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I owe this feeble pun (along with some even feebler ones below) to the viewers’ comments on Khatia Buniatishvili’s YouTube performance of the Schumann Concerto.

There are dozens of comments along those lines, and only one or two mention her playing at all.

This is unfortunate because, though Khatia has always had an impressive pair of breasts, since puberty at any rate, she also used to have a pianistic talent. Not of the top-drawer variety perhaps, but a real one nonetheless.

At the beginning of her career she could play well, promising much more to come. Much more did come, but it had nothing to do with music.

At some point either Khatia herself or, more likely, her handlers realised that talent alone does not careers make. Not these days. Moreover, talent is strictly optional, some will even say superfluous.

What matters is presentation exuding star quality. And star quality for a pianist who happens to be a good-looking, richly endowed girl doesn’t have to differ from what’s expected from Playboy centrefolds or soft porn actresses.

When that realisation sank in, Khatia began to expose more and more of her breasts, and what she exposed was more than most women had in their entirety. Alas, as her décolleté dropped, so did the quality of her playing.

The earlier promise remained unfulfilled – it was only a promise of artistic excellence not of a glittering career. Her breasts, however, could be parlayed into stardom. And so they were.

These days Khatia’s playing is facile to the point of being mediocre. But her impressively cantilevered dresses are true masterpieces of structural engineering.

The cameramen shooting videos of her performances often aim their lenses face on, through the piano. Since the top edge of the piano overlaps with the top edge of Khatia’s dress, she looks topless.

This is a comment on today’s music scene, not just on one particular practitioner. At least Khatia used to have talent, which is more than can be said for another musical nudist, Yuja Wang.

Less richly endowed upstairs, she bares the lower part of her body as well – while playing to the standard of a conservatory prep-school pupil who never ends up admitted to the advanced course.

This is also a comment on our time that makes exponents of the most vital Western art prostitute themselves like pole dancers. None of these girls would have been fit to turn the pages for the great women pianists of the past.

Myra Hess, Marguerite Long, Clara Haskil, Marcelle Meyer, Maria Yudina, Gina Bachauer, Annie Fischer – every one of these artists had more talent in her little finger than today’s lot have in their whole semi-naked bodies.

I don’t know how their listeners commented on their performances, but I’m willing to bet the focus was on the interpretation, individuality, mastery, tonal quality, structure. I do know how listeners, or in this case viewers, comment on Khatia’s Schumann Concerto.

Here are their comments, and I hope, as you smile against yourself, you’ll also shed a tear for the great art of musical performance, debauched, debased and prostituted:

“Never seen a piano concerto played in DD minor.”

“Wow outstanding. Truly a work of art. Too bad my speakers don’t work.”

“I’m stroking my D major key watching this.”

“Even more astounding because she is unable to see her hands!”

“Some of the most udderly clever piano playing ever, absolutely titillating!”

“Legend has it, there’s a piano in this clip.”  

“I have two big reasons for watching this video.”

“Is this Schumann Piano Concerto in D-cup Minor?”

“DD Major if I’m not mistaken, with an incredible climax in the final movement. Amazing recital, she has an incredible mammary.”

“Being musically talented myself I’ll have to get the old skin flute out and play along.”

“She’s got mountains of talent… would love to see her peaks and valleys.”

“I watch this till the end then realised I have sound turned off. No, I’m not deaf.”

“The way she bounces between notes is simply beautiful.”

“…didn’t recognize the music…was that Beatoffen? Gotta say – even the deaf would enjoy her performance… well rounded delivery.”

“As the Germans would say, that performance was WONDERBRA!!!”

“I clicked on the text that said, “show more”… but her top, sadly, didn’t get any lower…”

“At one point the conductor didn’t know which stick to sway.”

“This performance was not flat at all. Her phrasing was round and had a real bounce to it. She showed how classical music can stimulate the imagination. The end was truly climactic (at least for me)!”

“This is amazing. The music isn’t bad too.”

“I wouldn’t touch that piano. It looks booby-trapped.”

“Wait, there was a piano?!”

“This is proof men can concentrate on two things at once.”

“That moment when I knew where I want to end my solo.”

“Schumann is stroking his D Major Scales in his grave.”

“I’m udderly impressed.”

“Simply the breast!”

“To be quite honest, I was kind of scared that her dress might fall off.”  

“What a performance, simply breast-taking.”

“What a use of the Double D Areolian mode. Definitely a jugg-ernaut. An absolute orgasmic performance … at least by me.”

You may or may not be weeping; I know I am. But Khatia is laughing – all the way to the bank.

On 21 June, 2019, a UK court ordered a woman to have an abortion against her will, which put an interesting grimace on my face. It was a mixture of revulsion and smugness.

The reasons for the revulsion will emerge within a few paragraphs, but the smugness was caused by shameful I-told-you-so hubris.

For in my book How the West Was Lost and elsewhere I’ve argued that all modern states, regardless of their self-description, are either totalitarian already or else inexorably moving in that direction.

Regardless of any specific differences in the numerators, they all share the same common denominator: a steady expansion of state power, affecting more and more areas of life that in the past were regarded as private.

So-called democratic countries aren’t exempt from this observation, even though they differ from the states widely known as totalitarian in that they tend to desist from expanding and enforcing their power by unrestricted brutality and inhuman cruelty.

However, this is a variance of methods, not principles – different roads leading to the same destination. The destination was signposted by that expert in the subject, Benito Mussolini: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

The states that have already arrived at that destination, such as the USSR, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or communist China, take this dictum to its logical end by reserving for themselves the prerogative of deciding who should live and who shouldn’t.

This decision tends to be blood-chillingly rational: raison d’état. Its declared reasons may vary from one totalitarian country to another, but they all spring from the same source.

They could be based on class, such as in Bolshevik Russia, where whole classes were exterminated because they were seen as hindrances on the road to the communist millennium. Or else the motivation could come from considerations of racial purity, as in Nazi Germany, where Jews and Gypsies had to be prevented from sullying the otherwise pristine Aryan blood.

But the Nazis were nothing if not thorough. They protected their genetic pool from not only those impure racially, but also those unsound mentally.

