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Madness comes in many different forms. Yet most of them involve losing touch with reality to some extent.

The distance between reality and the patient’s perception of it determines the severity of the condition. If that’s the case, then our PM is, to use a technical term, bonkers.

Mostly through no fault of his own, he presides over an economy suffering its worst contraction since the early days in the reign of George I. The government is trying to spend and tax its way out of trouble, which ill-advised strategy has already produced the most profligate increase in public spending ever seen in peacetime.

These are the kind of dangerous times that don’t really call for desperate measures. Rather than maniacally throwing good money after bad, we should grit our teeth and tighten our belts for a couple of years. Then, when the economy is back on track, we might be in a position to contemplate ambitious programmes requiring vast investment.

If one is permitted an analogy, when a man has suffered a heart attack he must recuperate slowly. After being bed-ridden for some time, he can start moving around the house, then go out on short walks, gradually increasing their length. Only having recovered much of his strength, may he then ease into more strenuous exercise.

However, Johnson’s plans are tantamount to ordering a coronary victim to get up and run a marathon – which is certain to be a shortcut to the morgue.

Of the two schemes he has announced, one, what he calls the Green Industrial Revolution, would be cloud-cuckoo land under any circumstances. The other, a £16 billion increase in defence spending, mostly to beef up the Royal Navy, is a right idea put forth at a wrong time.

The first one should go by the codename Operation Carrie On, doubtless reflecting as it does the woke passions of Johnson’s masterful mistress. It’s estimated to cost some £12.5 billion, but everyone knows this is only a point of departure – for the Moon.

I’ll spare you the tedium of going over Johnson’s 10-point programme item by item. Enough scientists and engineers have done so already, debunking this nonsense with more authority than I can bring to bear.

What caught my eye is Johnson’s promise to use nuclear energy as a vital supplement to those Quixotic windmills. That, he promises, will create 250,000 new jobs or thereabouts.

Since the parallel plan is to destroy the oil industry, it’s useful to remember that at present it employs 285,000 people in the UK. The nuclear industry, on the other hand, is only served by some 60,000 employees.

The unsavoury pie in the sky being half-baked by Operation Carrie On must have as a key ingredient a massive shift of jobs from oil to nuclear. This, although the government stopped short of committing to the construction of any new nuclear plants, including those that have been mooted for a decade.

I’ve always advocated nuclear energy as being by far the safest of those really able to satisfy most of our needs, and least dependent on natural resources. The world’s reserves of uranium are for all practical purposes unlimited, which is more than one can say for hydrocarbons. And uranium is always there, displaying none of the fickleness of the wind or the sun.

Now, if I know that, European governments and their advisors know it infinitely better. And yet the two great European economies, Germany and France, are shutting down all their nuclear plants.

That’s going to hurt France especially, considering that 85 per cent of her energy comes from nuclear facilities. It’ll also hurt us by ricochet since we get six per cent of our energy from France, not that the French fret too much about this side effect.

So why are they committing this act of economic suicide, or at least self-harm? Simple. Because exactly the same people who use warm weather as a weapon in a sustained attack on the West and its capitalism are programmed to destroy the nuclear industry – specifically because it provides a viable alternative to hydrocarbons.

Any attempt to increase its size on the Continent or in Britain will instantly lead to outbursts of civil unrest expertly whipped up by the CND and other subversive organisations that came to life as Soviet fronts. Strident campaigns ignorantly equating nuclear energy with nuclear weapons will paralyse not only the industry, but also much of the country.

Since most Labour leaders have CND experience on their CVs, they know how to sow mayhem, especially when a Tory government is in power. So Johnson can forget about relying on nuclear energy – the anti-Western ghouls won’t allow it.

As to getting rid of all internal combustion cars in the next 10 years, this promise shows that Johnson’s mental disorder is progressing nicely. He seems to think that covering the country with cadmium, lithium and discarded batteries will improve its ecology, while plugging millions of cars into an already creaking grid will solve our energy problems.

By contrast, his intention to boost the defence is both worthy and long overdue. After all, the issue of the Royal Navy ruling the waves was settled on 21 October, 1805. However, in recent years the French navy has pulled ahead, making Horatio Nelson totter on the top of that column.

That said, embarking on such a programme at this time is crazy, especially considering that the budget of £16 billion will have to be exceeded at least threefold, if the experience of all large-scale government undertakings is anything to go by.

Concerned as I am about Johnson’s well-being, I think he should take some time (like the rest of his life) off the rough-and-tumble of political life and go back to writing his column, this time about the green utopia. From what one hears, The Guardian has a vacancy.

As a former advertising copywriter, I like informative headlines. In that capacity I really had no other option: research showed that 80 per cent of even those who look at an ad never read the body copy.

Hence an ad’s story, even if it’s only a headline, must stop and inform the reader quickly or not at all. Nobody leafs through a magazine looking for an ad to read and, if an effort is required, nobody will as much as look at it.

Newspapers are different. Since people actually want to read them, they have the luxury of long headlines, sometimes those telling the whole story in several bold lines.

The headline of the lead article in today’s issue of The Daily Mail is one such. But before I run it a disclaimer is in order: The Mail is commonly believed to be our most conservative newspaper.

