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Located in the south of London, Brixton is an area that’s rather… now what’s the acceptable word for it? I don’t wish to get in trouble for using an unacceptable one, PC propriety being one of my chief concerns.

Exotic? Diverse? Multicultural? Anyway, you get the gist. However, in spite of being all those things, Brixton isn’t usually as violent as the similar areas of New York I remember.

Once, for example, I found myself driving through Bedford-Stuyvesant as a result of misreading the road map. One look at the burnt-out shells of buildings with no window frames, doors replaced with holes cut in steel sheets, the people crawling out of the holes, and I prayed my car wouldn’t break down.

Brixton isn’t like that. It used to be a middle-class neighbourhood, which past has left much architectural legacy. And these days its diversity and multiculturalism are hardly ever expressed through riots and general mayhem.

Yet hardly ever is a far cry from never, which semantic point was made emphatically the other day. The fun started when two groups, the Montagues and the Capulets of Brixton, hundreds of them, fell out.

Before long, knives saw the light of day, blood flowed, and only the arrival of the cavalry could have saved the day. The cavalry, otherwise known as the Metropolitan Police, duly arrived, lights flashing, sirens blaring, tyres screeching.

The subsequent events vindicated the truth of the Russian proverb loosely translated as “Two square off, you f*** off” [Двое в драку, третий в сраку, for the Russophones among you]. For the warring parties abandoned their hostilities and joined forces in a coordinated counterattack against the blue-clad intruders.

The police were pelted with projectiles ranging from bottles and stones to bits and pieces of furniture, punched and clubbed. Both the Montagues and the Capulets jumped on police car bonnets, kicking the windscreens in.

The police suffered 22 wounded, walking or otherwise, and fled, with the multicultural crowd in hot pursuit, screaming “Run them out!” and other things I shan’t cite out of decorum.

The Battle of Brixton was lost. And, like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, this defeat has far-reaching implications. In that debacle, the real casualties went beyond the two Roman legions shredded by the ancestors of today’s Germans. In Brixton too, it was a civilisation that suffered yet another blow.

For the battle wasn’t lost in Brixton. It was lost earlier this year, when the police refused to arrest the ring leaders of the Extinction Rebellion horde. Or when they failed to save the statue of Churchill being defaced. Or, in the most emetic spectacle of all, when police officers ‘took the knee’ in front of the marauding BLM mob.

Or even earlier, when the aptonymic Cressida Dicks was appointed the Met Commissioner. Being a woman and a lesbian, she possesses two vital qualifications for the post, but hardly any other. Or when Sadiq Khan was elected mayor, bringing to the job his commitment to enforce only the laws of multi-culti political correctness.

Or even earlier than that, when the police were turned into an extension of social services rather than the staunch guardian of law and order. Or… well, I could backtrack to a more distant past, but there is really no need.

Let’s just say that protecting Her Majesty’s subjects from external and home-grown evildoers is the most – perhaps the only – indisputably legitimate function of the state. A state remiss in that area loses any claim to loyalty.

Anarchy, mob rule, war of all against all are a direct and inevitable result of this failure. In that sense the Battle of Brixton is the present-day Battle of Britain – and this time we are losing.

The PM delivered his usual violin-like performance: nice sounds, empty inside. “These were appalling scenes,” he said. “Violence against the police [as opposed to violence against civilians?] will not be tolerated. We have been clear that anyone who assaults the police or any members of the emergency services should face the full force of the law.”

That’s the whole problem, Mr Johnson: the full force of the law is puny, practically nonexistent. No politician, no police chief can instantly issue the order to fire tear gas at a riotous crowd, never mind firearms.

The sight of our self-righteously unarmed police officers running away from a feral mob serves a reminder of the hole into which we’ve sunk. How can the cops protect the public if they can’t even protect themselves? Law and ordure indeed.

People in the public eye routinely find themselves on the receiving end of love, hate, admiration, contempt – and jokes, some good-natured, some less so, some downright vicious.

That comes with the territory and overly sensitive people should protect their thin skin by steering clear of the territory. The best way of ducking the slings and arrows is to shun public life, keep a low profile and especially stay out of politics.

However, having plunged into elective politics headlong, one should learn how to respond to cutting or even vindictive humour. There are many acceptable ways of doing so.

The simplest one is to ignore the jokes altogether. Then of course it’s possible to laugh along, thereby showing an attractive capacity for self-deprecation. Or else one could joke back, although caution must be exercised: joking, especially off the cuff, may backfire easily.

One thing a politician absolutely mustn’t do is get angry. Such a reaction betokens one of the least attractive human qualities: humourless narcissism. And that, I’m afraid, is exactly the quality revealed by America’s First Lady on this occasion.

Now, when a wife boasts an adventurous sexual past, especially if her much older husband is no longer in the first or even second flush of youth, jokes about the paternity of the couple’s children practically make themselves. These are mostly tasteless, which makes them even harder to contain.

A few years ago, a British comedian was talking about the Christmas dinner at Buckingham Palace. “It was a small affair,” quipped the stand-up chap. “Just the immediate family – and Harry.” Since rumours of one of Diana’s lovers being Harry’s father abound, the joke hit a sensitive place.