Thus retarded people were castrated if they were lucky, or killed if they were not. Those pregnant women who were either retarded themselves or had conceived by retarded men had their pregnancies forcibly aborted.

This last practice is also widespread in communist China, though there it’s motivated by demographic reasons, those of overpopulation. Having introduced a one-child policy, Chinese authorities enforce it with merciless consistency. For example, in 2012 a woman was forced to abort a 7-month-old foetus, but then numbers should never be allowed to interfere with the principle.

To its credit, the US Congress seems to be as revolted by such practices as I am. In 1997 it introduced a bill, tautologically condemning “those officials of the Chinese Communist Party, the government of the People’s Republic of China who are involved in the enforcement of forced abortions” and barring them from entry into the US.

It’s comforting to know that, given the choice of the two models, Chinese and American, a British court has chosen the latter by ordering that a woman with learning difficulties abort her 22-weeks-old foetus.

The doctors argued, and the judge concurred, that an abortion was in the woman’s “best interests”. I don’t know if they also argued it was in the unborn child’s best interests, but I wouldn’t put it past them.

The woman in question is a Catholic and, though her mental age is only about six, that’s old enough to know that her religion treats abortion as infanticide. But that’s a separate matter from the one that concerns me here.

That matter is the obvious and demonstrable convergence of liberalism, as the term is understood nowadays, and fascism – which is a useful shorthand for describing the mentality of countries like communist China.

All this talk about the woman’s best interests is codswallop: Justice Natalie Lieven made her ruling for the same reason a dog licks its private parts: because she could.

And she could do so because our liberal zeitgeist is thundering into her ear that the state’s interests take precedence over an individual’s interests and indeed life. It was a demonstration of naked, fascistic power – not even of any common sense.

I don’t know who is the father of the child to be aborted. Is he also mentally deficient? If he isn’t, the baby could still be normal. And even if he is, genetics works in convoluted ways.

Children don’t necessarily get their genes exclusively or even mainly from either parent. Some genes are recessive and only reveal themselves after a number of generations.

However, not being an expert in genetics, I shan’t argue the case on such considerations. Mercifully there’s no need: the woman’s mother has offered to look after her grandchild, mentally competent or not.  

But Justice Lieven was on a roll. Caring for both her daughter and grandchild, she explained, would be too difficult for the grandmother. So it’s not only the mother’s best interests she protects, but also the grandmother’s.

And also, one suspects, the state’s – what if the grandmother can’t act on her promise or, God forbid, dies? The state would then be burdened with the care of another human being, and the state’s interests reign supreme.

I wonder if Justice Lieven is aware of the monstrosity of her ruling, which reduced a human life to merely its utilitarian value. Does she realise that she has shortened no end the distance separating Britain from such evil regimes as Nazi Germany and communist China?

She may or may not, but that’s not even the point. The point is the one I’ve made often: modern ‘liberalism’, with its ideological destruction of our civilisation’s spiritual and philosophical underpinnings, is innately totalitarian.

It differs from more accomplished totalitarianism only in its methods. And, by the looks of it, sometimes not even them.

Pop produces many revolting characters. If I were a less timid character, I’d say it produces only such characters.

Yet Lady Gaga stands out even against that background, which has served her well. Since success in that genre is directly proportionate to repulsiveness, that creature has sold zillions of records and amassed a fortune measured in hundreds of millions.

Some of it is donated to charitable causes, mainly of the LGBT variety. Such causes are close to Lady Gaga’s heart, and not entirely for disinterested reasons.

Well, it’s her money and she can spend it as she sees fit. I happen to be uneasy about mixing charity with political activism in general and propaganda of sexual perversion in particular, but obviously Lady Gaga sees no such problems.

Neither, by the looks of it, does our future king Prince William, and that does look like a problem – specifically because he’s our future king. In that capacity, HRH has a constitutional duty to maintain the honour and dignity of the monarchy, which is his main role in life.

It’s not immediately clear how well that role is served by associating with creatures like Lady Gaga, especially taking their advice on any matters. After all, monarchy is a conservative institution by definition, an axis linking generations past, present and future.

Hence conservatism is an essential job requirement for any member of the royal family, and especially one in the direct line of ascent. Whether or not this includes political conservatism doesn’t really matter because British royals have few opportunities to make their political views known.

But cultural and social conservatism is to the royals what a good voice is to opera singers: a sine qua non. This is an institutional requirement that ought to be unaffected by any innermost personal preferences.

Now my contention is that Lady Gaga’s pseudonym is actually an aptonym, for she surely must induce a gagging effect in anyone blessed with good taste – and certainly in any conservative. Yet HRH not only associates with that creature, but actually takes her advice on worthy causes.

Under her guidance, the prince is going to become the patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust (Akt), devoted to the needs of homeless LGBT children.

What I like about this charity is its portmanteau quality. It blends together several worthy causes – the homeless as such, homeless children specifically and LGBT rights all come together in one entity. But why stop there?

How about homeless black Muslim LGBT children blown up with landmines by fracking whalers in the Amazon rainforest?  It’s always best to concentrate one’s resources rather than splitting them up among various causes.

It would be heartless to sneer at the plight of any homeless children, whatever their sexuality. Children aren’t stray dogs; they mustn’t be allowed to roam the streets in neglect.

Any real charity devoted to finding loving homes for those poor souls goes back to the Christian roots of our civilisation; few causes are worthier than that. (‘Real’ is the operative word: most vast charities spend around 90 per cent of their income on themselves, not their raison d’être.)

But the moment this overall cause is particularised into a sexual subset, it acquires a political aspect, and an objectionable one at that. Lady Gaga clearly doesn’t mind that because she has a warm spot for the B part of LGBT. But how come Prince William doesn’t either?

One would hope HRH could enlist less disreputable advisors than Lady Gaga. Then again, perhaps he can’t.

For even before this new friend began to teach him the facts of life, someone had steered HRH to appear on the cover of the homosexual magazine Attitude and state his commitment to easing mental problems arising from “homophobic, biphobic and transphobic” bullying.

Since people of any description shouldn’t be bullied, why single out this narrow aspect of that objectionable practice? Why not just decry bullying in general?

