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Literary critics often amuse themselves by arguing which first sentence in which great novel is the best of all.

Those arguments strike me as futile because such qualitative judgements as ‘best’ imply the existence of objective criteria to be applied. Since no such criteria exist, ‘good’, ‘better’ and ‘best’ are fated to remain subjective statements of taste.

This isn’t to imply that all tastes are equal, far from it. But any comparative aesthetic judgement ultimately has to boil down to an ad hominem.

Thus you can’t prove to your opponent that Franz Schubert is a greater musician than John Lennon. By insisting that Winterreise is superior to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, all you are saying – correctly, as it happens – is that your taste is superior to his.

Following this logic, I steadfastly refuse to join the arguments about the relative merits of Austen’s “It is a truth universally acknowledged…”, Dickens’s “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and any number of other celebrated opening lines.

However, defying that logic, I can identify categorically and in a manner brooking no dissent the greatest last sentence in a work of fiction. None of all those ‘to my taste’, ‘arguably’ or ‘one could suggest’. Down with equivocation: the greatest last sentence ever written concludes Tolstoy’s novelette Hadji Murat.

My relationship with the author is complex. In my book, God and Man According to Tolstoy (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009), I tore to shreds Tolstoy’s philosophical and religious works, which, alas, take up half of his 91-volume legacy.

However, I never concealed my veneration of the other half, his works of fiction whose artistry, in my view, has never been matched by any other novelist in any language.

His longer novels, War and Peace, Anna Karenina and especially Resurrection are overburdened with Tolstoy’s hectoring asides on history, education, agriculture, morality, religion and other subjects close to his heart. Most of those digressions are as silly as his non-fiction. Yet even they can’t damage the works of art shaped by Tolstoy’s masterly hand.

I’ve never read such piercingly moving depictions of new life coming and old life going as the scenes of Andrei Bolkonsky’s dying in War and Peace and Kitty’s giving birth in Anna Karenina. Still, the sheer length of these masterpieces, and the intrusion of Tolstoy’s asides, take something away from the artistry, though mercifully leaving enough left for us to admire.

Tolstoy’s late novelettes, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Hadji Murat, each under 150 pages long, are free from annoying pseudo-philosophical distractions, which makes them arguably the most flawless gems in the treasure trove of prose fiction.

You see, I too can hedge my aesthetic judgement with ‘in my view’ and ‘arguably’. Yet, as I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m not going to do that when identifying the greatest last sentence in world literature. It appears in Hadji Murat, which I recently re-read after a hiatus as long as the average life expectancy in Russia.

The protagonist was a historical figure, a prominent independence fighter in the Caucasian wars Russia started in the early 19^th century and has continued, on and off, ever since. Hadji Murat was a controversial character who intermittently tried to get rid of the Russians by using Imam Shamil and then to get rid of Imam Shamil by using the Russians.

Both men were Avars, one of the Muslim tribes in the Caucasus. However, Shamil was a proponent of Muridism, an ideology that combined Sufi tenets with a call to jihad against Russian imperialism. Hadji Murat saw that ideology as a threat to their common cause, which eventually drove him away from Shamil.

The last straw came crashing down when Shamil named his son as his successor. To Hadji Murat that meant the perpetuation of Muridism, something he couldn’t accept. Shamil knew that and decided to have his rival killed.

Yet one of Shamil’s men warned Hadji Murat and he managed to escape. But his family, including his beloved son, was left behind and held captive.

Hadji Murat surrendered to the Russians who both admired and mistrusted him. Russian generals saw him as one of history’s great cavalry commanders; their wives swooned when that dark romantic hero floated into the room with his exotic entourage.

The Russians effectively kept Hadji Murat under house arrest and remained deaf to his pleas for men and arms he needed to rescue his family from Shamil. When one day Hadji Murat found out that Shamil was about to have his son blinded, he could wait no longer.

He escaped again, this time from the Russians, and rode out with a handful of his trusted comrades to rescue his family or die in the attempt. But the Cossacks and Caucasian tribesmen hostile to Hadji Murat tracked them down. In the ensuing firefight the outnumbered great warrior was killed, and his embalmed head was sent to the Tsar.  

These historical facts provide the bare bones of Tolstoy’s story, which he envelops in the luxuriant flesh of his artistry. The first two pages describe the narrator walking through ploughed meadows and admiring the profusion of wild flowers.