In popular perception it’s so conservative that it sometimes merits other adjectives as well, such as ‘reactionary’, ‘populist’ or even ‘fascist’. Guardian readers may describe it as being to the right of Attila the Hun’s head of security.

With that in mind, here goes: Mother, 35, with 13 children dies of Covid with her wife paying tribute to ‘backbone of our family’ as relatives of UK’s coronavirus victims accuse Boris Johnson of ‘ignoring’ them and demand public inquiry into his response to crisis.

There it is, the whole story right there. The rest of the long article simply fleshes it out with details, making the point that the government’s response to Covid is both negligent and incompetent. This is the current leitmotif of most of our newspapers, right, left or centre, and to this reader at least the story has lost its novelty appeal and much of its poignancy – even though it’s probably true.

Yet I found something in the headline considerably more eye-catching than Boris Johnson’s incompetence.  

Namely, that a long article in a supposedly conservative paper mentions matter-of-factly and without comment that the deceased Sonia Partridge had a wife and that the bereaved spouse, Kerry Ann, is understandably despondent, having been left without “my life for the last 11 years”. 

The article is illustrated by numerous photographs of the happy couple and their brood, adding up to a football side with two substitutes. The surviving Mrs Partridge says that the deceased Mrs Partridge had “an underlying condition”, and one can guess what that was by looking at the photos.

These show both spouses as being morbidly obese, with a combined weight approaching that of a small family car. What little can be seen of their enormous bodies is densely covered with tattoos, and the deceased also sported a nostril stud.

Each spouse brought pre-existing children into the matrimony: one Mrs Partridge had five, the other three. The remaining five were produced “via a sperm donor”. The article doesn’t specify whether the spermatozoa were administered in vitro or in vivo.

Now, I took the trouble to specify the spouses’ appearance not out of snobbery, but because they didn’t look as if they had the means to feed, clothe and house 13 children, with some discretionary income left over for tattoos and facial metal.

Taking a stab in the dark, I’d guess that the happy family was supported, partly or wholly, by the Exchequer. That means by the taxpayers, including, well, me. Now that, I’d suggest, deserved at least a short paragraph in a long article published by our most conservative newspaper.

After all, homomarriage was only legalised in England and Wales seven years ago, during the tenure of that soi-disant Tory, Cameron. Prior to that, the idea that people of the same sex could marry had been regarded as dystopically barmy during the entire history of Britain.

And yet it took but an historical blink of an eye for the notion to be taken for granted even in the conservative press. One wonders how our ‘liberal’ press would cover the story, and how different their take would be from The Mail’s.

Not very, I’d guess. Perhaps The Guardian would blame the government not only for its handling of Covid, but also for its handling of the Partridges.

If only they had received even greater handouts, Mrs Partridge could have afforded a better diet, thereby avoiding the “underlying condition” and untimely death. Such institutional parsimony might be ascribed to institutional homophobia. Other than that, the coverage would be identical.

I’m not gloating about Mrs Partridge’s demise. If John Donne is to be believed, her death diminishes us all, including me.

However, while I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing either Mrs Partridge, I do know our civilisation. And its accelerating demise diminishes me immeasurably more — with due apologies to Mr Donne.

As a former creative director of an ad agency, I know how difficult it is to foster corporate spirit even in a relatively small group. And when the group involves copywriters (often frustrated novelists), art directors (often frustrated painters) and other creatives, the task becomes exponentially harder.

All kinds of team-building stratagems, most based on heavy drinking, are activated to that end, but typically only with moderate success. People involved in writing and art tend to be cantankerous individuals, who are proud of being both individualistic and cantankerous.

So much more impressive is the achievement of our most liberal newspaper in forging homogeneity among its employees. To wit: 338 of them signed a petition demanding that Suzanne Moore, award-winning columnist who had been with the paper for 10 years, leave or be sacked.

The management went along – one assumes willingly, for Miss Moore’s transgression was egregious by the lofty standards of that august publication. For she’s guilty of transphobia, a crime that rivals racism and homophobia for sheer offensiveness to modern sensibilities.

This isn’t to say that Miss Moore is inordinately scared of transsexuals – and if you insist on the literal use of the Greek term, you too should be sacked from whatever job you have. In today’s parlance, politically charged words are desemanticised. They have a political meaning and no other.

Since old common-or-garden totalitarians typically gained and held power by violence, they were most afraid of violence. Today’s totalitarians are what I call glossocrats, meaning they rise not by the sword but by the word. Hence they are most afraid of words, not swords.

In any totalitarian society, neo-, aspiring or actual, a crime of word is worse than a crime of deed. Glossocrats know that once they’ve gained control of the language, their power will become absolute.

In that spirit, racism doesn’t have to mean fear of other races, and nor does a homophobe duck behind parked cars whenever a camp chap comes round the corner.

Anyone who says that immigration of cultural aliens must be curtailed is a racist. Anyone who finds anything wrong with homomarriage or with homosexual couples adopting children is a homophobe. And Miss Moore is a transphobe.

After all, she dared to introduce a touch of the real world to the schizophrenic virtual reality of Guardian liberalism by writing that sex is a biological classification, “not a feeling”. Hundred of throats opened wide and a thunderous chorus of “You what?!?” shook the Guardian building to its foundation.