The reasons for such particularism are all political, or rather politically correct. Our royals aren’t allowed to say what they think of Brexit, but they’re welcome to pontificate on other issues of great political and social import. However, politicising sexuality doubtless makes the problem worse.

A massive propaganda effort is under way to brainwash people into denying any moral difference between normal and perverse sexuality. This incites homosexual militancy, throwing down a gauntlet to millennia’s worth of moral and social tradition.

Most people bend under the weight of zeitgeist, but some stubborn souls don’t. Those among them who aren’t overburdened with conventions of civilised behaviour resist in the only way they know how: bullying.

True, homosexuals had been bullied long before they began to use their proclivity as a form of political expression – people are often uncomfortable with those who are different, and they may display their discomfort in reprehensible terms.

Yet the remedy for that would be to teach the nature of humanity, the meaning of charity, the essence of our civilisation, and plain good manners – not to impose a newly contrived morality of universal equality. The deeper the inroads thus made on our tradition, the more brutalised our masses become, the more likely to bully anyone they don’t like.

Someone ought to have explained to HRH such basics. Our monarchy is hanging by a thread as it is, without turning into an extension of pop sensibilities and taking sides with dubious issues.

Instead HRH chooses to hobnob with the likes of Lady Gaga. And worse still, rely on them for advice.

First the facts. A group of 40 Greenpeace fanatics stormed a City banquet just as Chancellor Hammond was about to speak.

As one wild-eyed woman rushed towards the Chancellor, Foreign Office minister Mark Field grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and marched her out of the room.

The ensuing outrage couldn’t have been any more hysterical had Mr Field smashed the fanatic’s head with a champagne bottle. Both Labour and LibDem spokesmen are demanding that Mr Field be summarily sacked.

The word ‘assault’ has been bandied about, accompanied by feigned amazement that the police hadn’t been involved. Assault is of course a crime with, depending on its severity, a custodial sentence a possible outcome.

Greenpeace have issued a whining statement about Mr Field’s utterly unwarranted brutality. After all, they merely intended to “flash-mob the Chancellor’s podium, hijack the microphone and give the speech we all need in a climate emergency.”

Allow me to paraphrase. Those crazed extremists breached the security of a private gathering, disrupted the Chancellor’s speech and rushed towards the podium, intending to yank the microphone out of his hand by force and scream frenzied gibberish at the bemused attendees.

It was a distinct possibility that the Chancellor was facing a physical threat as well. Those zealots have been known to resort to fire bombs, not just the flash ones. The ejected woman could well have had a weapon in her handbag, and any sensible person should have accounted for that possibility.

Greenpeace described their action as “peaceful protest”, but I beg to differ. True, the fanatics involved turned out to be unarmed, but breaking through a cordon of security guards and rushing towards the podium was a violent act in itself, even if it wasn’t followed by a fusillade.

At such stressful moments one must expect the worst. For example, a burglar breaking into a house at night may ‘only’ want a computer, a TV set and perhaps some jewellery.

However, the man of the house is unaware of the criminal’s intentions. He owes it to himself and his family to assume that it’s not just their property but also their lives that are in danger. The man is therefore justified in thwarting the crime with any weapon he has at his disposal.

This principle is no longer valid in our courts, and hasn’t been since justice and morality went their separate ways. However, bringing them back together, it takes a warped, or else non-existent moral sense to deny this simple, millennia-old logic.

In other words, Mr Field acted preemptively, decisively and justifiably. Yet he may still fall victim to the pernicious New Age cult of modernity. It’s not his action that’s deemed to be ipso facto objectionable, but its target.

Greenpeace activism (along with other faddish crazes, such as animals’ rights, militant feminism or anti-fur fanaticism) has been raised to the top of the totem pole that, in the absence of real religion, acts as its surrogate.

The idol sits so high up the pole that no criticism can reach it. In fact, taking issue with it can’t even qualify as criticism any longer – it’s blasphemy at best, apostasy at worst.

Now imagine it wasn’t a Greenpeace gang breaching the security at a City banquet, but a group of anti-abortion protesters disrupting a speech by the shadow chancellor. Imagine further that a Labour MP acted in the same manner as Mr Field did.

Do you think the public reaction would have been as loud and uncompromising? Do you think we’d be hearing demands for the culprit’s dismissal or even arrest?

If you do, you live in a world that these days is but a figment of romantic fancy. That chap would have been praised to high heaven for his bravery, with one or two insincere regrets expressed about the excessive physicality of his otherwise laudable response.

It’s not the action but the cause that’s at issue. Protesting against warm weather in even a violent manner qualifies as a sacred right; protesting against abortion or euthanasia doesn’t.

For the record, I would have felt the same way had a right-to-lifer been involved in the situation I’ve described. We in Britain still have many channels for expressing legitimate protest without having to act in an asocial, disruptive and threatening manner.

Hence I would have applauded that hypothetical Labour MP as much as I’m now applauding Mr Field. Alas, no one else is joining in the applause.

Facing the likely end of his political career, Mr Field has been forced to apologise “unreservedly” and to claim he “deeply regretted” his actions. 

Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis added that the party would investigate the incident, a suspension looming large in the subtext. And even the City of London Police have confirmed they have received a “small number of third party reports of an assault taking place” that are “being looked into”.

I don’t know if criminal charges will be filed, but one way or the other Mark Field will be sacrificed at the foot of that totem pole. New idols have taken over and they are athirst.

P.S. Speaking of the Conservative Party, now Jeremy Hunt has made it to the finals, I anticipate new Cockney rhyming slang expressions, such as “don’t be such a Jeremy” and “he’s a big fat Jeremy”.

Prof. Norman Stone was always so much alive it’s hard to believe he is dead. His appetite for wine, women and song was insatiable, although he could compromise on the song.

Norman was also one the most brilliant men I’ve ever met, and one of the most likable.

It was as if he was so embarrassed about his prodigious gifts that, out of consideration for the sensibilities of lesser mortals, he tried to lower his level by drinking toxic amounts of alcohol throughout the day, starting with G&Ts at breakfast and gradually building up to three bottles of red wine in the evening.