Tolstoy paints the field and its flowers with broad, lurid strokes from his endless palette, and the reader can see the blazing glory of the colours, breathe in the redolent aroma, hear the rustle of the grass. And then the narrator, having let us admire the accuracy of his eye and the sure touch of his brush, makes it clear that what he has shown with so much mastery is only a metaphor.

He comes across a thistle bent by the plough but not crushed by it: “ ‘What energy!’ ” I thought. “Man has conquered everything, destroyed millions of shrubs, but this one still doesn’t surrender!

“And I recalled an old Caucasian story, part of which I saw, other parts I heard from eyewitnesses, still others I imagined. Here is that story, as it came together in my memory and imagination.”

What follows is some 120 pages of the narrative I so crudely summed up above. The narrator recedes into the background never to reappear until the last sentence, simple and sublime, and sublime in its simplicity.

His place is taken by Hadji Murat and his comrades; by Russian soldiers, officers and generals; by Tsar Nicholas I, his ministers, courtiers and viceroys. (One of whom, Mikhail Vorontsov, has a street in London’s St John’s Wood named after him.) The pages are filled with love and hate, lust and betrayal, life and death – all drawn with the artistry so admired by, among many others, Vladimir Nabokov.

In his Lectures on Russian Literature, he calls Tolstoy “philosopher of the flesh” and compares him favourably to Flaubert. The Frenchman, writes Nabokov, takes a whole page to draw the portrait of Monsieur Bovary. By contrast, Tolstoy could have done it by creating with just one telling detail a compelling visual image that would stay with the reader for ever.

Such mastery animates every page of Hadji Murat.

The reader feels almost embarrassed: it’s as if he were a Peeping Tom, spying through the window on other people’s lives. Tolstoy’s is the kind of stark, laconic realism that draws the reader in and forces him to live the life of the protagonist, feel his feelings, die his death.

The narrative is a kaleidoscope of lurid colours, a whirlwind of penetrating insights, a maelstrom of human strengths and weaknesses, of good and evil. The narrator, the ‘I’ of the story, is nowhere to be seen, seemingly leaving the reader to do his own feeling, his own living and his own dying.

And only in that last sentence does he let his presence be known again: “It was that death that I was reminded of by the thistle crushed in the ploughed field.”

The metaphor, by now forgotten, reappears in a few short words, so unassuming that one could be deceived into thinking that anyone else could have written them. But no one else has ever written with so much power packed in so few words.

I gasped and slowly closed the slim volume that’s worth infinitely more than all the 50 volumes of Tolstoy’s ‘philosophy’ put together. Such is human nature, I suppose, never satisfied with God’s gifts, no matter how lavish, always reaching for something God withheld, in Tolstoy’s case the mind of a philosopher.

This is the kind of hubris God invariably punishes by turning the sinner into an easy target for criticism. This, to paraphrase Tolstoy, is the sin I was reminded of by re-reading Hadji Murat and trying to catch my breath taken away by that last sentence.

Recently, I finished reading a 900-page biography of William F Buckley by Sam Tannenhaus, and this was a labour of love.

Not so much for the book, although it’s good enough, but for its subject. I feel indebted to Buckley and his magazine, National Review.

When I found myself in the US in 1973, I was a callow ignoramus. My reading in Russia, where good books were rarely available, had been sporadic. My instincts were conservative, but I had no idea how to relate them to any coherent philosophy. I knew exactly what I hated, communist tyranny, but had a hazy notion of what I loved.

National Review, with its staff of the brightest conservative writers in the West, pointed me in the right direction. Thanks to Buckley and his friends, I found out what I should read, what I should think about, what conservatism really meant. At least, as they saw it.

Years have passed, I’ve struck out on my own, written my own books and developed my own take on conservatism. In many ways, I’ve outgrown Buckley and National Review, but not the feeling of gratitude for the guidance they unwittingly offered a young lad trying to find his own feet.  

Hence, reading Tannenhaus’s book was a bit like repaying a debt of honour. Truth to tell, I doubt I would have finished the book had it been about anyone else. It was a case of what youngsters today call ‘TMI’, too much information. Everything I found of interest could have been told in half the number of pages, but I soldiered on dutifully.