But of course sex is just a feeling! Who cares what chromosomes you were born with? You are a free, liberal, tolerant individual (at least as freedom, liberalism and tolerance are defined at The Guardian). That means you have a Guardian-given right to choose any from the menu of the available sexes, currently containing 74 options and growing.

Such is the orthodoxy, and if you defy it you are a heretic. Be jolly thankful if you’re only tossed out on your ear, not into a pyre.

Unfortunately, I’m unfamiliar with Miss Moore’s work and hence can’t judge her overall political inclination. However, since she lasted 10 years at that stronghold of tolerance, it’s safe to assume that she herself is generally liberal.

That makes it even worse. For she isn’t just a heretic, but also an apostate, turncoat, traitor. She’s a worm, a parasite gnawing at the insides of The Guardian’s body, and just getting rid of her offensive presence at the paper is too good for that vermin.

That’s why, in parallel with getting the good news that she was no longer welcome at her job, Miss Moore and her children also received hundreds of death threats. I don’t care how hardy one is – getting such threats is unsettling.

I can testify to that from personal experience, having received hundreds of similar message myself when years ago I wrote a piece in The Mail, in which I described homosexuality as an aberration, specifying that I used the word in its strict dictionary definition only.

Yesterday I asked for help with my English. What prompted that plea was the incessant updating of woke terminology that’s impossible to keep pace with. For example, just as I advocated, somewhat facetiously, the use of the politically acceptable term BAME, it was dumped into what Comrade Trotsky poetically called “the garbage bin of history”.

Now further help is required. Will someone explain to me the meaning of the words liberalism, tolerance and freedom inscribed on The Guardian’s metaphorical banners?

Actually don’t bother; I get it. Liberal means illiberal, tolerant means intolerant, free means enslaved. And put together they mean neo-totalitarian glossocracy.

It’s hard for a poor boy from downtown Russia to keep pace with the rapidly developing language of his adopted land.

I can just about muddle through trying to convey the meaning of what I want to say. But words have more than just meaning. They are also tinged with colour, stylistic, emotional – and, these days above all – political.

Even the meaning of words is changing, largely thanks to our progressively comprehensive education. Some words just disappear, to make life easier for those who have had the benefit of said education.

Look at words like uninterested, apprise and masterly, for example. Why do we need them if, respectively, disinterested, appraise and masterful can do the same job? Of course pedantic spoilsports may argue that the job isn’t the same because these words mean something else.

That just goes to show how little they understand the dynamics of linguistic progress – and they don’t even have the excuse of being poor boys from downtown Russia. For, repeat after me, words mean whatever the formerly downtrodden masses want them to mean.

Since majority vote decides matters in a democracy, and the comprehensively educated masses greatly outnumber the aforementioned retromingent pedants, it’s the masses who pass the verdict on the meaning of words. Or, more precisely, the verdict is passed by those who speak on behalf of the masses.

If semantics is decided by due democratic process, the colouring of words is determined by more dictatorial methods. Those who take it upon themselves to speak on behalf of the masses, dictate what is or isn’t acceptable.

That’s where my problem begins. While in no way disputing the right of those chaps to dictate, I can’t help noticing that their views are fluid. What’s de rigueur today may become questionable tomorrow and criminal the day after. This especially applies to words designating racial, ethnic and sexual minorities – starting with the word minority itself.

How does a former outlander keep track? My only consolation is that I’m not the only one who has this problem.

The other day, for example, I wrote about the – justified and commendable! – sacking of the FA chairman Greg Clarke who proved to be a straggler on the march of progress.

Apart from his semantic lapses, he enraged all progressive people like me by saying that homosexuality is a matter of personal choice. How is it possible for a modern man to be so blatantly unmodern?

Mr Clarke ought to know the current, correct thinking on the subject. A man can choose to be a woman, but he can’t choose to be a homosexual. He is what he is. It’s his sex, not sexuality, that’s a matter of choice.

If you find a logical flaw with this explanation, you belong in a re-educational facility that Britain regrettably doesn’t have yet, but, one hopes, soon will. But Mr Clarke’s real problems were indeed semantic.

He described those for whom apparently no proper designation exists as ‘coloured’ people, ignoring the fine distinction between ‘people of colour’ (acceptable) and ‘coloured’ (sackable).

Writing indignantly about that reprobate, I suggested that the only allowable term is BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic). And what do you know? Turns out I’m just as behind the times as Mr Clarke. Thank God I have no job from which I can be sacked.

The new spokesman, or rather spokeswoman or, even better, spokesperson for the FA has declared that BAME is offensive for being demeaning. The word ‘minority’, she (if one is allowed to be gender-specific) explained, implies inferiority.

Hence it’s as racist as ‘coloured’, if not quite as objectionable as ‘of colour’. The permissible term is ‘those of ethnic diversity’.

Aforementioned pedants might argue that, since ‘minority’ refers only to numerical inferiority and no other, it’s factually, if not politically, correct. After all, persons of ethnic diversity are still shamefully outnumbered in Britain, even if they no longer are in London.

Then again, the progressive person in me may argue that the word ‘diversity’ is problematic too, for it implies that whiteness is a default colour. After all, diversification can logically proceed only from an established norm.

This is yet another proof that perfection is unattainable in this world. In the Kingdom of Man we just aren’t blessed with a vocabulary sufficiently extensive to convey all the nuances of identity politics.