Now the British tend to be much more protective about the Royal Family than the Americans are about presidents. And yet the joke caused no outcry, and certainly no comment from Buck House. Cabbages and kings: royals reign, people gossip, comedians jest – life is like that.

Melania Trump should take her cue from the Royal Family, and generally speaking she does. She keeps an unusually low profile for a First Lady and hardly ever speaks in public. Whether her uncertain command of English has something to do with that reticence is anybody’s guess.

Yet she broke her silence on Sunday, Father’s Day, after the comedian John Henson tweeted: “I hope Barron gets to spend today with whoever his dad is.”

The joke is moderately funny at best, and Mrs Trump should have just let it slide. Instead she responded like a lioness protecting her cub: “As with every other administration, a minor child should be off-limits and allowed to grow up with no judgment or hate from strangers and the media.” 

Melania should really lighten up. The Trumps are doubtless exposed to more than their fair share of judgement and hate, but a joke, funny or not, just doesn’t fall into either category.

One gets the impression that, rather than learning from our Royal Family, Melania has been taking lessons in morbid sensitivity from her egotistic husband. Who, judging by the photograph above, has stepped up his preparations for an impending gurning contest.

I’m no physiognomist, but I do sometimes wonder what kind of personality leaves such unusual imprints on a human face.

One pundit with a vested interest in proving the virtue of Putin’s regime, hailed its clean break with Russia’s Soviet past.

As proof of that welcome development, the hack who’ll go nameless (well, Peter Hitchens, if you insist) claimed that Lenin statues no longer adorn Russia’s landscape.

Actually, by latest count, 1,600 of such statues still tower over the country. And of course, in a lovingly maintained sinister ritual, Lenin’s mummy is still on display in that Babylonian ziggurat in Red Square.

But hey, what does one expect? Russians will be Russians, right? We in the West aren’t going to tolerate statues commemorating monsters – nor anyone else we don’t like for however spurious a reason.

In the US statues of the two opposing commanders in the Civil War, Ulysses Grant and Robert E Lee, are about to come down. These are to be followed by most signatories to the Declaration of Independence, including its author, Thomas Jefferson. And even poor old Teddy Roosevelt no longer rates commemoration.

In Britain, the same monsoon is about to sweep away Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes, General Hague, Field-Marshal Montgomery and countless others.

However, as the photograph above proves, just as some objectionable personages step down from their plinths, some secular saints are climbing up. Lest you might think that the newly erected statue of Lenin appears in Russia or some other post-communist space, rest assured that’s not the case.

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) has been allowed to erect the statue in front of its headquarters in Gelsenkirchen, a city that’s in the heart of what used to be the Federal Republic, not the former GDR.

When city authorities tried to block the project, they were overruled by the courts. Pluralism and diversity were thus affirmed, paving, in my view, the way for some neo-Nazi party to decorate its headquarters with a statue of Hitler. Fair is fair, nicht wahr?

MLPD führer, Gabi Fechtner, is understandably jubilant. Lenin, she said, was “an ahead-of-his-time thinker of world-historical importance, an early fighter for freedom and democracy.”

I’ll buy the “ahead-of-his time thinker of world-historical importance”. Indeed, Lenin created a regime the likes of which had never existed before, but one that gave rise to numerous imitations. Not only Stalin’s USSR, but also China, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, not to mention assorted African and Latin American countries, along with the entire Eastern Europe, can all testify to the great man’s forward thinking.

However, “an early fighter for freedom and democracy” gives me a spot of bother. Anyone who wishes to check Lenin’s record, which gives him a fair shot at being considered the most evil man in history, can do so on Google.

I, on the other hand, prefer to let the great democrat speak for himself, through his official correspondence, books and articles. Here’s a brief thesaurus:

“It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy…”

“Superb plan!… Pretending to be ‘greens’ (we’ll pin it on them later), we’ll penetrate 10-20 miles deep and hang kulaks, priests and landlords. Bonus: 100,000 roubles for each one hanged…”

“War to the death of the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intelligentsia… they must be punished for the slightest transgression… In one place we’ll put them in gaol, in another make them clean shithouses, in a third blacklist them after prison… in a fourth, shoot them on the spot… The more diverse, the better, the richer our common experience…”

“…In case of invasion, be prepared to burn all of Baku to the ground and announce this publicly…”

“Conduct merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guard; if in doubt, lock them up in concentration camps outside city limits.”

“Comrades… this is our last and decisive battle against the kulaks. We must set an example: hang (definitely hang, for everyone to see) at least 100 known kulaks, fat cats and bloodsuckers; publish their names; take all their grain away; nominate hostages…; make sure that even 100 miles away everyone will see, tremble, know that bloodsucking kulaks are being strangled.”

“Suggest you appoint your own leaders and shoot both the hostages and doubters, without asking anyone’s permission and avoiding idiotic dithering.”