As I said, the book is still good enough, and other readers may find all that profusion of everyday details fascinating. But one thing was jarring, and it had to do not with content but with orthography.

Whenever the subject of race came up, which was often, considering that the book was about an American conservative with Southern roots, the author spelled ‘Black’ with an upper-case initial and ‘white’ with a lower case one.

That struck me as eccentric and inexplicably inconsistent. After all, both races should receive equal treatment – it’s initial cap for both or neither. In fact, I’ve always spelled both ‘black’ and ‘white’ in the lower case, unlike such technical terms as ‘Negroid’, ‘Caucasian’ or ‘Mongoloid’.  

I mentioned this oddity to my American friends, and they treated me in a frankly condescending way, like an alien from a faraway planet who has a lot to learn about the Earthlings and their mores.

It turned out that this incongruous spelling is mandated by all publishers and news agencies. They are driven by higher concerns than grammar and orthography: an urgent desire to establish their woke credentials. This is a kind of password granting admission to the inner sanctum of wokery, like Kipling’s Mowgli and his four-legged friends saying to one another: “We be of one blood, ye and I.”

Well, as Americans like to say, different strokes for different folks. If this is what the publishing powers that be get off on, who am I to take issue? However, I do wonder if they realise that this orthographic anomaly betokens a worse kind of racism than the inspiration for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

This is a curious modern phenomenon: in the past, those who mauled the English language were illiterate folk who didn’t know better. These days, it’s chaps with advanced university degrees who don’t want to know better. They just want to score points in the wokery stakes.

Yet in the process they admit for all intents and purposes that they regard blacks as culturally, intellectually and psychologically inferior. Blacks are simpletons who need to be thrown sops from their superiors’ table lest they may be traumatised.

Only a single-cell humanoid would be offended by traditional, and correct, spelling. Hence, assuming that blacks en masse would riot in the streets if their race didn’t rate a capital ‘B’ is tantamount to denying blacks the status of full humanity. This is the most flagrant racism one could imagine – the sort of thing that was widespread in the South when Buckley was growing up, but not since then, certainly not to the same extent.

I’m not proposing to delve into the entire complexity of race relations in the US. My concern is the survival of our civilisation, of which language is, if you will, the binding agent. When educated people are prepared to destroy their language, they thereby signal not their virtue but their anomie, alienation from a civilisation they hate.

In God’s eyes, erecting “a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven” with the subsequent disintegration of language was severe punishment: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

What’s happening now is even worse: those language destroyers understand one another’s speech perfectly well, but it’s no longer speech. It’s a desemanticised semiotic system signalling the triumph of evil.

I wonder whether Thomas Sowell, one of the best living thinkers, would throw his toys out of the pram if he saw his race spelled with a lower-case ‘b’. Something tells me he wouldn’t, and he probably feels about this abomination the same way I do.

He grew up in an impoverished black family that knew old-style racism at its worst. Many of their neighbours probably regarded them as less than human, or at least as inferior humans. But he must cringe at the sight of woke racism, where white folk make all the same assumptions but translate them into condescending superciliousness, camouflaged as virtue.

It pains me to see signs of that in a book about one of the foremost conservative figures of the 20^th century. Buckley himself would be scathing about this racism masquerading as namby-pamby wokery.

Writers should rebel against this orthographic vandalism. Joining forces, they should tell publishers and editors that they would refuse to have their books, articles or essays published with such affronts to cultural and intellectual decency.

People who take pen to paper or put fingers on computer keys have the duty of acting as guardians of our language, and hence of our civilisation. “Vandalism shall not pass” ought to be written on all manuscripts, not just those submitted by conservative writers.

Any writer who acquiesces to grammatical and orthographic vandalism becomes its accomplice. He should be drummed out of the profession and, if he treats ‘black’ and ‘white’ differently, charged with fomenting racial hatred.

In April, 1945, Hitler was becoming increasingly unhinged in his bunker. The war had been lost, but he was stubbornly trying to grasp a ray of hope.

That proved to be as futile as trying to grasp a ray of light. Yet until almost his last moments, Hitler kept repeating the same mantra, or rather two of them.