Now, I suspect that the new FA spokesperson leans leftwards in her political inclination. Yet on this vital subject she has found unexpected allies on the right, in the person of the former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and his think tank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).

The term BAME is “useless”, argues the CSJ, because it lumps together groups of people with entirely different backgrounds, attainments and problems. That’s no doubt true, but it exacerbates the problems this poor boy from downtown Russia has with today’s English.

After all, exactly the same can be said about any term designating a large group of people. For example, I’ve met many women in my life, most of them also characterised by different backgrounds, attainments and problems. Does this invalidate the word ‘women’? I’m just asking here, not asserting anything.

While debunking BAME, the CSJ has so far failed to recommend an alternative that could satisfy all comers from either end of the political spectrum. A couple of years ago, our present Home Secretary Priti ‘Very Priti’ Patel did offer a way out, which to a progressive person like me sounds more like a copout:

“I don’t like the labelling of people,” she said. “I don’t like the term BAME. I’m British first and foremost, because I was born in Britain.” Adopt this attitude and we’ll have to ditch identity politics, which simply won’t do. Where will we be without it?

There are some Priti thorny problems with Miss Patel’s doctrine too. What about those not correctly identifiable persons who weren’t born in Britain but have settled here? There are millions of them, and there will be more if Boris Johnson becomes as flexible in his EU negotiations as John Major demands.

Please don’t read more into this than there is. This piece is a cry for help, not an attempt to pass judgement. Though originally a poor boy from downtown Russia, I too am British first and foremost. So is Miss Patel. So is Sir Iain. So is the FA spokesperson. And none of us has a bloody clue.

Nostalgia for the past is a time-honoured conservative virtue. By putting a check on unbridled, progress-happy optimism about the present and future, it introduces a note of sobriety to our habitually punch-drunk discourse.

However, hindsight has to bear some relation to known facts, the more the better. Glorifying the past for no good reason, and especially supporting that exercise with ignorant or mendacious statements, turns nostalgia into the sort of thing little boys are told not to do for fear of going blind.

Yesterday’s article by Peter Hitchens serves a useful reminder of this medical fact. Displaying his usual propensity for self-aggrandisement, Hitchens portrays “most journalists of my generation” and especially himself as heroic paladins storming the bastions of the government with selfless abandon.

This stands in sharp contrast to the present situation, when “more and more journalists seem happy to be the mouthpieces of government, or of political parties.”

The contrast would be justified only if it satisfied two conditions: showing a) a political bias on the part of today’s hacks and b) the sterling objectivity of the previous generation.

Trying to prove a) is hardly sporting. There’s no glory in rolling the ball into an empty net from a yard out. Yet the second condition is harder to satisfy, especially from the starting point of ignorance.

Thus Hitchens: “…we all remember the great film All The President’s Men for its depiction of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters who exposed the crimes of Richard Nixon after the Watergate break-in.”

Hence Bob, Carl and other American journalists of their generation had the courage of tossing bricks through the windows of the state, at the risk of winning the Pulitzer Prize and earning millions. Those chaps had no ideological agendas and merely pursued objective truth for its own sake.

If Hitchens actually believes that, rather than indulging in his frequent practice of cutting facts to the stencil of his own prejudices, then he really knows nothing about American journalism of that period.

To support his romantic hindsight, he’d have to show that US journalists, especially those working for such ideological flagships of the liberal establishment as The Washington Post and The New York Times, displayed the same selfless vigilance regardless of who, or which party, was in power.

If, on the other hand, they could be shown to have been Rottweilers only towards conservative politicians and lapdogs toward liberal ones, then they’d be no better than today’s hacks. Hitchens would have to hold on to his rosy spectacles with both hands to make sure they don’t fall off his nose.

Alas, the predominantly liberal US press, including Woodward’s and Bernstein’s Washington Post, didn’t display the same commitment to truthful investigative journalism when the Kennedy brothers ruled the roost.

In fact, the Kennedys routinely committed misdemeanours compared to which Nixon’s were child’s play. Let me emphasise that I’m speaking comparatively here. For Nixon was indeed aware of the Watergate break-in and he did have a hand in covering it up. Thus he deserved everything that came his way courtesy of the Pulitzer laureates-to-be.

That’s the position taken by Victor Lasky in his 1977 book It Didn’t Start With Watergate. However, he also documents countless incidents of the press letting the Kennedys get away with murder (in Teddy’s case, possibly literally).

Wiretapping political opponents, using government agencies such as the IRS to harass them, conspiring with Mafia bosses, running a herd of hookers through the White House, blackmailing and threatening both politicians and journalists, underwriting smear campaigns – I do recommend Lasky’s book, especially since the evidence he presents is so voluminous that this format precludes even enumerating it.

Moreover, Lasky shows how that Cerberus of verity, the liberal press, was aware of most of those transgressions and yet chose not to disclose them. Kennedy was their darling, whereas Nixon was their bogeyman.

That hatred of Nixon specifically, and not just of his perceived conservatism, didn’t start with Watergate either. It goes back to 1948, when Congressman Richard Nixon interrogated the Soviet spy Alger Hiss on behalf of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Nixon nailed Hiss to the wall, kicking off a campaign to drive communists out of the US government, especially the State Department. That campaign is now known as McCarthyism, even though Tailgunner Joe was a senator, while the H in HUAC stood for the House (incidentally, Robert Kennedy was one of the HUAC investigators, but, unlike Nixon, he went on to redeem himself by establishing impeccable liberal credentials).

