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This phrase usually means making things worse. However, President Trump has hinted at the possibility of reversing its meaning.

Ostensibly speaking to the World Economic Forum at Davos but in reality to Putin and OPEC, he said: “If the [oil] price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately.”

Don’t know about immediately, but Trump has a good point. Overlaying the historical graph of oil prices over that of Russia’s military forays one can see a different inverse relationship, as I’ve found out by following expert opinion.

Thus, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, when the oil price was at a record high. Corrected for inflation it equalled $140 in today’s money.

In 2008 Russia attacked Georgia. The oil price was still high, about $130, again in today’s money.

In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and set the Donbass on fire. The oil price was stubbornly staying in triple digits, at about $110 a barrel.

And the price was still $110 a barrel in 2022, when Russia embarked on a full-blown aggression against the Ukraine, plunging Europe into a war the likes of which hadn’t been seen since 1945.

Since then the price has come down, to about $78. But it’s still high enough for Putin to finance the war by circumventing Western sanctions and dumping his oil at sale prices to anyone willing to do business, mainly China.

That relationship also works the other way: Russia tends to succumb to peace overtures when the oil prices dip.

In 1986 Ronald Reagan struck a deal with Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer. The Saudis agreed to crash the price per barrel by stepping up their production. The prices went down from $140 a barrel to $30, and the button for Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan was pushed.

In January, 2015, the oil price dipped from $110 to $50 a barrel. A month later, Russia signed the Minsk agreements, which she broke the instant oil became more expensive again.

Oil economists believe that getting the price down to the 2015 level of about $50 will force Putin to sue for peace straight away. That strikes me as way too optimistic, the kind of optimism that can only ever be based on a deficit of knowledge.

If currently Russia is spending over a third of her budget on the war, a collapse in oil prices may raise that proportion to 50 or even 75 per cent. That would turn the Russian population into cold and hungry paupers deprived of even the bare essentials of life.

But that wouldn’t deter Putin, or at any rate wouldn’t do so immediately. Concern for the well-being or even lives of the people has never figured prominently on the Russian list of priorities, certainly not since 1917 and not all that much even before then.

Their conduct of the on-going war shows that treating lives with cavalier disregard hasn’t exactly gone out of fashion there. Putin’s generals are pursuing the war effort by paying no attention to the growing list of casualties. They are throwing wave after human wave at fortified positions, with their forces advancing through the puddles of their comrades’ blood.

Conditions in the rear haven’t yet reached catastrophic proportions, but the Russians are considerably worse off now than they were three years ago. Yet one doesn’t see any mass protests, nor any fiery headlines in the papers. Such is the nature of any totalitarian state – and of the Russian people whose tolerance of deprivations has been honed throughout their history.

Having said that, the avenue to peace that Trump hinted at looks promising. The president’s transactional talents may not work on the Russians, but the Saudis are more receptive to pressure. They may grab at any carrot dangled by Trump because they stand to lose a lot if he swings a stick.

Trump’s entreaty of “Drill, baby, drill” may produce the same effect: if America boosts her fracking effort, she can flood the markets with liquefied natural gas, which too is bound to push hydrocarbon prices down.

There is no reason for the oil price not to drop as far down as $30 or even $20. That would indeed crush the Russian economy, making any foreign forays unthinkable even for Putin and his accomplices.

The Saudis may scream bloody murder, but that’s where the carrot can come in. The US could offer OPEC countries any number of concessions that would make up for the lower price of their principal export. In any case, such a dip would only have to last as long as the war. Once it has ended, the prices may be allowed to seek their natural level.

Donald Trump is on to something here. He might have identified the only way for the Ukraine and her Western allies to occupy a position of strength in any negotiations with Russia. Instead of appealing to Putin’s nonexistent good nature, Trump could simply whip his trusted calculator out and show him a few simple sums.

Here, Vlad, this is what’ll happen to your economy at $50, $40, $30 or $20. And did I forget to mention it? Here’s a copy of my agreement with OPEC who are ready to do what it takes. So this is where you sign.

This approach has got to be more successful than trying to intimidate Russia with more sanctions they know how to circumvent, or to bully Zelensky with the threat of cutting supplies off. As a concomitant benefit, a period of cheap energy would inject some resuscitating medicine into the sclerotic veins of Western economies.

A footnote has to be attached to every pronouncement made by Trump, good, bad or indifferent. His words and his deeds have been known to go their separate ways, and he doesn’t always take the trouble of thinking before talking.

But I have a feeling that this time around he has found, and is prepared to act on, the right ploy for ending the war – not in 24 hours, not immediately, but soon. Best of luck, and do let’s hope the strategy will succeed.

Any physiognomist casting an eye over our chancellor’s face will suspect she isn’t excessively bright. Then she’ll say something, anything, and the suspicion will turn into a certainty.

Yet so far no psychiatrist I know of has diagnosed Rachel Reeves with schizophrenia. That oversight ought to be corrected, and soon, before she hurts any more people.

Schizophrenia, as you know, is characterised by a delusional divorce from reality. And one doesn’t have to be a trained shrink to see that poor Rachel from Complaints has that condition, if only perhaps in a mild form.

(Rachel acquired that nickname when saying on her CV that she had been a top economist at the Bank of Scotland, and she justified that job experience by being economical with the truth. In fact, she had worked in the complaints department of a retail bank, fobbing off distraught customers who asked for a higher overdraft limit.)

But judge for yourself. This is how Rachel describes her experience of travelling through China on a recent trip: “I went on this train from Beijing to Shanghai, it’s 1,200km, it got there in four hours. Can you imagine if I’d said to the vice-premier, ‘I would like to understand what you did around environmental rules’? … We would have sounded like lunatics. We can’t get stuff done in Britain because of these ridiculous rules.”

I agree. Every sensible Briton knows that “these ridiculous rules” are hammering nails into the coffin of the economy. And every such individual is well within his rights to complain – in fact it’s his civic duty to do so. Provided, of course, that it’s not he who is responsible for suffocating the economy with a suicidal commitment to net zero.

Rachel, by contrast, is one of those directly responsible, holding as she does the second-highest position in a government whose climate fanaticism is unmatched anywhere in the world. So which of those “ridiculous rules” is she planning to rescind?

She seems to have this schizophrenic ability to become in her mind someone she isn’t in reality, in this case someone outside the government looking in. From that vantage point, one she shares with all of us, she can, indeed should, criticise our useless government to her heart’s content.

Now, I don’t know what the therapeutic protocol is for dealing with delusions, and I’d welcome any advice from medically trained readers.

Are you supposed to get the patient in touch with reality by, for example, telling Kevin that he isn’t Napoleon and should take that silly hat off, Jane that she isn’t Lady Godiva and should put her clothes on, and Rachel that she isn’t an outsider to this government and should either get rid of those ridiculous rules or shut up? Do tell me.

Everything about Rachel is progressive, including, by the looks of it, her schizophrenia. Speaking at Davos, she said:  “We’re all sick of Britain being in the slow lane, whether it’s British CEOs or British investors, and we want to see a revival of those animal spirits so that we can grow the economy and bring investment here.”

Rachel then channelled her inner Trump by holding the US president up as an example of someone whose can-do attitude is working wonders in America. “I think we do need more positivity,” she said.

The reality is that whatever economic success Trump may be able to achieve will be due not so much to what he is (a positive thinker) as to what he isn’t (a Marxist ideologue). Rachel is just that, yet she scolds British investors and businessmen for being pessimistic as if she had nothing to do with fostering such sentiments.