“I don’t think we should spare the city and put this off any longer, for merciless annihilation is vital…”

“As far as foreigners are concerned, no need to rush their expulsion. A concentration camp is better…”

“Every foreign citizen resident in Russia, aged 17 to 55, belonging to the bourgeoisie of the countries hostile to us, must be put into concentration camps…”

“Far from all peasants realise that free trade in grain is a crime against the state. ‘I grew the grain, it’s mine, I have a right to sell it,’ that’s how the peasant thinks, in the old way. But we’re saying this is a crime against the state.”

“I suggest all theatres be put into a coffin.”

“I’m reaching an indisputable conclusion that it’s precisely now that we must give a decisive and merciless battle to the Black Hundreds clergy, suppressing their resistance with such cruelty that they won’t forget it for several decades… The more reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we shoot while at it, the better.”

“…Punish Latvia and Estonia militarily (for example follow the Whites in a mile deep and hang 100-1,000 officials and fat cats).”

“Rather than stopping terror (promising this would be deception or self-deception), the courts must justify and legalise it unequivocally, clearly…”

Looks like the German courts have “unequivocally, clearly” legalised Genosse Lenin’s statue as a focus of public worship. Genosse Hitler, your turn next.

The tragic death of George Floyd, the recidivist criminal killed while resisting arrest in Minneapolis, is widely believed to have been caused by racism lurking in every white breast.

Although Minneapolis is in the US and the first B in BBC points at its British provenance, our state broadcaster felt called upon to respond – by announcing blatantly racist policies of its own and thereby confirming the allegations.

Over the next three years the BBC, declared Director General Tony Hall, will be investing £100 million of our money to produce “diverse and inclusive content”.

That content will be produced by diverse and inclusive people: 20 per cent of off-screen talent must be black and other racial minorities, or else homosexual, crippled or coming from a “disadvantaged socio-economic background”.

I detect a possible loophole here, which we, licence fee payers, must be alert enough to close. A producer or a casting director who’s black, Muslim, one-legged, Lesbian and a former council estate dweller, must only tick one box, not five.

Anyway, this policy won’t just apply to off-screen talent. The output of BBC TV will be subjected to three “diversity tests”, and it must pass at least two of them to be adjudged fit for our delicately sensitive audiences.

The tests are: ‘diverse’ stories and portrayals, ‘diverse’ production teams and talent, production companies led by ‘diverse’ people. Allow me to translate: the BBC is introducing an ironclad racial (and other ‘disadvantaged’) quota that must be filled regardless of any other qualifications.

Presumably, if the requisite number of qualified people can’t be found within the mandated groups, then unqualified ones will have to do. And if this diversity adversely affects the quality of the output, then it’s just too bad.

I must be missing something, but I thought that having a race-based hiring policy violates every possible law dealing with equal treatment for all. This sort of thing strikes me as unmitigated racism, and I hope you’ll join me in a violent protest against such iniquity (bring your own Molotov cocktail).

Trying to find out whether producing discriminatory “diverse and inclusive content” is part of the BBC’s remit, I turned to the text of its Charter. This is what it says:

“The Mission of the BBC is to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.”

I especially like the ‘impartial’ bit, and not only in view of the current developments. Over 90 per cent of BBC staff vote Labour at every election, which is predictable, considering that the corporation runs its appointment ads only in The Guardian, that celebrated bastion of impartiality.

The ruse works, judging by the unwavering left-wing bias of BBC programming. However, the Charter says nothing about “diverse and inclusive content”, and not even a word about compromising high quality for low politics.

Yet again the BBC unwittingly makes a case for the withdrawal of the licence fee. Let it fend for itself in an open market, to see how its “diverse and inclusive content” fares against the output of commercial channels. Best of luck to it.

P.S. On an unrelated subject, I’m amazed to see so many KIA cars on the road. One would think people would balk at buying a vehicle called Killed In Action.

Singer Vera Lynn, ‘the Forces’ Sweetheart’, died at the venerable age of 103, and there’s hardly an English heart that doesn’t feel sorrow.

My heart is English only vicariously, but I too felt sad on hearing the news. For I was moved each time I heard her recorded voice singing “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…” I hated myself afterwards, for being a mawkish sentimentalist, but there was little to be done about that.

Every nation has songs conveying similar sentiments, war songs outlasting the war. For example, I’m sure Germans still get soppy listening to recordings of Marlene Dietrich’s Lili Marleen – although I suspect the French may have mixed feelings about Maurice Chevalier’s Paris reste Paris.

Now my memory is weird. I have none at all for numerals: the only phone number I remember is my home’s in London. When I need my number in France or that of my mobile, I have to look them up.

However, my memory for words is well above average. I’m not going to boast about my English vocabulary, that being a tool of my trade. But I do remember, trivially and uselessly, the complete lyrics of hundreds of songs in two languages, and God only knows how many poems.

Dozens of the songs I know are Russian ballads, written during or at least about the war. Some of them are as poignant as We’ll Meet Again, some even more so. But the point I wish to make is that there are indeed dozens of them.