The same papers that later hounded Nixon with maniacal persistence were in broad sympathy with the communists, whom they saw as left-of-centre liberals rather than stooges to the Soviet secret services they all were at least potentially. Even now, McCarthy’s name is used in the same breath as Hitler’s, and at the time passions ran much hotter.

Hence, as William F. Buckley wrote presciently in his 1962 book The Committee and Its Critics, from 1948 onwards Nixon was a marked man. Every step he took was scrutinised in the press with the kind of diligence that was never applied to liberal politicians and especially the Kennedys.

It wasn’t just voter fraud but also an unashamedly biased campaign in the media that accounted for Nixon’s defeat in the 1960 election. That contributed to Nixon’s understandable insecurity: knowing he was a hunted man, he came across as visibly awkward before TV cameras, whereas Kennedy acted with the insouciant self-confidence of a teachers’ pet.

Later, in 1964, Barry Goldwater suffered the same treatment. Voters were scared into voting for Johnson by a string of caricatures in those supposedly objective papers, showing Goldwater against the background of mushroom clouds.

The thrust of that hysterical campaign was to play cynically on the fear of a nuclear holocaust to follow immediately after Goldwater’s election – and those knights sans peur et sans reproche did their job admirably, as they continue to do its variants nowadays (notably in this year’s election).

I suppose its hard to expect faithfulness to the facts from a Putin poodle, and I’m sorry for indulging in another canine metaphor.

Yes, today’s media are biased. But no, this isn’t a new or even recent phenomenon. The jokey riddle “What’s black and white and red all over?” didn’t start with Watergate either (ANSWER: a newspaper).

It increasingly looks as if Boris Johnson is whipped by the same organ Donald Trump likes to grab.

Johnson’s mistress Carrie Symonds exerts the kind of influence on policy that no WAG has done in a major Western country since Mrs Woodrow Wilson. Yet there’s a salient difference: by the time Edith took over, Wilson had lost his mind. Carrie, on the other hand, is running the show because Johnson has lost his nerve.

I almost said ‘his convictions’, but then realised it would be unfair to the man who has never had any convictions to lose. However, many of those who voted Leave and then gave Johnson a landslide victory do have convictions, and these emphatically don’t include the urge to make Britain “more liberal, greener and more international”.

They want British farms to prosper, not wind farms to multiply. They are concerned about preserving – or, as the case may be, regaining – the rights of Englishmen, not boosting the rights of LGBTQ+ people (although personally I love the open-ended plus). And they are sure that, unlike animals so beloved of Carrie, they do have such rights.

The men most responsible for developing the strategy that brought those people on side were Johnson’s communications director Lee Cain and especially his adviser Dom Cummings. In recognition of Cain’s role Johnson last week offered him a higher post, that of his chief of staff.

Then Carrie got into the act. Whatever her expertise in political mechanics, she’s woke in every fibre of her body, including the part with which she has whipped Johnson. That means she has an ideological bias, and no pragmatic concerns can withstand its onslaught.

She wants Johnson to inherit the mantle of Heir to Blair that another faux-Tory, Dave Cameron, once claimed for himself. Hence the “more liberal, greener, more international” drivel Johnson saw fit to mouth.

And hence also the brutal dismissal of both Cummings and Cain, without whom Johnson would probably have gone back to writing his Telegraph column. Granted, gratitude isn’t a productive dynamic in government. But realpolitik should be.

By using her journalistic connections and an underhanded campaign to destroy Cummings and Cain, Symonds has shown she can be as Machiavellian as they are. What she hasn’t shown is their sensitivity to the country’s mood.

Most people who voted for Johnson have no knee-jerk allegiance to the Conservative Party. Nor are they like me, who’d never vote Labour come what may.

These people can vote Labour and have done so in many elections. The masterly campaign laid out by Cummings gave them strong reasons to switch, and so they did. Yet they can switch back just as easily if they feel betrayed. And betrayal is under way.

They thought they were voting in a strong government they could rely on in any crisis. Instead they got a vacillating government that lost control of Covid. They thought they were voting in a government able to handle public finances with traditional Tory prudence. Instead they got tax-and-spend statists.

And they can sense that a Brexit betrayal is in the wind too. It looks likely that the acting PM Symonds will guide the figurehead PM Johnson to relaxing his stance on the EU trade deal. In fact, it could become so relaxed that Britain would agree to obey all EU laws while losing even the dubious privileges of full membership.

This isn’t what the electorate voted for in 2016 and 2019. And electorates can be very vindictive indeed, especially if a viable alternative presents itself.

Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour party are waiting in the wings, and they are literate enough to read the situation fluently. Sir Keir is Corbyn’s clever twin: just as left-wing but smart enough to conceal it behind liberal cant, repeating word for word the Johnson-Symonds mantra of “more liberal, greener, more international”.