How drinking on that epic scale didn’t prevent him from becoming an insightful historian, tireless and meticulous in his research, sound and daring in his concepts, is one of those baffling mysteries of life. The solution probably lay in his mind, so vast to begin with that booze could only chip away at it without wreaking total devastation.

Yet chip away it did, and his later output fell short of the sterling standards he established with his early book The Eastern Front 1914-17, which remains the definitive text on the subject.

As myself a bit of a linguist, I was shamelessly envious of Norman’s command of languages. How many, I’m not even sure.

French, Spanish and German were a good start, but that was just by way of a warm-up. Having gathered speed, Norman also learned devilishly difficult Hungarian, one of only two people I’ve ever met to have done so.

He then picked up Russian, which I can testify he knew well, and then, building on that Slavic foundation, added Polish and Serbo-Croatian. Italian came almost as an afterthought, and during his tenure at Ankara he also got enough Turkish to get by.

Polyglots often have little to say in any of their languages, but Norman could offend leftie sensibilities in all of them. He was for a while the sole specimen of that rare breed, a conservative Oxford professor of humanities.

His leftie colleagues might have resented his judgement, but conservatives always respected it even when they disagreed. Margaret Thatcher in particular was an admirer, and she used Norman as speech writer and advisor on foreign policy.

Norman’s pet hatreds were always justified; his pet loves perhaps not invariably. Yet both were professed with verve and passion.

As an example of the former, Norman virulently attacked EH Carr, the communist historian whose writings were indistinguishable from the output of the Moscow Institute of Marxism-Leninism, except that Carr also liked Hitler for his commitment to social justice.

Norman expertly tore Carr to shreds, and he meted out similar treatment to many of his Carr-minded colleagues. His distaste for them displayed a 20/20 acuity of vision, but his loves were sometimes blind.

For example, some 15 years ago he wrote an article in The Times extolling Putin. Norman, incidentally, always supplemented his academic salary with lucrative journalism, which he regarded as hack work and treated as such.

His article on Putin was so bizarre that, though we were friends, I had to publish a piece in Salisbury Review, pointing out some of the crazy things Norman had written. For example, he listed among Putin’s achievements his kindness towards ethnic minorities, especially the Tartars.

As an example of such benevolence he cited Putin’s treatment of the great dancers Nureyev and Baryshnikov. Now Nureyev was indeed a Tartar, but he defected from the USSR in 1961, when little Vova Putin was still going to primary school.

And Baryshnikov isn’t a Tartar at all, even though his name, as Norman correctly pointed out with his sterling erudition, is indeed of Turkic origin. In any case, Baryshnikov defected from the USSR in 1974, when Putin was just embarking on his KGB career.

Another of Norman’s blind spots was his love of Turkey, where he escaped in 1997, having got sick of both Oxford and New Labour – a feeling that was as justified as it was reciprocated. Having received a chair in international relations at Bilkent University, Norman moved to Ankara and became a staunch defender of Turkey.

The Times published many of his panegyrics for that country, in which he claimed that Turkey was so far in advance of Europe that the EU badly needed her as a member. Norman also denied that the 1915 massacre of Armenians constituted genocide.  

All that came later, but when I knew Norman in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, he exuded charm, undimmed intellect and deliciously iconoclastic humour. I remember one of our last meetings, when we bumped into each other by chance at the National Gallery.

Norman was accompanied by a young, exceedingly pleasant black man who was incongruously calling him “Dad”. He turned out to be Nick, Norman’s son from his marriage to the niece of Papa Doc Duvalier’s finance minister. (Nick later became a bestselling thriller writer.)

I was admiring Zurbarán’s St Francis, which Norman dismissed as “Counter-Reformation rubbish”. “I come from solid Protestant stock,” he explained in his slight Glaswegian brogue.

Such aesthetic and religious differences could only be solved over a drink, but there we were thwarted by the licensing hours, which have since been mercifully softened. But then no booze was to be had around Trafalgar Square in mid-afternoon.

Norman’s mind knew that, but his heart refused to accept it. So Penelope, Nick and I had to trail in his wake from one closed pub to another, with Norman trying every doorknob in vain and fuming at state bureaucracy.

In 1995 Norman’s wife Christine and I were among the group of foreign observers at the Belarus elections, and an echo of Norman reached me through Mrs Stone’s stern rebuke.

We were all having dinner in a Minsk restaurant, where I as the only fluent Russian speaker did the ordering. As part of my duties, I ordered a bottle of vodka, which wine of the country I thought was an appropriate accompaniment to our repast.

However, Christine, who was a lovely, kind woman, admonished me for my profligacy in no uncertain terms, which surprised me. But then I realised that men drinking booze occupied a particularly unpleasant place in her heart.

Christine is gone now, and so is Norman. What he did in his life would have been enough for a dozen successful academic careers. One can only wonder how much more he would have achieved had he not imposed that handicap on himself.

But then he wouldn’t have been Norman, the man we all loved.

Prof. Norman Stone, RIP.  

Watching Tory hopefuls jousting on TV, it was clear they were all ignorant of the basic principle I call the ABC of politics: Anyone But Corbyn.

The consequences of Marxist thugs taking over the government would be so comprehensively – and perhaps irreversibly – catastrophic that not just the Tories but all sensible politicians should set their squabbles aside and concentrate on just one goal: stopping that blight.

Can they? Will they? I’m not so sure.

Modern politics throws up characters singlemindedly committed to their own bono, not bono publico. I can’t think offhand of any who would put the country’s interests ahead of their own.

Their whole being is permeated with the urge to fulfil personal ambitions by scoring points off rivals. Whoever scores most points will see himself as the winner – even if the country ends up the loser.

Witness the Rory Stewart phenomenon. This nice chappie who looks like a cartoon character is moving up the charts even though anyone with a modicum of political nous will know that a vote for Stewart is a vote for Corbyn.

Corbyn’s message to the masses is simple enough for the masses to grasp. Marxism is monstrous, but it has an advantage over conservatism: it’s readily reducible to catchy slogans.

Thus its core slogan ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is instantly understandable even to the dimmest people.