Thus it was to my shame that I realised that Dame Vera’s signature tune is the only wartime English song I knew. I made an effort to jog my memory and still drew a blank – apart from a British ditty about the testicular deficiency of Nazi leadership and the American typological equivalent Right in der Führer’s Face.

Considering that I’ve spent most of my adult life in an Anglophone environment, these were slim pickings indeed. And there I was, thinking I had absorbed every particle of my adopted culture.

Desperate to bridge that gap in my assimilation effort I asked my wife to mention a few wartime songs. No need to sing or recite the lyrics. Just tell me what they were.

Now Penelope isn’t just English, but what my erstwhile colleagues called ‘very English’, as if Englishness were a quantifiable concept. So she instantly came up with We’ll Meet Again and… well, We’ll Meet Again. That was it.

Of course Penelope is a concert pianist, whose musical experience leaves little room for downmarket genres. She’d have no problem recalling scores of Bach cantatas or Schubert lieder, but popular songs just aren’t part of her life.

Fair enough. Recognising that my research sample was too small, I rang a few English friends and asked the same question about songs from the Second World War. Much to my dismay I also got the same reply: “We’ll Meet Again.” “And what else?” “Er… We’ll Meet Again.”

I didn’t conduct a similar survey among my Russian friends, because I didn’t have to: I already knew what the result would be. Few of them would know by heart as many lyrics as I do, but none of them would fail to recall the titles of dozens of war songs, and perhaps a line or two in each.

This is a detail, but of the kind where the devil is. Because, applying Aristotle’s cognitive methodology, we can go from the particular to the general and ask the next question: How come the British know so few war songs (or just one) and the Russians know so many?

A single-word answer will suffice: exposure. Someone growing up in Russia, and not just immediately after the war but even now, wouldn’t be able to avoid, no matter how hard he tried, hearing whole medleys of war songs every day. However, a Briton would hardly ever hear them, and that’s without making a special effort of avoidance.

Next question: how come? Here I’d suggest that anyone who ponders this question properly will understand more about Russia than he will by perusing learned tomes.

Especially if he also compares the celebrations of Victory Day in Britain and Russia. In Britain, these are short and mournful. They are a cause for sorrowful remembrance and perhaps a prayer, not for bellicose drum-rattling, bugle-whining celebrations.

Which is exactly what they are in Russia. Tanks and ICBMs trundle over the cobbles of Red Square, troops goosestep, current leaders wave from the ziggurat housing Lenin’s mummy. Thousands of tipsy idiots crowd the streets, yelling “We can do it again!!!”

What can you do again, idiots? – I’m tempted to ask. Form an alliance with the most evil regime you can find? Carve up Europe with it? Flood it with supplies it needs to pounce on the West? Finally fall out with it? Fight the war so ineptly and with so much contempt for soldiers’ lives that the road from Moscow to Berlin is still paved with the bones of tens of millions? Loot and rape your way through Eastern Europe and then Germany? Install blood-stained regimes in Eastern Europe and reinforce your own?

Individuals think, but masses don’t. A wad of humanity is no longer quite human; it acts by reflexes nurtured and conditioned over a lifetime. And idolising the war is one reflex that’s hammered into the Russians before all others.

The victory bought at the expense of 27 million lives (including at least half a million of their own soldiers executed by the Soviets themselves) isn’t just a part of history – it’s the only self-legitimising factor of the regime, its stock reply to otherwise uncomfortable questions.

How come a third of the population starve? We won the war. Why is everything worth buying made abroad? We won the war. Why is Russia always at the bottom of every list dealing with civil rights and quality of life? We won the war. Why do Russians have to die in the Ukraine and Syria? We won the war.

This isn’t a simple Q&A exercise. A population has to be house-trained to lap up that ubiquitous answer, it has to be systematically brainwashed to scream “we can do it again” instead of “down with [the current father of the nation]”.

And war songs are a crucial part of that satanic programme of universal dumbing-down and brutalisation. That’s why all Russians grow up hearing them endlessly at home and everywhere they go – not just on Victory Day but every day.

Many of those songs are very good individually; some even better than We’ll Meet Again. But unlike Vera Lynn’s classic, they aren’t pure in heart, not collectively at any rate. For everything that serves a sinister end is itself sinister.

Dame Vera Lynn, RIP. 

At least Covid and BLM did us the favour of keeping Greta Thunberg and her particular obsession more or less out of the news.

‘More or less’ are the operative words here, for Greta is a veritable polymath. Though the world gave global warming a short break, she filled her time by appearing on the CNN panel of experts discussing coronavirus. I’m eagerly awaiting her contribution to piano technique, molecular biology and treatment for cancer.

Now the two current blights seem to be past their peak, Greta is back with a vengeance, and so is her pet issue. But, having acquired expertise in adjacent areas, she has graduated from analysis to synthesis. Greta cast a panoramic glance around her and realised that global warming, coronavirus and BLM are all aspects of the same problem.

The problem is the West with its pernicious politics and money-grubbing capitalism. That dastardly entity is trying to fry people alive with carbon dioxide, poison them with Covid-19 and exterminate ethnic minorities.