Her abrupt about-face on Trump is also nothing short of insane.

For the past decade or so, the Labour brass (including Reeves) have been demonising him as a racist, fascist and in general the devil incarnate. Now they desperately need a trade deal with the US, they want Britons to become as positive as Trump – to a point that they don’t notice that their catastrophically incompetent government is destroying their country in the service of an evil ideology.

I’ve already mentioned the net zero madness, all those rules Rachel finds ridiculous but does all she can to multiply. But that’s only a start. Correctly sensing that climate fanaticism alone may not destroy the economy beyond recovery, our heroine has slapped such extortionist taxes and strangulating regulations on the economy that she started a massive exodus of wealth.

One wealth-producer is leaving Britain every 45 minutes, doubtless to the resounding chorus of “good riddance” performed by our governing Marxists. Hundreds of businesses are closing down, and those that are still holding on by their fingertips are laying people off.

Supermarket chains lead the way, with Sainsbury’s announcing 3,000 redundancies and Morrison’s not far behind. And investors, both foreign and domestic, aren’t investing because they don’t like throwing good money after bad. As a result, public borrowing is becoming not only greater but also more expensive.

In the fine tradition of socialist governments everywhere, Rachel is robbing the Peter of the private sector to give to the Paul of public employees. These are the only people who are doing well under Labour, with record wage hikes blithely dispensed by Rachel from Complaints.

“I want to keep the talent here,” she says. “In recent years too much has been drifting overseas.” True, so it has. But at nowhere near the rate of the past six months, when she took charge of the Exchequer.

Yet Rachel’s medical condition is such that she lives in the virtual reality of her mind, not in the actual reality of life. Thus, she blames the Tories for whatever economic problems Britain is experiencing: “You can’t turn around 14 years of sluggish growth in six months,” she says.

No you can’t. But you certainly can eliminate growth altogether, which is what Rachel from Complaints has done.

Economic growth in any country is inversely proportionate to the amount of socialism in it. The Tories are socialist too, but less so than Rachel and her mates. That’s why last year Britain’s growth, though undeniably sluggish, was still the fastest in the G7. Now it’s the slowest, having ground to a halt.

Every economic forecast, apart from those emanating from Rachel’s department, isn’t just pessimistic but doomsday. And even the Office for Budget Responsibility is downgrading forecasts every day.

Incidentally, Trump said yesterday that Starmer’s government has done a “very good job thus far”. That statement is as far from reality as anything Rachel from Complaints is saying, but one hopes that in this case the aetiology of the problem is merely ignorance, not madness.

Then again, Trump can’t be held responsible for anything he says: he is too garrulous to exercise even elementary self-restraint, and too egotistic to hold his statements to any tests of facts or general knowledge.

Thus he made a promise to indulge his fondness for “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, tariffs, mentioning plans to introduce levies as high as 40 per cent on all imports.

Then some economically literate advisers must have talked sense into Trump, and the bar began to come down incrementally. First, 40 per cent became 20, then 10, but even such a tariff on British exports to the US would inflict even more damage on our economy than Rachel can cause on her own.

That’s why she is full of praise for Trump, where before she was scathing about him and not always selective in her epithets. Overall, I can’t shake the clichéd feeling that we live in an asylum run by the lunatics. Please, please tell me I’m wrong.

Democracy in America is arguably the most seminal work of political science ever written, and definitely one of the most prescient.

Its first volume appeared in 1835, 190 years ago and only 59 years into America’s life as an independent country. And yet much of the book reads as today’s reportage.

This isn’t to say I find all of Tocqueville’s political philosophy of equal value, but, when reading a significant book on any subject, my tendency is to concentrate on the points that make it significant. In this case too, rather than arguing with many of Tocqueville’s contentious ideas, we could all learn from his sage observations.

It was Tocqueville who first explained to Americans that what they had created wasn’t exactly what they had set out to create. Democracy, not mixed republican government, was central to American politics. However, unlike both Jefferson and Adams who deplored that development, Tocqueville rather welcomed it.

But not without reservations, and I find these more interesting than the praise. Tocqueville believed that only democracy could find a proper balance between equality and liberty. However, he was aware of the problem that has since become as evident as it is ubiquitous:

“But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”

Tocqueville knew that not only political liberty might suffer as a result, but also intellectual freedom: “The majority has enclosed thought within a formidable fence. A writer is free inside that area, but woe to the man who goes beyond it.”

As a result, Tocqueville could think of no other country where there was “less independence of mind, and true freedom of discussion, than in America.” It was mainly in that sense that he spoke of “the tyranny of the majority”, a phrase also used by another champion of liberty, if a less nuanced thinker, John Stuart Mill.

While writing about America, Tocqueville always had his native France in the back of his mind. He was hoping France and other European countries would transplant America’s good features while remaining immune to the bad ones. His hopes have so far remained forlorn, and, largely as an effect of unchecked democracy, the West shows every day how little attention it has paid to Tocqueville’s caveats.

Many of his observations were both eagle’s-eye accurate and crystal-ball prescient. Pointing out that most people in the US government were lawyers by trade, Tocqueville feared that American politics would become excessively legalistic as a result:

“Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that does not turn, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”

True enough, of the 56 signatories to the Declaration of Independence, 25 were lawyers, as were 31 of the 55 members in the Continental Congress. That situation hasn’t changed much: 51 out of the 100 US senators were trained as lawyers. Although the percentage is somewhat lower in the House, Tocqueville’s numerical observation still holds.

What he didn’t anticipate, and neither did anyone else, is the amount of judiciary activism in the US (and, these days, elsewhere), with judges acting as political players, not just referees. They turn political questions into judicial ones not to protect constitutional purity but, as often as not, to usurp political power.

In fact, that practice is so widespread that political motives are impugned even to purely legal decisions. Thus, the predominantly leftwing press was up in arms about the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe vs. Wade. Pundits insisted the judges had ruled that way out of conservative (or religious fundamentalist, take your pick) distaste for abortion.

In fact, Their Honours merely scrutinised the federal Constitution and decided that nothing in it could be interpreted as an argument for or against abortion. Hence it was up to the states and not the central government to legislate the issue.

During his first post-inauguration hours, Trump fired a volley of executive orders at everything progressive mankind holds dear and sane mankind abhors. The President is clearly intent on pushing executive power to (some will say beyond) its constitutional limit. Considering that he has a majority in both Houses, political opposition is too weak to stop the Trump juggernaut.

That’s why massive legal regiments have been thrown into battle, trying to do exactly what worried Tocqueville: turn political questions into judiciary ones. That continues the tendency that took shape during Trump’s campaign, when the opposition often relied not on political arguments but on questionable legal tactics to get ahead.

That Trump’s order to deny birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants would be challenged in court was clear even to me, a rank amateur in such matters. Birthright citizenship regardless of the parents’ residence status is guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment, and it would take another amendment to overturn it. That’s a lengthy process at best, and Trump has neither the time nor probably the votes to succeed.

Just as the aforementioned rank amateur predicted, 22 states have filed legal challenges and lawsuits, probably meaning that sound idea will bite the dust. I can’t say I’m upset: as the Romans used to say, dura lex, sed lex – the law is harsh, but it is the law. And it’s the law that should rule a civilised country, not a ruler full of sound ideas.

Also finding itself at the end of a lawsuit is Elon Musk’s DOGE, the outfit charged with the worthy mission of cleaning up the Augean Stables of the federal payrolls. The lawsuit filed by National Security Counsellors takes exception to DOGE’s lack of transparency.