One was “Where is Wenck?” in reference to Gen. Walther Wenck whose Twelfth Army was trying in vain to break through the Allied encirclement to relieve Berlin’s garrison. The other was about the secret Wunderwaffe, a wonder-weapon that would arrive in time to save the day.

Originally the term was used in reference to the V-rockets expected to bring Britain to her knees. They didn’t, but in his last days Hitler was talking about something else. He hoped German scientists would beat Americans to the atomic punch, with mushroom clouds rising over the Allied troops.

That hope turned out to be forlorn, and since then the word Wunderwaffe has been used in German to describe an illusionary panacea. Donald Trump should look it up.

Flushed from his much-touted triumph of ending the war in the Middle East for ever, meaning for the next few months, Trump told the Knesset that now “we have to get Russia done”.

When Trump’s hot, he’s hot. But Putin’s bloody-mindedness regularly throws cold water over the Donald’s world-saving mission. At first, building on his experience of striking property development deals with shady characters, Trump thought that “great guy”, his friend Putin, would meet him halfway and agree to a peace deal Trump was trying to broker.

The deal seemed to be a no-brainer for the Russians. They’d have their ownership of the Crimea officially recognised. They’d get to keep all the Ukrainian territory they’ve occupied – and would also get the sweetener of some lands still in the Ukrainians’ hands. The Ukraine would undertake never to join NATO. And so on, stopping just short of the Ukraine being incorporated into Russia.

Yet Putin rejected the deal, beating Zelensky to it. Since then he has been giving his friend Donald the runaround and playing for time. You see, incorporating the Ukraine into Russia de facto, better still de jure, is precisely what Putin wants, the only kind of deal he’d accept.

That made Trump disappointed, and he said so. His whole lifetime career has been built on personal relationships based on mutual benefits or, that failing, coercion and threats. His personal relationship with his friend Vlad not getting him any closer to the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump decided it was time to talk tough.

If Putin continues to play silly buggers, Trump would arm Zelensky with Tomahawk cruise missiles, and see how Vlad would like that. The threat was expressed in Trump’s usual chatty manner:

“I might say, look, if this war’s not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks,” he said on Sunday.

“I might have to speak to Russia, to be honest with you, about Tomahawks. Do they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so… I might tell him [Putin] that if the war is not settled, that we may very well do it.”

I think that’s a good idea, as far as it goes: the more damage the Ukraine can do to Russia’s strategic infrastructure, the better. For purely sentimental, and therefore invalid, reasons I wouldn’t like to see the centre of my native city, Moscow, turned to rubble, and it’s easily within the Tomahawk range from the Ukraine.

Still, if that’s what the Ukrainian High Command wanted to do, I wouldn’t object: war leaves no room for sentiments. But suppose this isn’t an idle threat and, against his best judgement, Trump does deliver a couple of dozen Tomahawks to the Ukraine.

Would that swing the war in the Ukraine’s favour? Would the Tomahawks prove to be Zelensky’s Wunderwaffe? I don’t think so, for any number of reasons.

First, I don’t think Trump would deliver thousands or even hundreds of Tomahawks out of America’s total stockpile of some 9,000. Dozens would be more like it, but even if it’s hundreds, this weapon won’t win the war for Zelensky.

If you are unsure about that, put the boot on the other foot and ask yourself this question: “How come Russia hasn’t won the war yet?”

After all, the Russians have plenty of missiles that have the range to hit every square inch of Ukrainian territory, all the way west to Lvov, Uzhgorod and Mukachevo. And indeed, those places have suffered some damage, though nothing as drastic as the devastation of Mariupol, a city that lost 95 per cent of its buildings and 25,000 of its civilian inhabitants.

Yet the Ukrainian army is still fighting, still holding the aggressor at bay, still inflicting heavy casualties. (Just the other day, the Ukrainians wiped out a column of Russian armour, destroying 13 vehicles and killing dozens of soldiers.) And the Ukrainians are still united in their resolve to save their country’s sovereignty from Putin’s fascists.

Putin knows this, which is why he won’t be swayed by Trump’s threat. Even if Ukrainian Tomahawks hit Moscow, what does he care? Putin’s own bunker is impervious to such weapons.

Tomahawk missiles are about as likely to change the course of the war as the weapons that gave them their name would be. Putin will remain as deaf to Trump’s threats as he has been to Trump’s cajoling.