But no longer. According to Greta the world has “passed a social tipping point, we can no longer look away from what our society has been ignoring for so long whether it is equality, justice or sustainability”.

However, global warming is taking centre stage again as the longest prong of the trident about to skewer mankind. Here Greta treats different countries’ undertakings to reduce carbon emissions with the derision they deserve.

Even if they keep their word, which is never a given with capitalists, we’ll still suffer “catastrophic global temperature rises of 3-4 degrees” and the ensuing extinction of life.

As with cancer treatment, which must be next on Greta’s agenda, it’s no use treating the symptoms of the disease while ignoring its cause. And the cause is capitalism.

Hence the only way to avert the extinction of life on Earth is to get rid of capitalism and its political offshoots. “The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today’s political and economic systems”, explained Greta. “That isn’t an opinion. That’s a fact.”

Of course it is, dear, now calm yourself, have a glass of milk and go to bed. Seriously now, what does it say about a cause when its most prominent champion is a hormonally retarded, hysterical child with a whole raft of mental problems?

But let’s not be too beastly to Greta. She merely jumped on the bandwagon that had started rolling before she was born. Greta didn’t invent the global warming hoax; she just lent her shrill, incoherent voice to it.

For the ‘catastrophes’ of global temperature risings of a few degrees have happened countless times in the past – and somehow both the Earth and its inhabitants have managed to hang on. Moreover, the periods of global warming always miraculously coincided with an increase in biodiversity and general well-being.

Nor is there a shred of proof that those cyclical temperature rises were driven by atmospheric CO₂. In fact, The CO₂ in the atmosphere is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO₂ in life, and human activity contributes only 3.8 per cent to that minuscule proportion.

It wouldn’t take a mind much greater than Greta’s to figure out that, if global warming is caused by anthropogenic carbon emissions, then no such phenomenon would have existed before capitalists colluded to profit from industrial activity.

Conversely, if it can be shown that there were extended warm periods in the idyllic times of carbon-free economies (or no economies at all), then the whole global warming will be shown for the ideological fraud it is.

In fact, if we look at the past six million years, it was warmer than now for three million of them. The rest of the time saw a steady increase in the frequency of climatic cycles, with glacial and interglacial periods (such as the one we’re living in now) alternating at varying intervals, lasting from millions of years to mere decades. Compared to those cycles, modern warming is trivial.

If we look at the past thousands, rather than millions, of years, there were warmings galore. For example, in the Roman Warming (250 BC to 450 AD) temperature was at least 2C to 6C higher than now. During that ‘catastrophe’, in the 1^st century BC, citrus trees and grapes were grown in England as far north as Hadrian’s Wall.

Medieval Warming (900-1,300 AD) registered similar temperatures – and similar flourishing of agriculture. That created an abundance of food and a massive influx of excess capital and labour. Both, incidentally, went into the construction of the great cathedrals that adorn Europe to this day.

Cycles of glacial and interglacial periods have been with us forever, and scientists still don’t know exactly every contributing factor. About 98 per cent of climate changes are produced by variations in solar activity. Also vital are volcanicity, cloud cover, changes in Earth’s orbit, radiation levels, the position of other planets, such as Jupiter, and so forth, ad infinitum.

Serious study of climate changes must engage many different sciences, including inter alia astronomy, geology, solar physics, astrophysics, palaeontology, tectonics, oceanography, geochemistry, volcanology – and history.

Since our Renaissance girl Greta doubtless possesses expertise in all these disciplines, she can explain why temperature hasn’t increased in the past two decades despite the growing amount of anthropogenic CO₂.

If CO₂ produced by capitalism is killing ‘our planet’, then why did the global temperature increase from 1919 to 1940, decrease from 1940 to 1976,  increase from 1976 to 1998 and decrease from 1998 to the present? And why do the same people who in the early 1970s were screaming about an imminent Ice Age now carry on about global warming?

They base their alarmism on computer models ranging from speculative to slapdash to downright fraudulent. For example, the notorious ‘hockey stick’ graph was concocted by plotting data that excluded Roman and Medieval Warmings and choosing only a short arbitrary period. As to such factors as solar activity, they were ignored altogether.

Greta gets one thing right, albeit inadvertently: the issue has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. The kind of politics that can indeed bring about global extinction possibly and global enslavement definitely.

The poor child can’t be held responsible for her words and actions, but in a normal world the grown-ups who inflamed her little mind would be brought to account. But who told you we live in a normal world?

If I were to name one defining (and, to me, the most endearing) characteristic of the English, I’d probably opt for a sense of humour. Take it away, and England would be like Germany, but without the efficiency.

Not only is a sense of humour prevalent in England, it’s also unique and diverse. It can be cutting or affable, self-deprecating or savage, dry or ribald, subtle or direct.

Above all, the English have one commendable trait that perhaps only the Jews possess to the same extent: they can laugh at themselves. In that they are different from the French, who only do a good job laughing at others. And of course the Germans’ mirth is only ever provoked by bodily functions.

If humour is a defining characteristic of the English, then losing it would be tantamount to cultural genocide. Which is exactly the catastrophe unfolding before our very eyes.