Apparently, a federal advisory committee, which is what DOGE is, is supposed to keep regular minutes of meetings and allow public access, whereas Musk would rather do his work in camera.

That’s supposed to violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and I’m sure lawyers on both sides will have a well-paid field day arguing the toss. But I suppose DOGE could sidestep this one suit by making some concessions and continue to do its important work. I wish a less hideous character than Musk were in charge, but it is what it is.

The lawsuit filed by the National Treasury Employees Union may be harder to dismiss. Trump’s worthy intention is to sack tens of thousands of federal employees he sees – correctly, I think – as useless, actually harmful, leeches on the body of the public finances.

But it was predictable that getting rid of so many people would run into legal challenges, both individual and class suits. To speed matters up, Trump reinstated Schedule F, reclassifying all those employees as political hires and therefore sackable when the politics changed. If the government succeeds in reclassifying them in that manner, the employees will lose the right to appeal, which the union says is unprecedented and diabolical.

And so it goes, the legal merry-go-round spinning and gathering momentum as it goes. Some objections to Trump’s policies raise legitimate constitutional concerns, but most are simply legal sticks thrust into the spokes of political wheels.

They may not stop the juggernaut, but they can certainly slow it down, and Trump only has four years to implement his policies. So prepare yourselves for a whole bunch of further suits, some legitimate, most frivolous.

I hope Trump can chart a safe course through the legal reefs, but that’s not my subject today. I’m simply marvelling at Tocqueville’s sagacity. He noticed almost two centuries ago the seeds that have since sprouted into mighty trees.

If he suddenly came back, he’d look at today’s America and utter the aphorism coined by his contemporary, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”.

No one I know ever took seriously Trump’s promise to end the war in the Ukraine within his first 24 hours in office. But we’ve all been waiting with bated breath to find out what the President had in mind.

Now we know. Or rather don’t know because Trump’s message to Putin doesn’t clarify matters one bit. The only conclusion one can draw is that Trump doesn’t really understand the situation, nor, more puzzling, has any advisers who do.

He starts out by declaring love for the Russian people, which is neither here nor there. But the way he explained the origin of that affection has everyone in the Kremlin up in arms. Even I cringed, and I’m no friend of Putin.

In both style and substance, Trump seems to have been inspired by the speech that Marlon Brando’s Godfather made to the other Mafia dons. Seemingly pacifying, it augmented that carrot with the stick of threats. But, unlike Trump, old Vito was in command of his facts.

“We must never forget,” writes Trump, “that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process.”

First, a minor quibble: the 60,000,000 number was bandied about and discredited long ago. Having done the sums as accurately as the available data allow, serious historians and demographers have arrived at a total of about 27 million, of whom over 15 million were military casualties.

Trump doesn’t seem to have a Russian expert in his entourage, which his playing fast and loose with numbers shows. More important, such an expert could have prevented him from needlessly alienating the Russians by cavalierly offending the core of what passes for their ideology.

That is based on the cult of victory in the Great Patriotic War, their misnomer for the Second World War. The cult is worshiped with so much fervour that most Russians are unaware that their country had some help from the US and other allies.

(I recall doing interpreting for a group of Russian athletes visiting Houston back in the 1970s. On a city tour, I pointed out a memorial to Americans killed in the Second World War, much to my charges’ consternation. They didn’t realise the US had taken part in the hostilities. That was a long time ago but, if anything, the situation now has to be even worse.)

Official sources begrudgingly acknowledge that assistance but downplay its vital importance. Such is ideology, with its characteristic dismissal of facts that don’t fit.

But Trump’s statement is just as ideological and just as ignorant. He seems to be saying that the US won the war almost singlehandedly, with a little help from the Soviet Union, which is historically inaccurate and – more to the point – diplomatically inept. If the President envisages playing a part in subsequent negotiations, enraging one party by way of a warm-up is silly.

Since he chooses to adopt the tone of a chap who’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse, he should realise that such a mentality is encoded into Putin’s DNA. Like a Mafia don, he too demands respect – and neither can he be seen by his lieutenants as someone yielding to pressure. Show weakness and you are dead – this is one of Putin’s favourite phrases.

“I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR,” continues Trump. “Settle now and STOP this ridiculous War!”

Trump’s team seems to have a vacancy not only for a Russian expert but also for a grammarian. No one can ever accuse the President of being undercapitalised: his devotion to capital letters is as boundless as it is illiterate.

The Russian addressees of his message may not realise that part, but they’ll certainly be up in Arms at the Claim that their Economy is FAILING. It’s hard to know anything for sure about that country, but the reports I get from Russia don’t suggest an impending catastrophe.

The economy is definitely hurting, with rampant inflation impoverishing more and more people. At least a third of the budget (in reality, probably quite a bit more) is going up in smoke in the battlefields of the Eastern Ukraine, and Western sanctions do pinch.

But the Russian people have a long history of adding new holes to their belts, while the Russian government is similarly adept at getting around sanctions and international laws. These days too they are punching numerous holes in the sanctions wall, with a little help from their friends in China, Hungary, the Middle East – and corrupt Western traders whose name is legion.

Then comes a threat that sounds empty to me and definitely infuriating to Putin. “If we don’t make a ‘deal’, and soon, I have no choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and various other participating countries.

“Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do this the easy way or the hard way…,” added Trump in a further foray into Vito Corleone’s idiom.

Karl Popper would describe the first part of that statement as an unfalsifiable, and hence unsound, claim. Not being a Popper fan, I’d simply describe it as irrelevant and self-serving. But what does Trump see as the hard way? What is his leverage on Putin?

Slapping further sanctions on Russian exports to the West isn’t going to work because the volume of that trade is already negligible. Yes, saving the Russians further hardships may be (but really isn’t) important to Putin, but not nearly as important as saving his own face. If he loses that, the rest of his body will follow in short order – he knows that as well as your average godfather.

In his other messages Trump outlined other levers of influence, which may prove to be more effective. He is hinting that, should Putin refuse to do a ‘deal’, the US would ratchet up its arms supplies to the Ukraine. And if it’s Zelensky who proves obdurate, Trump will stop all such supplies.

If both parties take such threats on faith, Trump may succeed in dragging them to the negotiating table. Both countries are suffering egregiously, and both would be happy to end the war. But on what terms?

Zelensky has stated he is ready to talk, but he won’t accept the 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory currently occupied by the Russians as part of the conversation. Putin has also hinted at a possibility of talks but, with the Russians on the offensive, he too signalled his aversion to any serious concessions.

So what kind of deal does Trump have in mind? I hope an equitable one that isn’t tantamount to the Ukraine’s surrender. Yet I fear that, as far as Trump is concerned, any deal is better than no deal, and neither party to the conflict sees it that way.

One way or another he needs some expert advice on how to talk to a man who describes his youth as that of “a common Petersburg thug”. By all means, speak from a position of strength, but don’t make overt threats that will be counterproductive.

Thugs respond to deeds, not threats. Thus promising to arm the Ukraine to the teeth is not going to work, but actually doing so may. Announcing that US troops will be part of any peacekeeping contingent after the war may also have an effect.

Above all, Trump should realise that the desired end of any deal is lasting peace and the Ukraine’s security. Any other deal would set the stage for another world war, and this time around the US won’t have Russia’s help.

A chap should be allowed to indulge a few fantasies, no matter how preposterous. Mine is that someone sort out the gross pay inequality at major tennis tournaments.