The only way the US can help the Ukraine is to state its full, unequivocal commitment to the Ukrainian cause – and to act accordingly. That would entail using full congressional appropriations for Ukrainian aid, rather than merely about a quarter of them actually used.

This is increasingly becoming a PlayStation war, with swarms of unmanned drones buzzing over the battlefields, factories and infrastructure facilities. The Ukraine more or less pioneered this remote-action warfare, and she has started and stepped up the mass production of various drones.

Russia has been playing catch-up there, and Iran’s Shahed drones, both imported and homemade, helped considerably. But still Russia lagged far behind – until recently, when she suddenly acquired a huge numerical superiority in drones, five to one in some sectors of the front.

This suggests that China has begun to provide direct aid to the Russian war effort, and stopping this assistance is something Trump could do. For example, he could act on his threat to slap 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese exports, which would serve a dual purpose.

First, it would stop the flow of Chinese aid to Russia. Second, it would enfeeble China economically, by effectively ending her trade with America and her allies. But there are tough choices to be made, and I doubt Trump, or any other Western leader, would be ready to make them.

Over the past several decades, Western prosperity has been built on a seemingly endless supply of cheap labour, mainly from China, but also from Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries in the region. Cutting that supply off would mean Westerners having to accept a greatly reduced standard of living – and still continuing to vote for the politicians responsible.

Here I’m always reminded of Jean-Claude Junker’s epigram, one of the best political adages in recent times: “We all know what to do. We just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it.”

Quite. The thing about hard political choices is that they are, well, hard to make.

It’s so much easier to wave simple solutions around, such as this or that Wunderwaffe. Such things may help, but they don’t win wars. Only courage and commitment do, and the Western arsenal of such weapons seems to have been depleted.

As Trump’s bandwagon, aka Air Force One, arrives in Israel to celebrate the return of the Israeli hostages, even our own ‘Dear’ Keir Starmer hastens to jump on.

Peace at last, is the general theme of the festivities. Here one should remember that their Latin derivation is the only thing that peace and appeasement have in common. Moreover, when it comes to long-term prospects, appeasement is the exact opposite of peace.

Trump’s appeasement of Hamas, along with its Qatari and Turkish paymasters, is morally repugnant and strategically doomed (as is Starmer’s appeasement of China, but that’s a separate subject). Even as they sing, dance, and hug the returning victims of Hamas evil, Israelis know this perfectly well. But their hands are tied by their dependence on US support.

When the Marquis de Custine visited Russia in 1839, he gasped: “This country is always at war. It knows no peace.”

The same could be said about Israel, but there is an important difference. Russia was, and remains, bellicose by choice; Israel, only because bellicosity is thrust upon her.

So don’t talk to Israelis about peace: they know no such thing. All they know and welcome is the odd ceasefire, a temporary break in hostilities. How temporary? That depends.

War may resume in weeks. Or in months. Or in a couple of years. And no number of treaties can change that for as long as that tiny enclave of civilisation is surrounded by hordes of savages with hatred in their hearts and murder on their minds.

No matter how many American presidents declare peace and do a Chamberlain by proudly waving pieces of paper, Israelis know their enemies are loading their guns and sharpening their knives in anticipation of the right moment to start killing Jews again.

Still, they are grateful. The breather they are getting may prove short, but they want to enjoy it while it lasts. This though there is every indication that it won’t last long.

In exchange for their surviving skeletal hostages, Israel has been forced to release over 2,000 Palestinians, including 250 Hamas criminals, each covered head to toe in blood. Many of them were involved in the 7 October raid, both as planners and perpetrators.

That was no ordinary attack on civilians. Hamas raiders cut foetuses out of women’s bellies, raped men and women alike both before and after murdering them, devoured parts of their victims’ bodies. It was the greatest anti-Semitic atrocity since Treblinka.

Israel’s response didn’t just wreak devastation on Gaza. It degraded a great deal of Hamas’s ability to resume their onslaught in the near future. Many of their munition factories and dumps were bombed, many of their tunnels destroyed, many of its most experienced leaders assassinated.

‘Many’ is the operative word here, and its difference from ‘all’ is vital. Hamas’s ability to murder Israelis was degraded, but it wasn’t eliminated. Yet again, Israel’s hand was stayed by her Western allies eager to score publicity stunts by declaring themselves to be the kind of peacemakers who are to be blessed.