In fact, if it were Starmer at the helm now, I’m sure he’d be saying and doing exactly the same things as the Johnson-Symonds coalition. Printing money on a scale unprecedented in peacetime? Of course. Playing footsies with the EU? Naturally. Taxing wealth producers? Definitely. More wind farms and less hydrocarbons even if it means national penury? Certainly. Identity politics based on sex, race and class? Can’t be without it.

Whenever the next general election comes, and it may be sooner than people think, the voters will have to choose between two identical programmes, one fronted by a man who has already betrayed them once, the other by one who hasn’t yet had the opportunity to do so. An easy choice, wouldn’t you say?

Then we’ll have at least a decade of a Labour government even more revoltingly subversive than Blair’s was. Who knows, by then Carrie might even qualify for a cabinet position.

There’s a glimmer of hope though. Johnson has rich form in tiring of his mistresses, including those who have borne his children. Maybe, just maybe, he can get unhenpecked and unwhipped by dumping Carrie’s charms and her policies at the same time.

Otherwise we are courting disaster even greater than the one we are facing anyway. Is this what the French mean when they say cherchez la femme?

The exact proportion of white Christian women (known as ‘white bitches’ in some quarters) in London’s population is hard to estimate. Suffice it to say that they are in a minority.

However, London is so vast that even a minority may number in millions, especially considering that many people who don’t live in the city still work here. Hence, for all the giant strides made in promoting diversity, the offensive presence of white bitches is hard to avoid in most workplaces.

And an institution like Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), which employs over 4,000 people, is bound to have its fair share. ‘Fair’, however, isn’t the right word. For many GOSH employees regard this situation as very unfair indeed.

That was communicated to data manager Catherine Maughan in no uncertain terms. Over the three years she worked at GOSH, Miss Maughan had ample opportunity to peruse the riot act read to her chapter and verse.

On many occasions she was called a “silly white bitch” and a “stupid northerner” (she has the misfortune of coming from Yorkshire). She was kicked in the lift and was threatened to keep her mouth shut or else.

When she still had the temerity to complain, her manager, Adeboye Ifederu, told her she “would be sorry”, and the message sounded credible. In parallel, she received a crash course in multiculturalism when her colleagues explained to her that she had to “accept that in black African culture, men are dominating towards women”.

Amazingly, Miss Maughan was less than grateful for this valuable lesson in comparative religion. Realising which way the wind was blowing, she began to compile a diary, carefully documenting each instance of abuse she suffered.

The worst offences were committed by her colleagues Ayotunde Ojo, Margaret King, and Rebecca Eaton-Jones – in addition to the aforementioned manager, Adeboye Ifederu. To wit:

“On July 31 2018 Ayotunde Ojo told me that I ‘can’t drink alcohol after work on Friday, it’s against my religion and it would be offending Muslims’.”

“On August 28 2018 Rebecca Eaton-Jones called me a ‘f*****g silly bitch’.”

“On September 4 2018 Margaret King called me a ‘silly white bitch’.”

“On October 12 2018 Ayatunde Ojo called me ‘a white Yorkshire girl’.”

“With an aggressive tone, Adeboye called me a ‘silly white girl’ and said he was ‘surprised that I had been a manager before being stupid and inexperienced’.”

“Adeboye told me I ‘must ask for permission when leaving my desk or using the toilet’.”

“Adeboye slammed his fist on my desk in anger which, added with his threatening tone of voice when he said I ‘would be sorry for complaining about him,’ made me anxious for my safety.”

And so on, ad nauseum.

As a result, Miss Maughan became depressed, and her hair began to fall out, leaving her “with visible bald patches and very thinned hair.” She was prescribed antidepressants, but the drugs didn’t address the aetiology of her condition.

Finally, having raised the issue on numerous occasions with her colleagues, Miss Maughan made a formal complaint. Her abusers’ response was predictable: 

“On December 17 2018 Adeboye Ifederu discussed my grievance complaints with another colleague Daley Aofolaju at the tea bar in a manner which could be heard.

“Adeboye called me a ‘stupid white girl’ and asked ‘why I had not run away yet like others’.” So there had been others, and why not?

Eventually Miss Maughan had to leave her job, sent on her way with the kind of references that made it impossible for her to get another job. Her only recourse was legal, and she sued GOSH for sex, race and religious discrimination.

The case is being heard at Central London Employment Tribunal, and I don’t know whether or not it will find for the plaintiff. One thing is already clear, however: though there’s still room for improvement in GOSH’s employee relations, its policy on diversity is irreproachable – and that’s much more important.

As to Miss Maughan, she must realise that, while her sex could in theory be a target for discrimination, her race and religion can’t, by definition. Moreover, her race and religion may conceivably invalidate her claim of discrimination even on the grounds of sex.

She and other white bitches must pay the price for the irredeemable sins of the British Empire. If that means getting depressed, bald and unemployable, then so be it. The juggernaut of progress can’t be stopped by a few bodies crushed by its wheels.

The Church of England has succumbed to a two-prong attack, one prong doctrinal, the other sartorial.

The House of Bishops has issued a document densely enveloped in a fog of obfuscation. However, if one manages to disperse it, the message emerges in all its clarity: as early as in 2022 the Church will start officiating homosexual marriages.

The two senior Anglican clergymen, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, co-authored a foreword, instructing the church to be “deeply ashamed and repentant” over the “hurt and unnecessary suffering” it had caused to gay and transgender people.

