing to any normal person but hey, it’s a ‘celebrity’ we’re talking about.

Evidently Pamela’s desire to let it all hang out can’t be limited to low-cut dresses. Modern savages have no concept of dignity and emotional restraint, and this goes not just for Pamela but also for her audience.

Rather than reaching for sick-bags, they clapped their hands to raw meat. “No one was expecting a speech like that,” commented one of the attending savages. “Pamela was so brave.”

Right. As brave as – braver than! – our boys dying in Afghanistan for their leaders’ criminal idiocy. Our unarmed policemen confronting knife-toting thugs. Our missionaries who give their lives for their faith.

There goes another word, devalued right into the putrid gutter. But why stop there, why not describe this exercise in revolting exhibitionism as heroic? Why not put Pamela up for the Victoria Cross? As a Canadian, she’s Her Majesty’s subject after all, and we’re all looking for new heroes.

What Pamela’s boyfriend and his six friends did to Pamela she and her jolly friends are now doing to taste, modesty and decency. They should remember that a heart worn on one’s sleeve will be soon covered in grime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nigel Farage is in trouble yet again, and one would think he ought to have learned by now.

Mind you, Nigel would get in trouble with the media of any political hue even if he said that the sky is usually blue, except at night when it’s black, or on a cloudy day when it’s grey.

The Guardian would scream that such colourist statements are a sign of incipient fascism. The Independent would add that at sundown the sky is sometimes red, reflecting its readers’ politics, but obviously not Nigel’s. The Telegraph would chide the poor man for keeping his head up in the clouds. And The Times would suggest that there’s something of the night about Nigel, for his heart is black.

Lurking behind the text would be the subtext that, as it often does, would convey the real meaning: Farage doesn’t always behave the way our political elites expect a politician to behave. Hence he threatens the elites’ secure hold on power, which is bound to unite them against him.

They have no principles they wouldn’t drop in a second for a couple of percentage points in the polls. What they describe as their political philosophies are simply the various paths they’ve chosen to get to power.

When an outsider like Nigel Farage looks threatening to the elites, they’ll forget their minute differences for the sake of this towering similarity – hence the vituperative and often mendacious attacks on UKIP in every paper.

The most threatening thing about Nigel is that sometimes (by no means always) he dares to speak the truth, thus proving he’s unfit for public office. For the only scathing comment we ever hear about a politician’s statement is “you can’t say that”. Not “it’s not true” but “you can’t say that” – regardless of the truth.

True or false simply doesn’t come into it. There’s no such thing as truth. There’s only obeying the totalitarian diktat of political correctness, which is these day a sine qua non of political success.

This time Nigel found himself in the soup for suggesting in a radio interview that he’d rather live next to a German than to a Romanian.

That undoubtedly is good news for Mrs Farage, considering she’s German. But it’s rotten news for Mr Farage: he committed the terrible faux pas of saying something that most people know but would be afraid to say.

Personally, I prefer to judge people individually and not collectively. Thus I’d rather live next door to a Romanian doctor than to a German lout. By the same token, I’d rather live next to a quiet Eskimo than to an Englishman whose stereo blares what most Englishmen regard as music.

But yes, if you held a gun to my head and forced me to generalise, I’d have to admit that the closer my neighbours are to me culturally and socially, the better I feel. So do all the same hacks who’ve got their claws into Nigel.

Most people don’t mind diversity, but not necessarily on their own doorstep. Hence I occasionally indulge my taste for ethnic excitement by going to Brick Lane for a curry. But I wouldn’t want to live there – and not because I have anything against people from the sub-continent, which I don’t.

It’s just that when I’m at home I don’t seek excitement and diversity. I’d rather trade them for a nice, secure feeling that my neighbours are more or less like me, which is to say more or less predictable and unthreatening. It may be something as simple as having a neighbour whose nod denotes assent and not, as in the case of Bulgarians, denial.

More typically, however, things aren’t quite so simple. Using the example that got Nigel in trouble, the Germans are in general culturally closer to the British than the Romanians are.

I use the word ‘culture’ in a broad sense, to include things like intuitive attitudes to legality, business practices, hygiene, politics, social interactions and what not. ‘In general’ is an important disclaimer, for obviously some Romanians are more civilised than some Germans.

But collectively the Germans are a couple of generations removed from their outburst of satanic beastliness, whereas the Romanians aren’t. Three generations of them, including the present one, have lived under either fascism or communism, and for the purposes of this argument the difference between the two is irrelevant.

For both fascism and communism have a deep, usually lifelong, corrupting effect on even those who dare resist, and it takes more than one generation to mitigate it. I’m speaking from personal experience here, for I grew up under a regime I deeply resented and at times actively fought.

Yet it has taken me decades in the West to go native in my intuitive attitudes – and my wife claims the job still isn’t quite done. Now imagine someone who neither fought against the corrupting effects of communism as recklessly as I did nor grew up speaking English and reading English books.

This describes most people, as I hope you’ll believe without my having to produce statistical evidence. So yes, if asked to generalise, not only Nigel Farage but also you, me, anyone would rather live next to a German than to a Romanian.