But even the brightest conservative would struggle to counter with a catchy phrase of his own. To argue against the Marxist slogan, he’d have to explain that for this idea to be applied in practice there would have to exist an authority empowered to decide what constitutes both ‘ability’ and ‘need’. Such an authority would inevitably become downright despotic.

This is true, but a catchy slogan it isn’t, and it’s presuming too much on human goodness to believe that voting throngs are averse to demagogic sloganeering. They aren’t; quite the opposite.

Hence there’s a distinct danger that the electorate will fail to realise that all Corbyn slogans are reducible to one: eradication of everything that makes Britain British. Corbyn’s economics, for example, is tantamount to an all-front assault on private property with the ultimate goal of its elimination.

His foreign policy is circumscribed by seeking alliances with every avowed enemy of Britain, while alienating our friends.

Corbyn’s domestic policy will involve curtailing law enforcement, inviting as much immigration of cultural aliens as Britain could physically accommodate, destroying what’s left of decent medicine and education, and tacitly encouraging the abuse of whites in general and Jews in particular.

As to his stand on Brexit, which is the central issue of today’s political discourse, it depends entirely on the damage it could do to the Tories.

In that spirit he is expected to come out in favour of a second referendum, which is the most cynical of all available options.

An honest statesman believing that Britain’s interests will be best served by leaving the EU would declare his commitment to doing so with or without a ‘deal’. Conversely, an honest Remainer would promise to keep Britain in the EU, regardless of the referendum results.

“I realise,” he’d say, “that you voted for Brexit. But my remit as prime minister is to act in accordance with your interests, not your wishes. Therefore, since I’m convinced it’s in your interests to stay in the EU, I intend to exercise the Royal Prerogative and do just that.”

Such a politician would be sorely misguided and in my view even treasonous, but at least he’d have the power of his convictions. A demand for a second referendum, on the other hand, is an attempt to get the same result by disgraceful subterfuge.

And it’s not even the result Corbyn would want ideally – the EU is evil enough, but it’s the wrong kind of evil as far as he’s concerned. Commitment to permanent class struggle under the red banner is regrettably lacking there, so the EU isn’t ideologically pure.

However, a second referendum or even a demand for it may deepen the rift within the Tory party, thereby smoothing Corbyn’s way into Downing Street. QED.

The only way to stop this calamity is for the Tories to unite behind a candidate best able to beat Corbyn – and also to ally themselves with the Brexit Party that’s threatening to siphon off millions of votes from the Tories if they continue to vacillate on Brexit.

Yet vacillating on Brexit is precisely what Rory Stewart proposes. He’s committed to keeping Mrs May’s ‘deal’ alive – this though it has been thrice comprehensively defeated in Parliament. His goal isn’t so much reanimation as resurrection, and I don’t think Rory possesses such powers.

In other words, he’s proposing nothing but political impotence, intellectual vacuity and moral decrepitude – which is to say he’ll hand to Corbyn the keys to 10 Downing Street.

Much as it pains me to say so, the only candidate capable of uniting the Tories, creating a quasi-conservative Brexit coalition and ultimately defeating Corbyn’s Marxists is Boris Johnson.

He’s louche, unreliable, unprincipled and dubiously moral – but he’s all we’ve got. Johnson can match Corbyn demagoguery for demagoguery, except his will be cleverer, more erudite and better delivered. Moreover, he has twice defeated Labour in its own backyard, London.

Johnson’s professed refusal to take no-deal Brexit off the table will attract Farage fans and possibly many non-Corbyn Labourites – even though I don’t believe he’ll have the guts to deliver on such a promise. But that’s not the point: we’re talking stopping Labour here, nothing else.

So far Johnson has fought a clever campaign following the strategy associated in marketing with brand leadership. The runaway leader should say nothing but say it well: he doesn’t need to score any more points; all he needs is not to lose any.

Once Johnson has won the Tory race, his strategy will have to change. At that point he’ll have to do two things: first and foremost, to communicate to the public how catastrophic a Corbyn government would be; second, to come up with sound alternatives to Corbyn policies.

The two objectives are in a descending order of priorities, but with one exception: Brexit. If Prime Minister Johnson fails to deliver it quickly, his tenure will be brief. The sun will then shine on Labour, and they’ll make much hay.

This is a distinct possibility, considering how hard the Tories have made the task of leaving that vile contrivance. But at least Johnson offers a sporting chance of stopping Marxism. No other Tory candidate does, and the sooner they, their party and the rest of us realise this, the better.

At this eleventh hour in the Tory horse race, a new candidate has made a late run on the rail, putting pressure on the frontrunner Boris Johnson.

The candidate’s credentials certainly look so impressive that one has to wonder why he hasn’t figured from the start. Having witnessed his scintillating performance in the Channel 4 debates, one is even more surprised.

After all, this latecomer to the proceedings has held four high-level cabinet posts. While nitty-gritty administration wasn’t his forte, he showed leadership qualities second to none, which isn’t surprising considering that in his younger days he served with valour and distinction as army officer in the battlefield.

When in government, he used his steely resolve and impressive oratorical skills to unite the nation at a moment of crisis. He then negotiated the country’s way through the crisis, earning himself an unassailable reputation as a man Britain can rely on in her hour of need.

In purely political terms – and we do have to consider the possibility of an early general election – he alone among the Tory candidates has demonstrated a cross-party appeal. Though some detractors describe him as a right-wing ideologue, he has shown hardnosed pragmatism when needed, but without compromising his core principles.

Yet his prospects quickly wilted under the scathing attacks launched by both the press and the other candidates, who joined forces to ward off this late threat.

Michael Gove pointed out during the debate that the “honourable and other gentlemen” seem to ignore that this admittedly impressive candidate comes from a highly privileged aristocratic family.

Unlike Mr Gove, an adopted child who describes himself as “a warrior for the dispossessed”, this Johnny-come-lately could only be a warrior for the toffs – even though he might have fought for his whole country and not just its upper classes.

Sajid Javid instantly developed this theme, highlighting the new candidate’s elite educational background. Unlike Mr Javid himself, who went to a Bristol comprehensive that “wasn’t brilliant”, the latecomer was educated at exclusive public schools, including Harrow.