And, say what you will about Donald Trump, but he wouldn’t stand for such injustice. So I’m hereby putting forth his candidature as the world’s tennis supremo. Yes, I know he already has a job, but I did tell you my idea was a fantasy.

The first of the yearly four Grand Slams, the Australian Open, is currently under way, and it would be a perfect time for Donald to put his foot down. If he could shut down all the federal DEI programmes in one fell swoop, he’d find it a doddle to make sure players get equal pay for equal work.

Someone has calculated that during the first week, before the quarterfinal stage, the women’s world number two, Iga Swiatek, was paid $148,000 per hour. It wasn’t specified whether the dollars were Australian or US, but that’s an arithmetic distinction without a substantive difference.

This is more than twice the hourly wage earned by her male counterpart, second seed Sasha Zverev. The two outside letters in DEI are working hard, but the middle one, which stands for Equity, has dropped out of the acronym.

However, the WTA and organisers of the majors insist that men and women should get the same prize money at every stage. At work here is an ideology that, like all other ideologies, is impervious to facts, logic or any moral considerations. This characteristic should appear in any dictionary definition of ideology, but, unless I do a Dr Johnson and compile my own, probably won’t.

This is my perennial theme, figuring in my pieces once every few years. But this year it’s different, for Swiatek’s obscene earnings have caused a public outcry. Well, perhaps not exactly an outcry, but certainly some commotion.

Ideologues of this outrage insist that Iga is so much better than anyone else that she hardly has to take more than an hour to dispatch her opponents, especially in the early rounds. That’s beside the point.

In their heyday, players like Sampras, Federer and Nadal also dominated their opponents, and Djokovic is still doing that. But even their one-sided matches hardly ever lasted less than two hours and usually closer to three.

One reason for that is that men play best out of five sets, and women best out of three. But another, just as important, reason is that the overall level of men’s tennis is infinitely better. A world number sixty or seventy can give a match to a top player and, on a good day, even knock him out. For a top woman, a match against such a lowly opponent is a warm-up session.

One fan who is aghast pointed this out: “Check all of the women’s scores from the year and you will be shocked at how many bagel and breadstick sets have been played.” (For those unfamiliar with tennis slang, in a bagel set the loser doesn’t win a single game, and in a breadstick set he only wins one.)

But most protesters insist that, if women want to deserve equal pay, they should play five-set matches too. That, I think, misses the point, or at least most of it.

An argument could be made that women are physiologically less strong than men, and they expend as much energy in three sets as men do in five. But people glued to their TV sets are only watching the results of hard work, not the work itself.

The real work is done behind the scenes, on the practice courts, running tracks and in the gyms. That’s how professional athletes hone the tools of their trade: not just strength, speed and endurance but also technique.

And, while the women can’t be expected to match the men’s physical properties, there is no reason for them not to develop the same technique. This means the ability to hit the whole repertoire of shots (and there exist dozens) with the right pace, touch and consistency.

Anyone wishing to argue that women have that ability should have watched the quarterfinal match between two burly, heavily tattooed ladies, first seed Aryna Sabalenka and twenty-seventh seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

A typical point featured the two players, one of whom is the world number one, hitting hard, flat shots at each other, with no attempt at ever varying direction, length or spin. After a couple of such boring shots, one of the women would either dump the ball in the net or hit six feet out.

The match was technically inept, creatively nonexistent and invariably boring to watch. Sabalenka, who eventually won in three sets, tacitly acknowledged as much in her victory speech.

“Djokovic and Alcaraz are coming next,” she said with a self-effacing smile. “So you’ll be able to watch better tennis.”

She was right about that, except the next match wasn’t just better tennis – it was tennis from a different planet, nay universe, a totally different sport. Serena Williams, possibly the best women’s player ever, would know that as well as Sabalenka did.

When she was at the peak of her powers, Serena was asked if she’d like to play Andy Murray. “I’m not going to play Andy,” she laughed. “He’d beat me in ten minutes. It’s a different game.” Quite. The game is different. It’s the money that’s the same.

Unless you are prepared to argue that women are innately less talented than men (and if you are so prepared, I’ll report you to the Equality Commission), it’s clear that the men and the women display a different commitment to their profession.

Add to this the observable fact that many women in the Aussie Open draw are grossly unfit, and you’ll realise that it’s not just hours on court that separate the two sexes. It’s the total amount of work, and the women’s hourly wage is many times that of the men’s.

Anyone who has ever struck a tennis ball in anger knows this, and the tennis powers that be certainly do. Nevertheless, Sabalenka has no qualms about receiving as much for her QF win as Djokovic got for his – and twice as much as Alcaraz got for losing. She doubtless likes the money and is grateful to her feminist predecessors who pushed through this travesty of equality and fairness.

In this area, tennis is a microcosm of life in general. Loudmouth ideologues, whichever subset of the overall woke ideology they single out, aren’t after equality. They do battle not for equality but for the preferential treatment of the group they depict as an oppressed minority.

This is strictly political chicanery that has nothing to do with the intrinsic merits of the issue. As Thomas Sowell showed convincingly decades ago, there was no wage discrimination of either women or blacks even then, at least not in the private sector.

(Prof. Sowell can get away with publishing such research because he is black. Or perhaps he isn’t: as Joe Biden explained, negritude is a political, not racial concept. “If you vote for Trump, you ain’t black,” he once said to a black audience.)

Discrimination is merely the battle cry screamed by radical activists out to fulfil their political objectives, in this case the preferential, which is to say unfair, treatment of their flagship group. That is only an intermediate step along the way to their ultimate goal: wreaking destruction on tradition, common sense, justice and morality.

Trump knows this if he knows anything. And, to his credit, he is doing what he can within his own bailiwick, the federal government, to put an end to this political subversion, and inversion, of justice. Alas, most areas are outside his reach, and tennis is only one of them.

Still, watching woke lefties squirm is one of life’s greatest pleasures – even greater than watching tennis matches played by top men.

Donald Trump must be having cramps in his right wrist. Signing so many executive orders one after another within just a few hours has to be hard for someone his age.

Here’s a man who rolls up his sleeves and gets down to business with gusto, even though he’s only working from home, you know, the one in Pennsylvania Avenue. Moreover, he gets most things right.

If I succumbed to delusions of grandeur and imagined myself in Trump’s shoes, I’d happily sign my name to most of his edicts. Whether or not he’ll manage to get all of them through Congress and the courts remains to be seen, but the intent is clear and it’s mostly laudable.

One thing that isn’t is changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as a way of “reasserting America’s greatness”. This is simply playing to the populist galleries by singing a tune that makes them get up and salute. In fact, rather than reasserting greatness, this sort of thing screams insecurity.

Taking such liberties with geography is just venting churlish pique at Mexico, which does little to stem the flow of huddled masses across the border. In that case, why stop there? Why not rebaptise the Rio Grande as the Big River or, better still, the Wetback Stream?

While at it, perhaps all those Spanish-sounding locations ought to be renamed too. San Francisco, for example, could become St Donald, Los Angeles Ivanka City and San Antonio Barronburg. This is just silly, isn’t it?

Some of Trump’s ideas are contradictory to the point of being self-refuting. Even though he hasn’t yet signed any edicts featuring what he calls his “favourite word in the dictionary”, tariffs, the idea hasn’t gone away.

Yet if he goes through with it, Trump will find it hard to keep his promise of lowering the cost of living. Quite the opposite, things will cost more, as a result of both the higher cost of imports and an increase in inflation. At the same time, his pet idea of kicking illegals out and not letting even legals in is bound to create short-term labour shortages, pushing prices up even higher.