His statement is thus completely unobjectionable, at least in its denotation. But it’s connotation that reigns supreme nowadays, and Nigel has committed an unpardonable sin.

He said what most people feel but have been trained to be ashamed of. A slight tug on their psychological wire activates a Pavlovian response – you can’t say that! Especially because it’s true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you recovered from the initial shock? Well then, you must be eternally grateful to the Office for National Statistics for breaking the news.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the ONS has vindicated Ernest Hemingway who reported this dialogue. Scott Fitzgerald: The rich are different from you and me. Hemingway: Yes, they have more money.

This exchange never actually took place but, even so, it’s hard to argue against its main thought. After all, its veracity was presaged by that well-known proto-conservative: “For ye have the poor with you always…”.

Implicitly ye also have the rich always – or at least that’s the conclusion to which ye are led by the subsequently developed dialectical method.

The ONS confirms: just 10 percent of the Brits own – are you ready for this? – almost half the country’s wealth! Now if that isn’t an outrage, I don’t know what is. And that’s not all (make sure you have a cardiac arrest unit standing by):

Only a meagre 10 percent of us are millionaires, with barely more than that owning a second home. That’s disgraceful. Just spare a thought for all those who own less than £1,000,000 in assets and have to make do with a single residence. Think of their plight. Think of the inequality!

Rachael Orr, Head of Oxfam’s Poverty Programme certainly does: “This is another shocking chapter in a tale of two Britains… We need politicians… to make the narrowing gap between the richest and the poorest a top priority.”

Miss/Ms Orr probably meant ‘narrowing the gap…’ for, the way she put it, one may get the subversive idea that the gap is actually narrowing already. But let’s not pick any nits. It’s the thought that counts, and I second it with hear-hear enthusiasm.

Moreover I can go even further than my new friend Rachael by making a concrete proposal. Let’s start by cutting, or ideally eliminating, the salaries of Oxfam executives, most of whom, including my new friend, are comfortably within the top five percentile of the income scale, and some in the top one.

While we’re at it, let’s perform a similar surgical procedure on the salaries in all other top charities… Forget I said it. Didn’t the same proto-conservative I quoted earlier teach that charity begins at home?

Our charity bosses are therefore theologically justified in using donations and huge state subsidies to pay themselves at the top of the scale. Mind you, Oxfam’s charity both begins at home and practically ends there, but at least they’re halfway to the summit of virtue. Who of us can make the same claim?

The report follows in the footsteps of another exercise in the economics of envy, the book Capital in the 21^st Century that’s likely to earn its author, the leftwing French economist Thomas Piketty, the Nobel Prize.

Isn’t it dommage, complains Piketty, that capitalist Western democracies tolerate, and can’t reverse, the inequality of wealth? The implication is that other forms of government have sussed out how to make everyone equally rich, even though the evidence for this finding is somewhat limited.

But evidence-schmevidence, as New York economists would say – it’s like the simian origin of man. Yes, there’s a missing link, but that’s only because we haven’t discovered it yet. A few more grants to Richard Dawkins’s fans, and we will. After all, we know it must exist for, if it doesn’t, there goes a beautiful theory and we can’t have that.

So give us time and we’ll find a way of creating a paradise of equality on earth. So what if no previous generation has managed to do so? We’re much cleverer. Time is all we need.

Implicit in all such animadversions is the presumption that equalising wealth across the board is a goal that’s both achievable and desirable. It isn’t, on both counts.

Count 1: Those who hold this view are typically atheists who worship at the altar of reason, understood in a most primitive, empirical sense.

Operating within their own pathetic system of values, one should point out that empirical evidence is absolutely unequivocal: a state making economic egalitarianism its ‘top priority’ never enriches the poor. It murders many and impoverishes all, with the exception of the loyal servants of the state, especially those who do the murdering.

Count 2: A government economic policy is only ever desirable when it brings out the best in people by discouraging cardinal sins and encouraging cardinal virtues.

These notions have Judaeo-Christian antecedents, but then so does our whole civilisation. So let’s humour those who justly feel they have 2,000 years of history on their side, shall we?

The cardinal sins are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. I maintain that economic egalitarianism aggressively caters to at least six of the seven, with gluttony being the possible exception and envy taking the pride of place.

Prudence, justice, temperance and courage are the cardinal virtues, and our economic Robin Hoods shoot arrows through each of them, especially justice.

Descending from the dizzying theological heights to the ground level of common sense and decency, one would suggest that the figures riling the egalitarians so ought to be juxtaposed with those of tax contributions to the Exchequer.

These are telling: even though the top 10 percent only own 50 percent of the nation’s wealth, they contribute 91 percent of income-tax revenue, and the top one percentile fill 30 percent of the country’s piggy bank. Are we going to be worked up about this glaring inequality as well?

By any historical standards most of our ‘poor’ are rich beyond the imagination of most earlier generations. And only a wicked man would resent his neighbour’s wealth, especially provided he himself isn’t deprived of what Dr Johnson called ‘the necessaries’.

The real problem we face isn’t economic but spiritual poverty, which our egalitarians don’t understand. But they do exemplify it.