Yes, admittedly Mr Javid lacked the debating skills displayed by this candidate, but at least he was “genuine and honest, with experience of real life at the rough end”. And it’s not as if those debating skills bespoke nothing but a talent for articulate speech and sound argument.

No, they were acquired and honed at elite educational institutions, which means that deploying them to political ends was tantamount to… There Mr Javid stumbled, being stuck for the right word. And then it came to him: “…dishonesty!”

“We must prevent this contest from becoming an Eton-Harrow debate,” he concluded.

The press chimed in with gusto. “Where is diversity in this line-up of Tory candidates,” asked one editorial rhetorically, “especially with this late addition?” All other papers differed only in the choice of words, not in the general tenor of their comments.

The consensus reached unanimously was that the very fact of a candidate’s privileged background complete with exclusive education must disqualify him from government irrespective of any other qualities he may possess.

“We already have a full complement of Etonians standing for leadership,” commented a paper known for its Tory leanings. “At this juncture, we certainly do not also need a Harrovian contender, especially one who grew up in a palace.”

The chorus of the new candidate’s detractors grew stronger and louder. No one even bothered to talk about his experience, nor indeed about his qualities of intellect, character and popular appeal.

The final chord was sounded by another Tory newspaper: “Yes,” was the summing-up of its editorial, “he may, probably would, make a good prime minister.

“And yes, perhaps an argument can be made that he is better qualified for this office than any other candidate on offer.

“However, unless the Tories wish to reinforce their reputation for being an exclusive Pall Mall club committed only to the interests of the rich and wellborn, they must close ranks against the threat presented by this toffy-nosed aristo.”

In the face of such unanimous opposition from not only Labour but even from his own party, Sir Winston Churchill had no option but to exit the contest.     

Now that Johnson has the Tory leadership practically sewn up, more and more distressing facts are coming to public attention.

The other day, for example, he viciously attacked a lesbian couple on a London bus, beating them to a bloody pulp.

Well, if you want to be pedantic about this, Boris wasn’t the one landing the punches. In fact, my sources confidently report he wasn’t on that – or any other – London bus that day.

However, according to the victims interviewed on Channel 4, Johnson was the real culprit in the attack, more real than the actual thugs who had drawn blood.

Now it’s no secret that Channel 4’s affection for any politician is inversely proportionate to his conservatism. Since this month Boris seems to be the most conservative of the realistic candidates, Channel 4 would happily see him eviscerated, stuffed and put on public display in the Whitechapel Monster museum.

Hence one of the first questions the interviewer put to the victims concerned Mr Johnson’s suitability for high office. What else could he possibly have asked two women beaten up on public transport? The floodgates were flung open.

Homophobic hate crimes are alive and well, they complained, and it’s all because Johnson personally creates a climate of hatred. Fit to lead the United Kingdom? You’ve got to be joking.

“I do not think that Boris Johnson is fit to lead anything much less the United Kingdom,” fumed one of the victims. What, not even a dog on its walkies?

Since Johnson’s guilt was self-evident to both parties, the interviewer didn’t probe into the issue too deeply, which was good news for the candidate. After all, incitement to violence is a crime that potentially could land him in Wormwood Scrubs rather than 10 Downing Street.

But being by nature an inquisitive sort, I looked into the matter more closely. After all, we may be talking about our next PM.

It turns out that in his 2001 book Johnson expressed opposition to homomarriage. Not only that, but he actually suggested he saw no valid difference between marrying two men and a man with his dog.

Having myself written things along these lines many times, I’m ready to spring to Johnson’s defence.

The only marriage worthy of the name is between a man and a woman, which argument can be made from every conceivable angle: historical, religious, moral, social, cultural, demographic and so forth.

The counterargument is typically eudemonic: if two people of the same sex are naturally inclined that way, why shouldn’t they marry? Wouldn’t that increase the happiness of the world?

The response to this is that in a moral society not all natural inclinations are to be condoned, much less encouraged. For example, we still, for old times’ sake, refuse to exonerate a chap naturally inclined to violence or thieving.

And if our society is no longer moral, then what’s the difference between a man having sex with another man or, say, a sheep? On what grounds do we discriminate against one perversion in favour of another?

Some Welsh sheep I’ve seen are more attractive than Sir Elton John and, if rumours are to be believed, some shepherds are naturally inclined to succumb to those ovine charms. Consummation of such attraction doubtless makes them happy, so why not let them marry?

Isn’t this the same argument as one in favour of homomarriage? I think so, and so evidently does Mr Johnson.

You may disagree, although only false modesty prevents me from claiming that I could easily destroy any dissenting argument based on logic (a purely emotional one is of course indestructible). So could Mr Johnson.

But one way or the other, how can putting forth an argument be seen as incitement to violence, even if we happen to disagree? I dare say the ability to argue soundly and logically ought to be hailed as a great asset for any politician trying to make sense of our mad world.

However, precisely because Mr Johnson chooses to be rather conservative this month, an open season has started.

Since according to Descartes all knowledge is comparative, Johnson’s beastliness can be best illustrated by comparing him to some rather disagreeable political figure of the past. Such as Hitler.

Not to my mind, but to the giant one belonging to Mohammed Amin, the chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. Mr Amin has vowed to quit the Tories after 36 years as a member if this present-day answer to the führer gets to lead the party.

The parallel between Mr Johnson and Hitler isn’t so obvious as not to require a clarification. Mr Amin is happy to oblige. Yes, he admits grudgingly, Johnson is popular, but “popularity is not the test. A lot of Germans thought that Hitler was the right man for them.”

Now the first part of that statement is correct: popularity isn’t – or rather shouldn’t be – the test.

It’s the second part of the statement that makes me doubt the giant size of Mr Amin’s mind. True, Hitler was popular with the Germans, but that’s not all he’s known for. He also gassed Jews, which to my knowledge isn’t Mr Johnson’s plan (I’m not so sure about Corbyn’s Labour).

Anyway, if popularity isn’t the test, what is? Put another way, what is the test Mr Johnson fails so comprehensively as to rate comparison with a mass murderer?