I also have doubts about Trump’s foreign policy, described by his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, as “America First”. As a barely post-pubescent person (she is 27), Miss Levitt may not be aware of the historic associations, but they aren’t necessarily positive.

The term was first used by the America First Committee (AFC), a group of cross-party isolationists that existed from September, 1940, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour just over a year later. Their principal idea was that America had no business taking sides in the on-going war, what with the ocean making her immune to invasion.

If America’s neutrality meant Britain’s defeat and Nazi domination of Europe, America Firsters had no problems with that. A few of those chaps didn’t have a problem with fascism either, while having a big one with Jews.

Trump himself made a reference to the ocean in a similar current context, which probably means he is familiar and sympathetic with AFC mentality, if not its nastier edge. In that case, he should also know that, had the AFC had its way, America wouldn’t have emerged as the dominant world power after the war, and neither would we have had several decades of relative peace.

So far Trump has announced he is pausing foreign aid until a thorough review of it, which is a sound idea in general. In particular, however, I wonder whether supplies to the Ukraine fall under the rubric of foreign aid or else that of stopping evil in its tracks. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.  

With these reservations out of the way, I have to applaud Trump’s other executive orders, each taking a wrecking ball to this or that pillar of New Age wokery: climate, DEI, gender madness, globalism.

I’m not convinced he can defeat all those enemies of sanity, but at least he gets top marks for trying. For example, Trump has stated that the US will only recognise “two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality”. That’s Genesis truth against genital lies, and godspeed to the President.

Trump has also put paid to all DEI programmes within the federal government, calling them “radical and wasteful”. That description is unnecessarily moderate, which is out of character. Such programmes are actively and deliberately subversive, driven by hatred of our civilisation, its history and tradition.

Trump knows this, but there are things even he can’t say in public. I just hope a legal mechanism may be found for extending such measures to the private sector, though I’m not sure presidential power packs that much punch.

In any case, I hope our own lot are taking notes, although I suspect they aren’t. Wokery has seeped into their viscera and they have no minds capable of combatting its toxic effects.

The same hope goes for Trump’s climate policies that one wishes our own government adopted. Trump has again pulled the US out of the Paris Accords, leaving bogus concerns for ‘our planet’ to the EU and, alas, HMG.

Realising that it’s not ‘our planet’ that’s in trouble, but its inhabitants reeling under the blows of woke ideologies, Trump has also put an end to Biden’s pet project, the Green New Deal. If ‘tariffs’ takes pride of place in Trump’s lexicon, ‘net zero’ doesn’t figure in it at all and, for once, I have no quibble with such a limited vocabulary.

No more leasing of wind farms, Trump has ruled, and say good-bye to the “electric vehicle mandate”. Are you listening, Sir Keir? No, you are too busy beggaring Britain for the sake of a stupid ideology, which is to say an ideology.

Immigration is another one of Trump’s bugbears, and he is right to be concerned about what he calls, somewhat excessively, “America’s sovereignty under attack”. If he can stop the swarms of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border, more power to his elbow. I just hope Trump doesn’t go too far, as he is prone to do, and stops legal immigration too, while he is at it.

As I’ve mentioned before, this may create severe labour shortages, especially in agriculture and construction. As a former Texas resident, I can testify to the vital importance of Mexican migration to the economy of the border states. But Trump is right: the perennial problem of illegal immigration must be solved at last. Best of luck to him.

Another good idea of his may run headlong into legal challenges. This concerns birthright citizenship, with any child born on US territory automatically becoming a citizen regardless of the parents’ immigration status. Trump has ordered the denial of citizenship to children born to migrants who are in the US illegally or temporarily.

I like this, although I can foresee a slippery-slope argument against it. Trump’s idea bears a direct relevance to our own situation, what with some native-born British Muslims prevented from re-entering the country after a stint in Middle Eastern terrorism.

Some of Trump’s closest confidants, namely Elon Musk, demanded in a rather peremptory tone that HMG abandon that practice. Perhaps Donald should put a quiet word into Elon’s shell-like, to the effect that some people may not be morally entitled to a citizenship even if born in the country.

The legal problem may arise from constitutional pedants invoking the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution, which says that: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Not being an expert in constitutional law, I don’t know if that Amendment has a loophole wide enough to repeal birthright citizenship. But on general principle, I find Trump’s idea defensible morally and intellectually, if perhaps not legally.

All in all, Trump’s first day in office is interesting, even invigorating. I hate being bored, and usual humdrum politics are boring in the extreme. That’s not a charge that can be levelled against the President, and I hope some Hollywood diva will croon her appreciation.

P.S. In his inaugural speech, Trump listed the splitting of the atom among America’s great achievements. In fact, this was done by Sir Ernest Rutherford at Victoria University in Manchester. I know this may come as a surprise to the President, but America can’t take credit for everything good in the world.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is hailed as a triumph of diplomacy. The US brokered the deal, with both Biden and Trump claiming the credit.

I, on the other hand, wonder which of them should take the blame. For the agreement is another instalment in the saga of America bullying Israel into supine concessions just when the problem could be solved once and for all.

During the year of hostilities, the IDF greatly degraded both Hamas and Hezbollah, but not beyond repair. The job needed one last touch, but the ceasefire let the two terrorist gangs live to fight another day. Yet again Israel was prevented from finishing her enemies off.

Instead, the country had her arm twisted into negotiating with terrorists, something that goes against Israel’s military doctrine, instincts and indeed common sense. This at a time when the IDF was ready to deliver a coup de grâce.

Hamas was on its last legs. Thousands of its militants and dozens of its chieftains had been killed, and much of its infrastructure had been destroyed. Many of its warehouses and tunnels had been blown up.

Just as impressive was Israel’s political success, although looking at the pro-Hamas riots in European cities one might not get that impression. In fact, even most Arab countries voiced a mild support of Israel.

Much of that benevolence was due not to their sudden burst of affection for the Jewish state, but by their correct view of the terrorists as Iran’s stormtroopers. Yet it took much diplomatic and political action to make the link between Iran and Hamas/Hezbollah plain for the world to see.

In short, the terrorists had been routed on every kind of battlefield, and it took American bullying for Israel to offer them a reprieve. Alas, degraded doesn’t mean destroyed. Israel had planted the seeds of victory and hence lasting peace, but she was again prevented from reaping the harvest.

Hamas was allowed to keep its control of Gaza and hence its base of future terrorist operations against Israel. The strategic aim of murdering every Jew “between the river and the sea” hasn’t gone away, and it’s only a matter of time before Hamas will be able to come back in strength. How much time is a matter of conjecture, but it’s when, not if.

Exactly the same thing happened in 1956 during the Suez Canal crisis, in 1968 during the Six-Day War, in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, in 1978 during Israel’s attack on terrorists in Lebanon, and I’m sure I’ve left a few incidents out.

Such treatment of America’s sole reliable ally in the Middle East isn’t party-specific. All US administrations involved, Republican and Democratic alike, have treated Israel as a bull in the ring: allowed to fight, but not allowed to win, not decisively at any rate.

Each time the US supported Israel, but only up to a point. And that support was then used as leverage to stop Israel in her tracks just when decisive victory was in sight.

Moreover, each time the Israelis had to pretend they were ecstatic about the happy ending to hostilities. Yet in this case, as in all the previous ones, there is little to be ecstatic about.