The unsmiling, self-righteous woke brigade is taking over with the stern resolve typical of all totalitarians. It’s declaring ever-expanding areas of life to be off-limits for humour, realising – as all totalitarians do – that laughter can defeat them faster than rage.

Back in the day, the Soviets rewarded political jokes with 10-year sentences in the Gulag death camps. The Nazis also quashed all attempts at humour: Charlie Chaplin lampooning Hitler was their worst enemy.

Our budding totalitarians have all the same instincts, but they don’t yet have the same power. Hence they can only contort their features into a sanctimonious grimace, voice their displeasure and demand that the hapless wag be censured.

That fate befell the BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker, in the past an England footballer. Gary naturally has impeccable left-wing credentials, which partly explains why he became BBC’s top earner.

Yet also contributing to his popularity are his professional skill, easy charm and, well, sense of humour. It’s that latter faculty that got him in trouble.

Covid gave Gary a bit of downtime but, now the Premier League is back, so is he. Lineker hasn’t changed much from what I can see, but the Premiership has – in line with the neo-totalitarian BLM diktat.

All footballers, managers and referees have to take the knee before each match. I can’t help thinking that, among the several hundred people involved, there have to be a few who disapprove of the international pogrom spree inspired by the BLM slogan – this without being racists.

But the genuflecting craze leaves no room for disagreement, not for someone who wishes to keep his job. Totalitarians demand uniformity and are prepared to enforce it with every means at their disposal.

As part of their re-education campaign, they demanded that every player replace his name on the back of his jersey with the words Black Lives Matter. Thus, instead of saying, for example, ‘Harry Kane 9’ the shirt now has to say ‘Black Lives Matter 9’.

Gary Lineker responded to that holier-than-thou absurdity by tweeting a little joke to his 7.5 million followers: “Had a tenner on Black Lives Matter to score the first goal.”

If he forgot that life in England is no longer a laughing matter, he was quickly reminded of it. A torrent of reprimands wasn’t slow in coming:

“Out of order Gary! Is casual racism a thing with you now?” “So the last two weekends it’s been a serious message, we’ve had TV shows cancelled but this joke is acceptable?” “This is making a mockery of the message so yeah I fully expect people to want him sacked.” “Wow. Nothing to joke about, Gary. You’re cancelled.”

So far Lineker has been neither sacked nor cancelled, but the BBC, though declining to comment, has contacted his agent. We’ll wait and see.

While waiting, however, we can observe that the ethical standards imposed by the woke mob are considerably stricter than those demanded by Jesus Christ. He, after all, only placed the Holy Ghost off-limits:

“Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.”

Never mind all manner of sin and blasphemy. These days – in England! – a man can lose his livelihood for making an innocent joke. He can’t yet lose his life, but one can see where things are going.

Everyone who knows him as intimately as I do is aware that my friend Donald Trump is a man of exquisite style, vast erudition and unimpeachable [sic] integrity.

In fact, I advised him during the 2016 campaign to tone down his boundless vocabulary for tactical reasons, and certainly to refrain from using foreign, especially Latin, phrases. The odd grammatical solecism, alien as it was to his refined locution, would also go down well with his core electorate, I suggested.

“But Al,” objected Donald, “Caesar non supra grammaticos, meaning a president shouldn’t sound like a square from Delaware.” Thankfully, however, Donald eventually followed my advice and adjusted his speech patterns accordingly.

So much more appalled was I to find out that Donald fell victim to calumny perpetrated by his disgruntled former employee, John Bolton. That scumbag, to use Donald’s favourite word, maligned the president, describing him as a self-centred ignoramus.

Sensing that Donald was in need of solace, I immediately rang him on the burner mobile he had given me on my birthday. It was only during our conversation that I realised how perfidious Bolton is, and how unfounded his allegations.

“The plebs are all over me,” complained Donald. “They say ex nihilo nihil fit, there’s no smoke without fire.”

“Yes, Don,” I commiserated. “How dare he claim you thought Finland was part of Russia!”

“That scumbag is lying ab ova usque ad mala,” said Don. “He twists every word I actually said.”

“Which was?”

“As I recollect, we were discussing Finland, a Nato member whose sovereignty is inviolable in accordance with Article 5 of the Nato Charter, and whose close proximity to Russia puts it in a precarious position. The Russians treat it as if it still were the Suomen suuriruhtinaskunta, the Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. And now that scumbag claims I said Finland still was part of Russia.”

“He also claims you said invading Venezuela would be cool…”

“I’m getting a distinct sense of déjà vu,” sighed Donald. “All I said was Venezuela delenda est, meaning my moral position on that country’s heinous dictatorship is intractable. Hier stehe, ich kann nicht anders, and I don’t even have to subsist on a diet of worms.”

Seeing that his pun went right by me, Donald added with a wry smile: “I’m as capable of a lapsus manus as the next man. You know, homo sum humani a me nihil alienum puto, even though I’m no homo.

“But that scheming scumbag pretends not to realise that subtle changes in inflection can act effectively as a prosodic, extra-lexical means of communication.