Mr Amin explains: “The test is, is this person sufficiently moral to be prime minister, and I believe he fails that test.” That may be, but there’s much moral mileage between failing Mr Amin’s rigorous moral tests and being evil.

That Mr Johnson isn’t exactly a choirboy is well-known, but he isn’t a candidate for canonisation. He stands for Tory leadership, a job in which certain moral laxness doesn’t necessarily spell automatic disqualification.

Boris is known for a roving eye but, compared to some great statesmen of the past, he’s indeed a choirboy. The list is long of US presidents who ran an uninterrupted string of girls through the White House or of French kings and first ministers who did the same at Versailles. Nor has every inhabitant of 10 Downing Street kept the premises monastically pristine.

Many people who seek political office are highly sexed: lust for power is closely related psychologically and hormonally to other lusts. If we wanted to elect sexual teetotallers, we’d have to raid monasteries. Alas, they haven’t existed in Britain since Henry VIII did just that.

Actually, it’s not really Mr Johnson’s sexual shenanigans that most vex Mr Amin. “There are lots and lots of Muslims in the party,” he says, “who are very concerned about Boris Johnson.” 

I’m surprised there are “lots and lots of Muslims” in the Tory party tout court. I can’t help feeling they have to be either bad Tories or bad Muslims.

After all, British conservatism traditionally takes a dim view of such Muslim practices as the stoning of adulterers, although Mr Amin seems to think that may be a good idea in this case.

The problem is that Mr Johnson’s pronouncements on Islam highlight the divergence in the Tory and Muslim views of the world. For example, he favours a ban on the public wearing of the burqa, claiming that women thus clad resemble “letter boxes” or “bank robbers”.

The similes may or may not work, but show me a Tory who isn’t offended to see swarms of women sporting Halloween costumes in England, and I’ll show you, well, the chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum.

It would be too much to expect a Muslim scorned to choose a less emotional comparison to put Mr Johnson down. A Muslim Tory (if they exist in anything other than name), for example, could say that Tony Blair was popular, but he was one of the most destructive prime ministers in British history.

But where’s the emotional charge in that? No, Boris Johnson has to be a latter-day Hitler, who attacks lesbians on buses and wants to gas all homosexuals and Muslims.

That much-vaunted British understatement, wherefore art thou?

You know how a man pretending to be someone else may betray himself with just one wrong word? That’s what happened to my friend President Trump.

One ill-phrased tweet, and it dawned on me (even if it didn’t dawn on anyone else) that the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen based his Ali G character not on a black gangsta but on ‘me main man Donald’.

See if you can spot the tell-tale word in Donald’s message urbi et orbi:

“I meet and talk to ‘foreign governments’ every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Whales…”

The quotation commas bookending ‘foreign governments’ indicate those bodies are neither foreign nor really governments, but many people misuse that punctuation (although admittedly not many of those whose education cost a six-digit sum).

True, specifying Her Majesty’s title as “the Queen of England (U.K)” betokens a most lamentable ignorance, but that solecism still doesn’t reveal the true provenance of Ali G. So what does?

I’ll give you a clue: one of Ali G’s early sketches was about Wales. He started it by saying: “When you ear da word Wales, you probably fink of da fish with da biggest dick in da ocean. But it’s also da name of da country dat’s only 200 miles from Britain…”

Do you get it now? Trump’s reference to HRH as “the Prince of Whales” (sic) is a dead give-away: no one but Ali G thinks of marine creatures when speaking of Wales, HRH’s principality.

Having realised what’s what, I immediately phoned my friend Donald, telling him he had been found out. This is what he replied, dropping the mask he had had to wear for such a long time:

‘Boyakasha, Al! Is yous wicked? But wot is yous bangin on about? Me leader of Washington posse, me and ma bitch Melania goes to see da Queen, da prince and his bitch Camilla, innit?

‘Melania is well fit, me always wants to grab’er by da muff, but Camilla is well mingin, wouldn’t dig her to get jiggy wiv me biggy, you feelin me? But me didn’t want to dis’er, so I says wassup, Cam, wanna do some erbal remedies wiv me?

‘And dis geezer Whales says in dis batty boy accent “Actually, my wife has no pressing need for any medication. She is rather fit, as a matter of fact.” She ain’t fit me finks, but me doesn’t get da rest of it. To be polite me says aye, for real, finkin me main man prince he don’t understand me was talkin about a spliff of gundja, not medical stuff.

‘Den da main bitch asks me “How do you find London, Mr Trump?” And me says me finds it well wicked, a wicked place to chill. Eastside! (East Side is me turf, not West Side, me main man Sacha he got that wrong, innit?)

‘But da main bitch she says “I rather think London is unseasonably warm at the moment, but it can indeed be rather wicked at times.” She ain’t feelin me, me not feelin her, and me crew has to translate all da time. Main bitch may fink me a bit fick.

‘Me says word in da street be da Tory posse be fightin to elect da main man, innit? Me likes Boris, he do erbal remedies but quiet, not like dat geezer Gove. But da main bitch she say “Yes, it is rather tense at the moment.”

‘Me finks ain’t nuthin like gundja to take da tension off but me doesn’t say dat thinkin she don’t understand English.

‘Den we gets some posh grub and chill. Da wine cost a lot of mula, 2,000 squid, but me doesn’t drink, me likes erbal remedies, but dere was none dere. Dere was no bruvers neither, nuthin but a well posh posse, but me doesn’t mind, innit. Me has nuff bruvers on me turf in Washington.

‘Dat’s it, Al, stay cool and keep it real! Eastside!’

My friend Donald hung up, leaving me happy about the unmistakable sense of relief in his voice. A mask coming off must feel like a load off his mind, and God know he has plenty of other loads there.

Glad to have been of help. Boyakasha and keep it real, as my friend Donald likes to say.

This question has been prompted by Gerard Baker’s article American Conservatives Are at Daggers Drawn in today’s Times.

Mr Baker himself neither answers this question nor indeed poses it, even though his cogent article makes it obvious that no clarity on the subject exists.

He merely describes the debate between old-school, which is to say anti-Trump, conservatives and the new breed, according to whom “Trump is not conservative at all: just a grotesque Neronian figure committed to his own self-aggrandisement through protectionism, tough immigration policies and isolationism.”