Contextually, the refusal to debauch a key Christian sacrament constitutes one factor of said hurt and unnecessary suffering. The only way to propitiate for this sin is to have a vicar, ideally a transgender lesbian herself, to pronounce happy couples man and man, or wife and wife, or any other permutation the English language affords.

In this abomination the church follows the lead of the state, which legalised homomarriage during Cameron’s (Conservative!) tenure. However, this Anglican apostate can’t help pointing out the difference between the two bodies.

A state legalising homomarriage deals a blow to the very institution of marriage, thereby stamping on millennia of tradition and tearing yet another hole in the social fabric. However, that isn’t the first such outrage, and it certainly won’t be the last.

The secular state still manages to muddle through for the time being, and in any case it has been secular for so long that no one is particularly surprised when yet another legacy of our civilisation falls by the wayside. That’s what modernity is all about, isn’t it?

The upshot of it is that the state can absorb, just, a large number of charges going off without necessarily collapsing onto itself. However, a Christian church that marries two homosexuals at the altar is no longer a Christian church. Full stop.

When at the altar, the bride and the groom take vows that include the words “according to God’s holy ordinance”. Or at least they do so in the few remaining Anglican churches that still favour the Book of Common Prayer over Mao’s Red Book, or whatever texts today’s clergy hold as sacred.

And God’s holy ordinance is unequivocal on the subject of homosexuality, which is castigated in both Testaments as a deadly sin. A priest represents Christ at the altar and if in this capacity he blesses a deadly sin, he forfeits the right to act as God’s intermediary. And of course the church that instructs him to debauch its sacraments is effectively deconsecrated.

Against this background, the sartorial revolt being launched by female vicars and bishops doesn’t have more than amusement value. Those dubiously ordained Lysistratas are unhappy about the drab clerical garb concealing their more jutting attractions.

They don’t want sombre black robes hiding their bodies from admiring eyes (although, to be unchivalrous for a second, most female vicars I’ve seen don’t offer much to admire). They want sequins, lace and satin. They want skirts cut at least six inches above the knee and ideally slit. They want décolletage. And, as God is their witness, they are going to get them.

So far they have drawn the line on celebrating mass clad in a dog collar and nothing else, but such outdated modesty may be ousted before long. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the House of Bishops issued an edict on female clerical nudity, saying “if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”

And why not? Compared to subverting Christian sacraments, what’s a little sartorial indiscretion among friends? A bit of innocent fun, that’s all. And if the church can’t be fun, what good is it?

As a frequent football watcher, I like to have fun with the solecisms peppering the speech of both players and commentators.

Just the other day, a random 10 minutes of commentary regaled me with a few choice examples. One player was accused of a “lacksidaisical attitude”, another of being “adverse” to defending, yet another was to be substituted “momentarily”.

It’s “lackadaisical” and “averse”, chaps, I thought maliciously. And “momentarily” means for a moment, not in a moment. Why, I went so far as accusing our football folk of being ignorant of, or at least insensitive to, the nuances of English.

Turns out I was wrong. Our football community, ably represented by the Football Association (known colloquially as ‘sweet FA’) has linguistic sensitivity in spades, if one may use this word without incurring censure or even prosecution.

In fact, it’s so sensitive to linguistic nuance that it has forced the resignation of its chairman, Greg Clarke, for using language carelessly, crassly and borderline criminally. If you have the stomach for it, here’s a short list of his transgressions.

First, he bewailed the abuse “high-profile coloured footballers… take on social media…”. The sentiment is unimpeachable, the choice of words isn’t. Mr Clarke ought to have known that the word ‘coloured’ is currently out of fashion.

It may come back in the future, but it hasn’t yet. The proper term is BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic), and Clarke should have been using it, while avoiding the idiotic levity of puns like ‘up your BAME’.

Some stick-in-the-mud tried to defend the culprit by citing the Duchess of Sussex, aka Meghan Markle, who once referred to herself as “a woman of colour”. However, it was correctly pointed to that troglodyte that ‘of colour’ is drastically different from ‘coloured’.

I must admit the fine distinction escapes me. Perhaps I should take a linguistic sensitivity course, if such a thing exists. I’m sure it must; can’t be without one.

And in any case, BAME persons may call themselves whatever they like. Why, black comedians even routinely refer to themselves by the word than which none more appalling exists in English or in any of the world’s other 6,500 languages. But that doesn’t give anyone, including Clarke, the licence to follow suit.

I wouldn’t blame you for screaming that you can’t take any more of this. But on the off-chance that you can, Mr Clarke also made an observation that’s so much more offensive for doubtless being correct:

“If you go to the IT department at the FA, there’s a lot more South Asians than there are Afro-Caribbeans. They have different career interests.” Excuse me?!?

I realise that Mr Clarke actually did the hiring at the FA. Hence one might think he’s in an ideal position to judge the relative numbers in question. However, one would be inexcusably wrong.

Physical facts mustn’t be allowed to compromise a higher metaphysical truth. And the higher metaphysical truth says that anyone who as much as hints at any behavioural or cognitive differences among races is a [TAKE YOUR PICK: racist, bigot, fascist, extremist, chauvinist, Donald Trump].