“For example, he says I didn’t know Britain possessed nuclear weapons. What fabulae! You know what really happened?

“That old broad, senex mulier, Theresa said Britain was a nuclear power. I guffawed in my supercilious manner and said, I didn’t realise Britain was a nuclear power. Meaning it takes more than a couple of peashooters to qualify as a power.

“Cogitesne? Get it? I know perfectly well that Britain possesses a nuclear deterrent. I just questioned her being a goddamn power.

“Then I talk to that scumbag Xi, saying ‘Can’t offer you any circenses, Xi, other than my speeches, but US farmers can flood you with panem and especially soya, whatever the hell that is in Latin.’

“All I wanted to do was to help out our farmers who overproduce like lepores, and Chinamen, come to that. When I don’t negotiate on their behalf, scumbags like Bolton call me insensitive. When I do, they call me self-serving. Auribus teneo lupum – damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

The rest of our conversation was emotional and strictly confidential. At the end I told my friend not to be excessively worried about the upcoming election.

There’s more to Donald Trump than just the presidency. Worst comes to worse, he can always become a professor of classics at an Ivy League university.

By using the phrase ‘people who menstruate’ instead of ‘women’, JK Rowling committed a crime that only by some oversight hasn’t yet been made an imprisonable offence.

Yet prison isn’t the only form of punishment. Abuse in the social media, ostracism and now a strike at her publisher’s office can be punitive enough.

If you still think free speech is intact, witness the refusal by employees of Hachette UK to work on Miss Rowling’s new book. They simply can’t bring themselves to proofread any text produced by someone who claims that women are women and men are men.

Miss Rowling deserves respect for proving yet again that perverse is the new normal, even more so than for her books, none of which I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Just think of it: virulent attacks are levelled at a celebrated author for saying something that should go without saying – that women’s lavatories should be reserved for women.

This is what Miss Rowling actually wrote: “… I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”

If that’s not self-evident, I don’t know what is. Those who have problems with Miss Rowling’s statement ought to look at what’s going on in women’s prisons. Burly thugs are put there because they ‘identify’ as women. Predictably, they then rape everyone there, including some female screws.

Yet the sheer volume of venom splashed on Miss Rowling was such that she felt called upon to offer 3,700 words of superfluous mock-Freudian explanation for her newly unorthodox views. In doing so, she undid some of her good work, though not all.

Apparently, she suffered sexual assault in her younger days, which explains her quest for “women-only spaces”. And because her Daddy really wanted a son, “if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition.”

In other words, if a very feminine Miss Rowling hadn’t been assaulted sexually, she’d have nothing against men walking into women’s lavatories at will. And, belying her crass insensitivity, she feels empathy for gender-benders – why, she could be one herself if she were younger.

Miss Rowling hasn’t quite been forced by the fascistic woke crowd to renounce her sane statement. But she has been forced to claim that, but for that unfortunate blip, she’s like them. And if she’s not entirely like them, she certainly has nothing against them.

I would have simply said that the issue bears no discussion: if your chromosomes are XY, you are a man; if they are XX, you are a woman. Full stop. End of conversation. And if, being a man, you wish to gain access to women’s lavatories, you’re a voyeur at best, rapist at worst. But then of course I have less to lose than Miss Rowling.

Hermaphrodites exist, and they’ve always existed. Yet their numbers are so small that they fall into the same category as Siamese twins and babies born with two heads.

Most unfortunate, that, but hermaphrodites merit no more special dispensation than do Siamese twins or bicephals. One doesn’t read too many demands that all clothing shops carry a line of two-in-one jackets and hats.

Nor does transsexuality merit elevation to a political issue. Yet everything can be made political these days, because our voting masses have been brainwashed to accept woke drivel as reality.

Perhaps ‘brainwashed’ is a wrong word here. Brains have to exist before they are washed, yet the woke brigade doesn’t satisfy this requirement in any other than the purely anatomical sense.

Those people don’t rely on reason to form their convictions. They respond to outside stimuli by reflexes only, like dogs or skunks. That negates the advantage of being human, throwing God’s most sublime creation back into his face.

To their credit, Hachette UK’s managers showed they still possess residual humanity by telling their employees they can’t refuse to work on Miss Rowling’s latest cash cow. “Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of publishing,” they said most commendably if, these days, less than truthfully.

But then, just like their prime client, they had to add a clarification that destroyed the good impression they had made:

“We will never make our employees work on a book whose content they find upsetting for personal reasons, but we draw a distinction between that and refusing to work on a book because they disagree with an author’s views outside their writing, which runs contrary to our belief in free speech.”

In other words, they can’t boycott those writers who express objectionable views in private. However, refusing to work on a book that says something brainless youths don’t like is perfectly all right. Those champions of free speech do draw the line in fine places.

Is it any wonder then that there exists a groundswell of opinion that we should redact from history great warriors, statesmen and philanthropists? Those who are guilty only of having failed to anticipate that at some time in the future an anomic chaos would arrive, turning all certitudes upside down and enforcing compliance with perverse and absurd notions.