“Old-school conservatism,” explains Mr Baker, correctly, “which has dominated the right since the days of Ronald Reagan, was chiefly about promoting free markets and small government after the failed corporatism of the 1960s and 1970s.”

According to the new lot, however, specifically the New York Post op-ed editor, “This laissez-faire approach to society actually enabled ‘progressives’ to promote their illiberal version of liberalism… Despite the election of Republican presidents and congresses, social and legal norms have moved steadily leftwards, particularly on minority rights, and it will soon be illegal for devout Christians… to express their beliefs about sexuality or sin in public.”

One detects a terminological Babel here, so typical whenever political labels are bandied about. But Mr Baker is right: unless we sort this mess out, buried underneath will be conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Does the future of conservatism lie in continued faith in small government, and in peoples’ right to pursue their own interests free from undue state intervention? Or should conservatives man the political and cultural barricades, and fight the forces of progressivism to the bitter death?” he asks, this time less convincingly.

The two courses of action ought to be linked by ‘and’, not ‘or’. The trouble is that in America, and exceedingly in Britain, political conservatism is often defined in economic terms, converging with economic libertarianism, and leaving social and cultural conservatism to fend for itself.

Yet, though true conservatism may include aspects of libertarianism, it’s much deeper and broader than simply a preference for free markets over state corporatism.

Western conservatism is defined above all by commitment to preserve what’s left of Western civilisation, otherwise known as Christendom, of which politics is only one, perhaps least important, manifestation.

However, Christendom is impossible to preserve without Christianity acting as the dominant moral, social, cultural – and derivatively political – force.

This isn’t a theoretical postulate but merely a historical observation: ever since the secular desiderata of the Enlightenment began to rule the roost, our civilisation has been suffering a steady erosion. Traditional certitudes no longer apply, and neither does the traditional political taxonomy.

American Founders, being wiser and more moderate than their French Enlightenment brothers, tried to fashion a conservative society out of Christendom leftovers, a sort of Christendom without Christianity.

But ultimately that effort was doomed to failure: you can’t break eggs without breaking eggs. One egg broken immediately after the American Revolution was political – as opposed to cultural – conservatism.

Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton, the Revolution’s greatest minds, thought they were creating a republican version of British constitutional monarchy. For the king, read the president; for the House of Lords, read the Senate; for the Commons, read the House of Representatives.

Yet a solid structure can’t be built on a rickety and termite-eaten foundation. A secular revolutionary republic inspired by Enlightenment egalitarianism and lacking indigenous political tradition going back many centuries was bound to become an egalitarian democracy, which precludes political conservatism by definition.

Messrs Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton had miscalculated – and they lived long enough to realise that to their horror. Granted, the commonwealth they created has proved viable and successful on its own terms – as long as we accept that political conservatism isn’t one of those terms.

The politics of Christendom mirrored the structure of the Church and its key organisational aspect: subsidiarity, devolving power to the lowest sensible level. Central power attenuated as it radiated towards the periphery: the most absolute of monarchs had more power over their loftiest courtiers than over their lowliest peasants.

If we take Louis XIV as the personification of absolute monarchy, he couldn’t even dream of the powers vested in modern presidents and prime ministers.

It would never have occurred to the Sun King that he could conscript the whole population into his army, extort at least half of people’s earnings in taxes, impose the same obligatory education on all children and punish the parents who demur, dictate what the people should eat, where they should live, how they should be treated – and so on, ad infinitum.

Enlightenment, as opposed to traditional, politics ineluctably lead to centralism ousting localism – which is to say political modernism ousting political conservatism. The American Civil War did a good job of convincing those who had failed to grasp that point.

Since traditional politics can’t exist without a traditional social structure, and since both had fallen by the wayside, cultural conservatism was the only one left available to Americans. Yet when different parts of the whole go their separate ways, the whole can’t survive.

Fast-tracking a century or so forward, we see the mess Mr Baker describes. Post-war American conservatism was mainly an economic reaction to New Deal corporatism. Since then the whole debate has been reduced to big vs. small state and free vs. controlled markets.

Those who laudably supported small vs big and free vs unfree were desperately clinging on to the flotsam of a great imploded ship: Christendom. But those were only small fragments, which most people failed to realise.

A great comprehensive view of the world that included economics and politics but was infinitely greater than them was extinct. The vacuum thus formed was filled by another comprehensive view of the world, one that descended from the Enlightenment on a straight dynastic line: egalitarian socialism (whatever it’s called) in its economic, cultural, moral and political manifestations.

This view of the world springs above all from the destructive desire to drive the last nails into the coffin of Christendom. As such, it doesn’t lack cohesion and consistency – exactly the qualities that so-called American conservatism can’t possibly have.

That’s why it can counter-attack only on a small section of the front, not across the whole frontline. This section is the economy, a fact that by itself testifies to an argument lost.

Those who attempt to engage the left on other issues, such as abortion, euthanasia or legalisation of drugs, are ultimately outshouted by the well-coordinated chorus of anti-Christendom invective.

Arguing ab oeconomia is tantamount to accepting the socialist terms of debate. But socialist views on economics dovetail with the broad picture of the world painted by any mind formed by the Enlightenment.

On the other hand, the so-called conservative, in fact libertarian, take on economics is but one piece of a jigsaw, from which it’s impossible to reconstruct the whole design.

Such is the real nature of the debate described by Mr Baker, one between old-school and new-school conservatism. Students of the new school are correct in their observation that commitment to laissez-faire economics by itself (my emphasis) can’t stem the tide of socialist subversion of cultural, social and ethical mores.

Students of the old school are also right in pointing out that the big, omnipotent state is harmful to the economy and detrimental to liberty.

Yet neither of them realise that this is a ‘both… and’ argument, not ‘either… or’. The very existence of those two schools testifies to the demise of conservatism, as defined in the only logical way as the preservation of Western tradition.

One can preserve only what is still extant – not Western conservatism. Its obituaries are written every day and with equal relish by libertarians, socialists, statists, neoconservatives, free marketers, corporatists, progressives. It’s just that some of them may not realise that’s what they are writing.