Clarke is clearly one or all of those things (except Donald Trump, that one is sui generis). A sacking alone is insufficient here – the Special Branch should hear about this. Especially considering that this fossil isn’t just racist but also sexist. This is what he said:

“I talked to a coach… and said, ‘what’s the issue with goalkeepers in the women’s game?’ She said, ‘young girls, when they take up the game (aged) six, seven, eight, just don’t like having the ball kicked at them hard’, right?”

Wrong, Mr Clark. Again a higher metaphysical truth should trump (if you’ll pardon the expression) any physical, or in this case medical, fact. A stickler for empirical knowledge may say that a hard shot striking a man’s chest may only cause mild discomfort, while the same shot striking a woman may cause breast cancer.

That ignores the higher truth that, just as there is no difference – as in none, zilch, nil, zippo – among the races, so there’s none among the sexes, all 74 of them. If some women have to die defending this unassailable proposition, then so be it.

Now, are you ready for this? Clarke isn’t just racist and sexist. He’s also a homophobe. Discussing the possibility of gay footballers openly admitting their sexuality, Clarke said, inter alia: “I’d like to believe and I do believe they would have the support of their mates in the changing room.”  

At first glance, you might think these words are inoffensive. But the current legal definition of an offence is anything taken as such by anyone else. Hence if some people think that Clarke is a homophobe on the strength of this statement, then that’s what he is. Off with his head.

Actually, that’s only a figure of speech, for the time being. All Clarke got was a sacking. He should count himself lucky, though I’m not sure about the rest of us.

Lacking specialised training, I can’t define treason with lawyerly precision. But on general principle, a concerted effort to destroy the constitution of the realm should come close to any reasonable understanding of the term.

If so, then the Maastricht Treaty signed by John Major in 1992 was a treasonous document. Then again, not being the sharpest chisel in the toolbox, Major probably misunderstood the sovereignty of parliament, on which our constitution is based.

He might not have realised that the institution in question isn’t just any old parliament, but specifically the British one. That means the parliament sitting in Westminster, not in Strasbourg – but then geography, or for that matter any academic discipline, isn’t Major’s forte. (In his youth he even failed maths in a bus conductor’s exam.)

Even before Maastricht, in 1990, Major tried to peg the pound to the euro by joining the European Exchange Mechanism. That little caper cost the Exchequer some six billion before the pound was forced out, with Major kicking and screaming.

Having effectively turned Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II into Liz Windsor, citizen of the EU, Maastricht Johnny then applied his giant intellect and political acumen to home affairs. In that capacity he successfully led his party to the worst defeat in recent memory, a 1997 debacle that wasn’t fully reversed until last year.

In 2001 Major retired from politics and has since practised full-time self-vindication, which in his case means frenetic attempts to prevent Britain from regaining her sovereignty. Such worthy efforts were intensified in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, and especially after it returned a result Maastricht Johnny hated.

Yesterday he rode again, showing that his mind hadn’t noticeably sharpened in the intervening years. First Major made an observation startling in its ground-breaking perceptiveness: “We are no longer a great power. We will never be so again… 

“We are a top second-rank power but, over the next half century – however well we perform – our small size and population makes it likely we will be passed by the growth of other, far larger, countries.”

As Johnny must have told Edwina at one point, it’s not the size that counts. Quite a few successful countries – in fact all the top 10 in the quality of life – have smaller populations than ours.

As Maastricht Johnny espied with his eagle eye, Britain is unlikely to retrieve her empire, much to the chagrin of many countries that used to belong to it. So what exactly follows from his astute observation?

Funny you should ask. For, displaying the mental acuity of his bus conductor’s exam, Major came up with a complete non sequitur: because Britain is no longer an empire on which the sun never sets, she should remain in the EU de facto, even if that awful referendum made it impossible for her to do so de jure.

That logic can’t be reduced to the absurd because it’s already as ridiculous as it can get. In effect, Major is saying that a country of 65 million souls is too tiny to govern herself without help from some supranational entity constricted by its own megalomania and bureaucratic zeal.

Hence, if we regrettably can’t keep the nebulous privileges of full EU membership, at least we must retain the duties. And the way to do so is giving the EU everything it wants to get out of the on-going negotiations.   

“Because of our bombast, our blustering, our threats and our inflexibility,” fumed Maastricht Johnny, we’ll end up with “a flimsy, barebones deal or no deal at all.” That would be a “wretched betrayal of what our electors were led to believe”.

Our electors were led to believe that, as a result of Brexit, Britain would again be governed by her own parliament according to her own ancient laws, and not those imposed by an ideological contrivance with its roots in the socialist dream of a world government.

This is what Johnson’s government is trying to deliver, and it’s something that can only be delivered by a show of strength and resolve – what Major describes as inflexibility.

The situation is difficult, but it has only arisen because of what he did in 1992. Surely Maastricht Johnny must realise that? No, perhaps not.

As he’s probably unaware of the net effect of Britain’s EU membership: untold billions going to that abomination, untold swarms of immigrants coming the other way, our laws made impotent and irrelevant, our government reduced to a gau similar to those circa 1940.

I wouldn’t put it past Maastricht Johnny to collude with Biden in trying to stop, or at least denature, Brexit. After all, four years ago the British people let it be known in no uncertain terms what they thought of his life’s work. I’m sure Major takes that as a personal insult, and that’s not something his brittle ego can stomach.