This leaves only one question unanswered. If all our beliefs must spring from personal trauma to be valid, was Miss Rowling sexually assaulted in a public lavatory? Her faithful readers want to know.

Without Nato, Europe can’t survive as anything other than a purely geographic entity. This is as true now as it was during the Cold War.

Actually, the past tense is misplaced here. The Cold War never ended. It just took a 10-year break, only to come back, this time with red-hot edges.

An expansionist Russia ruled by history’s only fusion of secret police and organised crime constitutes what’s called a clear and present danger. Putin has declared that rebuilding the Soviet Union (whose demise he called “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20^th century”) is his life’s mission – presumably in addition to multiplying his billions in offshore havens.

Lest we refuse to take him at his word, in 2014 Russia annexed vast tracts of Ukrainian territory, killing 13,000 Ukrainians in the process and running up the score even further by downing a certain airliner. In response, Western countries introduced sanctions, turned G8 into G7 and beefed up their military presence in Europe.

In response to their response, Putin recently announced a change to Russia’s war doctrine. The country may now use a nuclear first strike with low-yield theatre weapons. Doctrine or no doctrine, no one ever doubted the Russians were capable of that anyway, but now it’s official. Russia’s threat is at present as deadly as it ever was, perhaps even more so.

Therefore Nato’s role is as vital as it has ever been. And vital to Nato is Article 5 of its charter, saying that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Without all 30 members being fully committed to Article 5, the whole charter is for all intents and purposes null and void.

Now, while Europe can’t survive without Nato, Nato can’t survive without the US. It depends on a wholehearted American commitment – which, under President Trump, has been lukewarm at best.

I’ve written enough about Trump’s obvious admiration for Putin, accompanied by a demonstrable refusal to see Russia as a threat, despite all evidence. I’m not going to probe into the possible reasons for this attachment. Suffice it to say it exists.

Hence Trump has been making anti-Nato noises since even before assuming the presidency. His vitriol is usually aimed at European countries, especially Germany, for failing to meet their funding pledges.

That point is fair: whenever European countries feel the need to reduce public spending, their scissors go to the defence budget first. However, even though America contributes disproportionately to the Nato budget, she also derives numerous economic benefits inherent in her position as the Leader of the Free World.

Still, Europe should contribute more to its own protection, and somewhat begrudgingly it’s beginning to do so. If some countries still fall short of the agreed level of contributions (two per cent of GDP), America should try to influence them, not throw its toys out of the pram.

Yet that’s what Trump would do, given half the chance. With his transactional, bean-counting view of life, he clearly feels that the balance still isn’t in America’s favour. He may or may not be right, but geopolitics, unlike, say, property development, can’t be all about dollars and cents.

One can’t avoid the impression that Trump sees Nato as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Take if it pays; leave if it doesn’t.

As to Article 5, he has dropped countless hints that he sees it as an ad hoc arrangement, not an ironclad commitment. This encourages Putin who has designs on all former Soviet republics, but especially the Baltics, Estonia in particular.

Enter Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, one of Trump’s closest political allies and his mouthpiece, activated to say outright what the president can only intimate. In a recent speech, Gingrich proved that he takes on board not only Trump’s ideas but also his demotic style:

“Estonia is in the suburbs of St Petersburg. The Russians aren’t gonna necessarily come across the border militarily. The Russians are gonna do what they did in Ukraine. I’m not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St Petersburg. I think we have to think about what does this stuff mean.”

If former professors of history sound like that, what can one expect from mere property developers? But never mind the style, feel the message. And it’s eerily reminiscent of another one, delivered by Neville Chamberlain on 27 September, 1938:

“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”

The subsequent events, largely set off by this statement, ought to have taught mankind a useful lesson, but they didn’t. History never does.

Now, Estonia is 98 miles from St Petersburg. If such proximity makes her ineligible for Nato protection, then the Finns can’t sleep peacefully either: they are even closer. But then of course Gingrich was a professor of history, not geography.

Within his own discipline, what does he suppose the Russians did to the Ukraine? The answer is, they committed, and are continuing to commit, an act of unprovoked military aggression.

If that’s what lies in store for Estonia, both Gingrich and Trump seem to be relaxed about that. After all, rather than being a sovereign country and a fellow Nato member, Estonia is a mere suburb of St Petersburg.

If you doubt that Gingrich is enunciating Trump’s thoughts, the president’s actions have their own eloquence. Ever since Russia was booted out of the G8, he has been trying his best to have her reinstated, and to have all sanctions lifted.

Only staunch resistance on the part of Congress has stopped Trump from fully consummating his love affair with Putin. Yet he keeps trying.

A few days ago the president announced plans to withdraw 9,500 US troops from Germany, about a quarter of the total contingent. Some of the top US generals have pointed out that this would greatly jeopardise the Nato capability to respond to Russian aggression. I hope Trump managed to contain a QED smile.

Considering that 22 Republican congressmen are opposed to the action, it may not go ahead. But it’s the thought that counts, and the thought sends a signal to Putin, which isn’t dissimilar to the one Chamberlain sent to Hitler.