Yes, Israel will get a few dozen hostages back, if there are still so many still left in one piece. Few if any of the hostages are soldiers, most of them are women, children and old people who were going about their peaceful business when Hamas struck on 7 November, 2023.

In exchange, the Israelis will release 1,650 Hamas POWs, which is to say the savage militants who raped and murdered, not always in that order. They’ll return to Gaza and resume their evil activities – meaning that many Israeli lives will continue to be lost to bandit raids and a hail of missiles.

The released militants won’t be the only ones. Thousands more, every one of them with murder in his heart, will continue to be armed, financed and trained. Any doctrinal haters of Israel in the Islamic world, along with enemies of the West who have a vested interest in turmoil, such as Russia and China, will be happy to oblige.

The net effect on Israeli lives will be devastating, compared to leaving the hostages to their fate and finishing Hamas off for good.

This arithmetic is heartless but unavoidable, and all Israelis are prepared to have to make such calculations. There is a permanent war going on, and, while weeping over every killed Israeli, survivors have to regard them as battlefield casualties and make sure the enemy will pay for their death a hundred times over. The Old Testament trumps the New Age.

The Biden administration and those who voted for it have plenty of malcontents who hate the West and hence Israel, while adoring any Third World barbarians they see as victims of colonialism and Zionism. But Trump’s participation in the deal is worrying because it doesn’t bode well for either Israel or the Ukraine.

The new president is a friend of Israel, although his feelings for the Ukraine are less obvious. But he sees the world in largely transactional terms, with striking a deal elevated to an almost religious height. Trump is sure that his own charisma and American power are so irresistible that he could put an end to any conflict, no matter how sanguinary and protracted.

In theory, there is nothing sinister about that: horse trading is the essence of diplomacy, the only way to chart a safe course through a minefield of conflicting interests. But a deal has no self-redeeming value: there exist good ones and bad ones.

A good deal improves the well-being of both sides, a bad one serves one but not the other. Another word for it is surrender – either instant or extended over time.

Some of Trump’s pronouncements give rise to fears that he sees deals to be done both in Israel and the Ukraine in strictly self-serving terms, as steps towards a Nobel Peace Prize and the beatitude of a peacemaker. Or else as a demonstration of American power, and his own.

In both cases, the US has much more leverage on the good side of any negotiations, with both Israel and especially the Ukraine heavily dependent on American supplies. But using that leverage to force through a deal detrimental to America’s allies brings to mind the Russian proverb: beat your friends so your enemies will fear you.

As I write this, Trump is about to be sworn in as America’s 47^th president. We’re in for an interesting time, and cautious optimism must be in order – with possible misgivings held in reserve, ready to come out when necessary.

Contrary to the popular misapprehension, Sir Keir Starmer isn’t just trying to take a leaf out of Marx’s book, presumably Das Kapital.

Fair enough, he too is driven by what Nietzsche called ressentiment, a psychological state produced by suppressed feelings of envy and hatred, otherwise known as socialist longings. In due course, Starmer may indeed remove the prefix crypto- from Marxist and go the whole hog.

But the historical figure exerting a more immediate influence on Sir Keir seems to be not Marx but Ramesses II, the pharaoh of Biblical infamy. The parallel is so obvious it’s hard to believe Starmer doesn’t genuflect every night before the picture of Ramesses on his bedroom wall.

As you recall, Ramesses’s country was blessed with a large diaspora of successful, enterprising people keeping Egypt’s economy in clover, or manna if you’d rather. Yet the pharaoh too was possessed of ressentiment, some 3,000 years before the word was coined.

Thus he mistreated that diaspora with singular disregard for their well-being and, more to the point, for his own country. The result was predictable: those frustrated people upped sticks and left, leaving ten plagues behind them.

Read Starmer for Ramesses, non-domiciled residents of Britain for the ancient Hebrews, and the similarity becomes impossible to ignore. For Starmer has also mistreated his non-dom diaspora, and he too has pushed the button for their exodus.

Non-doms are wealthy foreigners who live in Britain and pay £30,000 a year for the privilege if they’ve stayed here for a certain number of years. That system, which goes back almost to the time of Ramesses, makes their offshore assets and income exempt from British taxation.

There are some 37,800 fee-paying non-doms in the UK, out of the total number of 74,000. Multiply 37,800 by £30,000 and you get, in round numbers, a hell of a lot. Yet Starmer and his merry men (I go against biology by including Rachel Reeves in their number) wanted more than a paltry £30,000 a head. They wanted many times that amount, and thought they could get it by taxing non-doms on their global assets.

Predictably, the merry men were taught a simple arithmetic: £30,000 may not be good enough but it’s better than nothing. And nothing is what the Exchequer is going to get.

What ensued has been an exodus of millionaires, with 10,800 fleeing in 2024 and many more packing up. Thus Britain lost more wealthy people in one year than any other country in the world except China, which is rather more populous.

That’s just the beginning. A survey has revealed that two-thirds of the remaining non-doms are planning to leave for sunnier economic climes. That would constitute a huge hit on tax revenue, not to mention charitable donations.

The net cost to the public purse will be about £1 billion a year. Add to this the lower VAT receipts and council taxes, factor in the job losses (those leaches on the body of the ‘working people’ do create jobs for the said working people) with the subsequent swelling of the welfare rolls, and the picture acquires even a darker tint.

Here we approach a significant difference between ancient Egypt and today’s Britain. The Egyptian elite did all they could to prevent their non-doms from leaving. But the British elite jump on the bandwagon.

You see, our own Ramesses set out to punish with extortionist taxes not only non-dom entrepreneurs but also the home-grown kind. They too are leaving, taking jobs them, at least 23,000 to be lost by the end of Starmer’s first term. The demand for overseas residence permits has grown 57 per cent on 2023 – and 580 per cent on 2019.

The Plagues of Britain don’t end there. In fact, they barely begin. The same ressentiment drives Starmer’s gang, with Milibandit as their frontman, to expose whole industries to their insane obsession with net zero.

The oil industry is the most immediate victim, with tens of thousands of jobs lost already, and many more to be lost in short order. Even assuming, unsafely, that some of the newly unemployed will be able to retrain for a new trade in the long run, the short-term pressure on social services is crippling.

Moreover, car manufacturers are increasingly taught that making cars in Britain is no longer viable. The most immediate prompt comes from the government’s punitive tax hikes, but the cost of shifting to electric cars is also unsustainable. Hence hardly a day goes by without yet another car manufacturer announcing the closure of yet another plant, with thousands of job losses each time.

I struggle to come up with another example of so much economic damage visited on Britain in such a short time for purely ideological reasons. The sums involved are so simple that even people as manifestly stupid as Starmer and Reeves should be able to figure them out on their own.

The salient point is that they aren’t crippling the British economy because they know not what they do, but specifically because they know it very well. Ramesses couldn’t have predicted the plagues Egypt had to suffer as a result of the Exodus. But the economic devastation wrought by socialist ressentiment was entirely predictable.

If there exists one economic constant raised to the level of an unbreakable law, it’s that people flee from socialism, and the bolshier the socialism, the faster they run. Nor does it take an Adam Smith to figure out that punitive taxation coupled with the destruction of whole industries can’t produce an economic boom.

That’s why it’s wrong to say that the economic policies of Starmer, Reeves et al. are failing. In fact, if you define success as achieving the desired result, they are succeeding famously.

Their socialist loins ache for revenge against their traditional bogeymen, starting with ‘capitalists’, which pejorative term covers all wealth creators in the country. If all such objectionable people leave in emulation of the Exodus, then so much the better for this lot – and so much the worse for the country.

The ideal they see in their mind’s eye is reversion to the golden-age economy before the Industrial Revolution, when all energy was produced by renewable sources, such as wind, sun, water and human muscle. Most of the people, their rulers apart, were then paupers, but our present-day pharaohs wouldn’t mind that.

Private wealth makes an individual more independent from the state, which is why it’s anathema for people devoted to increasing state power ad infinitum, which is to say for socialists. They are equally opposed to bono publico and bono privato. It’s their own ideological bono that they pursue, and they do so with the kind of fanaticism that would make even the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs turn green with envy.

The pharaohs were blissfully unfamiliar not only with the concept of ressentiment but also with that of ideology. They did their level worst, but still managed to create a great civilisation.

Today’s answers to Ramesses can’t create anything. They can only destroy, so it’s a good job that’s exactly what they really want to do. When they die, they’ll go to the socialist heaven, while the rest of us will wail, weep and gnash our teeth.

The other day I saw an article in a mainstream newspaper in which some ‘celebrity’ regaled her readers with a frank and clinical discussion of her problematic labia. I wish I could tell you what the nature of the problem was, but I didn’t read far enough to find out.

The celebrity obviously felt, and her editors must have agreed, that the subject of one’s genitalia is fit for public airing. That could be easily dismissed as an exercise in solipsistic bad taste, but I think it’s more sinister than that.

The woman and the paper both proceeded from ideological premises they regard as universal and uniquely correct. The desirability of letting it all hang out, literally if need be, springs from the urge to smash up the old order, replete as it was with repression, body-shaming, religious superstition, alienation, misogyny, suffocating ethics, anally retentive etiquette, retrograde morality and so on, all the way down the list.

This brings me yet again to my recurrent theme: the eerie and growing similarity between the communism of my youth and the liberal democracy of my adulthood. Both are ideological, and both ideologies aim to replace the old, deficient world with a new, progressive one.

Since a world is made up of people, the aim of any ideology is to create not only a new and improved political order but also a new and improved man, as defined in the terms of the received ideology. Step by step, the whole complexity of man is reduced to a simple binary proposition: with us or against us.

Communist ideology was simpler than liberal democracy, but both are simplistic (that is an essential attribute of any ideology). However, in one respect communism was better: as it went along, the fervour of ideological commitment attenuated.

In the beginning, the masses, with notable exceptions, were quite gung-ho. But by the time I became a sentient person, in the 1960s, no one in Russia took communism seriously, although most people continued mouthing meaningless clichés by rote.

With liberal democracy, it’s the other way around. Rather than becoming gradually less ideological over time, it becomes more so, and at an ever-accelerating tempo. And, unlike communism, it attacks on many fronts because its enemies come in all shapes.

Stalin’s pet idea was that, the closer the shining ideal of socialism, the more intensive the class struggle. That didn’t happen in communist countries. On the contrary, communism there steadily became more and more anaemic and less and less belligerent. However, a related idea worked out perfectly in liberal democracies.

As they became more liberal and democratic, their enemies were coming out of the woodwork in greater numbers and types, and the dominant ideology had to grow more aggressive by the day.

Allegiance to the communist ideology boiled down to a simple pro or con. If one accepted the sole truth of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin, one was a friend eligible for some latitude. If one didn’t accept it, one was an implacable enemy slated for destruction. That ideology was embodied by the communist party, whose doctrine changed day to day, but it was up to every citizen to follow the ideological zigs and zags vigilantly.

The task of creating a new, which is to say ideological, man has a vital political dimension because most people stubbornly cling to the old and familiar version of humanity. They can only be made to see the light by political action, and there democracy of universal suffrage comes in handy.

By drawing every citizen into elective politics, democracy predisposes them to expect a political solution to every problem. Ideology then moves in to claim the crumbs of the pie.

The ideology of liberal democracy is as comprehensively politicised as communism, but it’s broken down into multiple strains. It too strives to create a new human type, but its criteria for belonging are more multifarious than a simple statement of allegiance.

An aspiring adherent has to demonstrate that he accepts every aspect of the ideology, and these constantly become more numerous. One has to pledge allegiance to climate change, transgender rights, women’s rights, homomarriage, anti-colonialism, anti-racism and any other pet idea of the moment. Moreover, one must make that pledge vociferously.

Passive acquiescence isn’t good enough, as it wasn’t under communism. Ideologues demand enthusiastic support, not merely non-resistance. And they brook no argument, mainly because they don’t even know what constitutes one.

Even though ‘idea’ and ‘ideology’ are etymological cognates, they are antonyms. An idea, which becomes an argument when expressed, submits itself to a test of true or false. If the argument is persuasive, the idea is accepted as fact; if not, it’s rejected.

Conversely, the only test imposed by an ideology is loyalty to it. That’s why there is no point arguing, say, that changing sex is impossible at any biological level. An ideologue won’t engage you on your turf.

He’ll simply comply with the demands of his ideology by identifying the pernicious roots of your disagreement with it. Thus he won’t try to prove that a transsex operation does change the biological makeup of a person. He’ll simply dismiss you by saying “you believe this because you are…” Whatever follows in that phrase means “a rebel against my ideology and therefore my enemy.”

The same goes for any attempt to present, say, scientific evidence proving the ideology of climate change is based on false and bogus evidence. Your opponent won’t relate to any real argument. His response will be: “You are saying this because…”  

In the incident I cited at the beginning, ideology was working overtime. A new, ideological man must pass the test of renouncing his old prejudices. What in the past was considered common decency affirming the dignity of man is now seen as sexual repression, which is a fatal failing of character and ideological probity.

When Marcuse and other Frankfurters concocted an organic blend of Marx and Freud, they formed perhaps the most vital aspect of the new ideology. Everyone, according to them, was driven by his unconscious class prejudices (Marx) and sexual urges (Freud).

The former are fine if the prejudices are those of the lower classes. If you have any others, you are… [fill in the blanks]. But any sexual self-expression, especially of a kind that used to be frowned upon, is healthy and ideologically sound. Suppressing such urges, on the other hand, means rejecting the liberating effect of the new ideology. If you are guilty of such shameful repression, you are…

No subject is taboo any longer. If you refuse to indulge the public’s taste for intimatemost details, you implicitly reject the liberal-democratic ideology, which makes you an oddity at best, an enemy at worst.

A woman discussing her labia in a family newspaper makes thereby a statement of allegiance, at the same time submitting her readers to a test of ideological purity. If you wince, as I did, and refuse to read any further, then you are… well, you know what you are.

If, however, you lap up every tasteless word – even if you may be cringing somewhere deep down, around your pancreas – you pass the test. You’ll be an ideological man, my son, as Kipling didn’t quite put it.

In this area too, the communist ideology was vectored differently from its liberal democratic sibling. One of the first decrees of the Bolshevik government was the abolition of family. Prominent Bolsheviks, such as Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand and Karl Radek, proclaimed sexual liberation and called on every true communist to express himself with multiple partners.

Radek founded the Shameless League and personally led nude marches through Moscow. Marriage was declared a bourgeois perversion, a way of enslaving women in their men’s bondage. Every woman was now community property, and she had to accept the advances of any Party member who fancied her.

However, as the Soviet system matured, it became puritanical. Even though divorce and abortion remained easily available, marriage was reinstated, and sexual licence discouraged.

Back in the 1970s a Soviet woman involved in a TV debate with her American sisters even declared that “there is no sex in the Soviet Union”, much to my hilarity as I watched from the safety of my Houston house.

But the dynamic of liberal-democratic ideology is exactly reverse. At the beginning, some erstwhile reticence held firm as a throwback to Christian morality. Yet the revolutionary outburst of the ‘60s put paid to that. The poet Philip Larkin even wrote: “Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me).”

That was followed by a rapid escalation all the way to today, when formerly serious newspapers happily talk about labia and various ballistic possibilities ensuring orgasmic bliss. Ideology is laying about it, and I for one wonder what comes next.

When Lenin wrote about eliminating whole social classes, everyone thought it was a figure of speech. Surely not? Alas, most definitely yes. The chap wasn’t carried away by his own evil rhetoric, he really was evil.

Neither did people believe Hitler was going to exterminate all Jews. Fine, he didn’t like them, but then who did? But murdering millions of people? Preposterous. Of course he wouldn’t. But he did.

In that spirit, I suggest you take mainstream Russian propagandists at their word. When they say Britain has no right to exist, and it’s up to Russia to do something about that, they mean it.

Such is the view of Gen. Andrey Gurulyov, a member of the State Duma, Russia’s parliament, where his low opinion of Britain is shared widely enough to be considered mainstream.

The other day the Ukrainian Army launched its biggest rocket attack on Russian territory, and Gen. Gurulyov believes that the wages of that sin should be a complete obliteration of that bothersome neighbour. But all in good time.

Because the Ukrainians used British Storm Shadow missiles in the attack, the good general insists Britain should be wiped off the face of the Earth first. “This attack,” he insisted, “is a direct reason for Britain simply not to be on Earth”, but to be nuked out of existence, a view he believes is universally shared all over the world.

“I think 80 per cent of the world will clap for us. Make it 100 per cent,” he said. With all due respect, I have to disagree with the general’s calculations. I have no data at my disposal to contest the 80 per cent estimate, but 100 per cent means everybody. However, I probably know a couple of hundred people in various countries personally, and I can guarantee that none of them wants Britain to suffer such a gruesome fate.

Still, far be it from me to hold against anybody a slight exaggeration caused by polemical zeal. We’re all capable of saying things in the heat of an argument that we later regret.

In this case, however, Gen. Gurulyov has a bit of previous. Unleashing nuclear holocaust on Britain is his recurrent theme, which either means emotions have little role to play in his statements, or else the general’s emotional state is permanently febrile.

When Russia invaded the Ukraine in 2022, and it became clear that all NATO members supported the victim of the aggression as best they could, Gurulyov suggested they should all be nuked. But already then he put Britain at the top of his pecking order.

Yes, he said, Russia should definitely bomb Warsaw, Paris and Berlin. But let’s take out London first.

Later that year, Gurulyov encouraged Putin to “launch missile strikes on the British Isles,” which “would spell the end of the British Crown.” At that time, my good and worried friend in Holland suggested I should move out of London for the duration of the war. He’d rather I wasn’t incinerated by a nuclear bomb.

In June last year I was able to return the favour when Gurulyov suggested that Russia attack the Netherlands with nuclear weapons to disrupt energy supply to Europe. However, both my friend and I courageously stayed put, displaying the resolve of the British royal family who refused to depart for Canada during the Blitz. So you see, commoners can be brave too.

Gurulyov offers penetrating geopolitical insights in support of his explosive ideas. As he explains, Russia’s aggression against the Ukraine is “a war for survival, for the survival of civilisation, for the survival of our Russia, but not just of Russia – of the countries around us too.”

Let me see if I understand correctly. And correct understanding is essential because a man of such high rank can’t be just talking drivel. He must have a serious argument to put forth, and it behoves any analyst to get to the bottom of it.

So, Russia is coextensive with civilisation. This view has been enunciated so often and by so many Russian officials that it has to be axiomatic. Thus any existential threat to Russia is tantamount to putting civilisation in peril, and it’s precisely that kind of threat that the Ukraine posed and still does.

Hence, Russia’s aggression was a selfless act, a noble attempt to save civilisation, along with 14 countries at Russia’s borders, from Ukrainian depredations. There, I hope I got that right.

Hence the whole world is clearly demarcated between good and evil. Russia represents the former, and everyone who doesn’t see her as the saviour of civilisation, the latter. I know I’m not just speaking for myself when thanking Gen. Gurulyov for clarifying the previously complex view of civilisational geopolitics.

Forces of evil are at work not only in the Ukraine and the 141 countries that voted against Russia in the UN (compared to seven voting in favour) but regrettably within that citadel of civilisation itself. Thankfully, very few such vermin dare speak out blasphemously against Russia’s demiurge and his deeds.

But ‘very few’ doesn’t mean ‘none’, which is why back in 2023 Gen. Gurulyov advocated the idea that Putin should outdo Stalin’s internal terror of the 1930s. All Russians who disagree with his policies should be imprisoned or, better still, exterminated.

The good general is a regular fountain of such constructive ideas, but Britain is never far from the front of his mind. It doesn’t matter how the war goes, nor how persistent Britain remains in her dastardly assault on the guardian of civilisation.

One way or another, “There’s still going to come a point where we’re going to strike. It is inevitable. The question is simply a matter of time and decision-making. And there is no other way.”

Anyone dismissing Gurulyov’s animadversions as simply deranged rants would be making a serious, possibly fatal, mistake. He is the voice of the Russian mainstream, not only in the Kremlin but in the country at large.

Spurred on by the death cult that used to be known as the Moscow version of Russian Orthodoxy, many Russians – and certainly most parliamentarians – share Gurulyov’s views and hail his plans. They know that the demiurge in the Kremlin thinks along the same lines, and they never question his right, nay sacred duty, to strike out with vengeance against anyone or any nation that dares to think differently.

Gurulyov’s tirades are no more extreme than those pouring into Russian ears from every TV channel around the clock. The desirability of turning, say, the US into “radioactive ash”, thereby creating an empty space called the American Strait between Canada and Mexico, was first mooted on Russian television in 2014. Since then it has become the leitmotif of official propaganda, and Putin himself has seconded the motion many times.

Don’t know about you, but I’m tired of this wicked nonsense. Such unvarnished barbarism hasn’t been seen and heard in Europe since the blessed time of Stalin and Hitler.

When I was growing up in Moscow, anti-Western propaganda was standard and uncontested fare. But neither Khrushchev nor Brezhnev maintained their hysterical nuclear threats at anywhere near the current level. Khrushchev did say once that he could wipe out the US with just one huge bomb developed by Soviet scientists, but that was child’s play compared to today’s rhetoric.

All I can do is beseech Western governments to take the Gurulyovs of this world seriously. The West made the mistake of not doing so with Lenin and Hitler, and paid an awful price for it.

And Putin enjoys a greater popular support in Russia than his evil predecessors did in their countries. It appears from where I’m sitting that the proportion of Putinistas among today’s Russians is much greater than the eight per cent of the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany or roughly the same percentage of communists in the Soviet Union.

If evil could express itself with wars and murder camps in those countries, it may yet express itself with nuclear weapons in Russia. This is reality, not just Gurulyov’s or Putin’s bluster.

Unfortunately, these days forewarned doesn’t necessarily mean forearmed. That takes more than an early warning.

We must arm ourselves in such a way that Russian evildoers realise it’s not the West but Russia that will be razed to the ground in any nuclear exchange.

I don’t know how this can be achieved, but I hope that we have enough experts in relevant offices who do. And that, push come to shove, they’ll have the nerve to act.