Instead, they’ve once again shown themselves as betrayers of Israel to be damned. This happened every time Israel was about to finish off her enemies: in 1956, 1968, 1973 and every couple of years ever since. Now it has happened again.

As Israeli troops withdrew to the prearranged line, a power vacuum was formed in the areas they vacated. That was instantly filled by Hamas declaring mobilisation and reasserting control over new tracts of land.

Their phone calls and texts went out, saying: “We declare a general mobilisation in response to the call of national and religious duty, to cleanse Gaza of outlaws and collaborators with Israel. You must report within 24 hours to your designated locations using your official codes”.

Heeding the message were 7,000 gunmen who had been hiding in plain sight as poor, oppressed Palestinian civilians. They filled the gaps created by IDF and immediately began to do the only thing Hamas can do: murder.

Even as Israeli hostages return, Hamas are publicly executing, in their favoured baroque ways, everyone suspected of collaboration with Israel. They’ve also appointed five new governors, all Hamas militants implicated in the worst crimes.

This is only the beginning. Some of the released murderers heading back to Gaza will fill the leadership vacancies created by Israeli bombs, and a mass recruitment drive will begin.

Tempers among Israel-haters are running even hotter than before the current war, and Hamas will have little trouble finding crazed volunteers ready to die for the noble cause of murdering Jews and their supporters. Moreover, the on-going mayhem of pro-Palestinian, in fact anti-Semitic, marches and riots all over Europe suggests that not all new recruits will be Muslims.

The peace deal of which Trump is so proud stipulates Hamas disarmament. Yet one has to be deluded to believe those murderers will lay down the tools of their gruesome trade. They aren’t going to disarm, and I doubt they’ll even pretend to be doing so.

Quite the contrary, Hamas are likely to be open about violating the terms of the peace treaty, hoping this will provoke Israel into renewing her offensive. Once the provocation has succeeded, Western malcontents will again hit the streets, this time in even greater numbers and with even more incendiary violence – aimed not only at Israelis but Jews everywhere.

Israel is the focus of anti-Jewish and anti-Western hatred. This will continue to fester like a boil until it bursts into violence yet again. No appeasement will ever appease, no accommodation short of annihilation of Israel and another Holocaust will ever suffice.

Witness the fact that pro-Palestine, in fact anti-Semitic, marches haven’t abated since the recognition of the ‘Palestinian state’ and the signing of the ‘peace treaty’. Quite the contrary, they’ve flared up with new force.

Hamas, its supporters within the ranks of Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslims in general and anti-Semites in and outside the Middle East, don’t want peace, though they occasionally don’t mind being appeased.

They want, for starters, to murder millions of Jews “from the river to the sea”, as their chant frankly admits. According to London mayor Sadiq ‘Sadist’ Khan, that chant isn’t anti-Semitic. No, of course not. It’s philo-Semitism in action, along with its companion slogan, “Death, Death to IDF”.

Now I mentioned Muslim Brotherhood, many Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, have disowned it, not wishing to upset the apple cart of Western trade. One Arab country that has consistently supported Muslim Brotherhood and its cutting edge, Hamas, is Qatar.

That’s good to keep in mind as Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is negotiating with Hamas about the postwar shape of Gaza. For Qatar is a valued partner of Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners.

Kushner has raised billions in Qatar, and his firm’s wealth has tripled since Trump was elected, with similar gains in the Trump clan’s other businesses. This sort of thing may be called a conflict of interest in some quarters, one even greater than Trump accepting that gilded airliner from Qatar.

That gives Trump a personal stake in the on-going orgy of appeasement. His political opponents in the US have shown a voracious appetite for attacking Trump through the courts. After he was re-elected, Trump has gone after his enemies with even greater vigour.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that Trump and his family will be prosecuted if he is succeeded by anyone other than a MAGA Republican president. This consideration makes it vital that Trump not lose control of both Houses of Congress in next year’s mid-term elections.

If he does, he’ll effectively become a lame duck president – and a sitting duck for his detractors baying for his blood through either impeachment or post-tenure prosecution. Trump knows this, and hence his frantic efforts to become known as a man who brought peace to the Middle East.

He must keep his fingers crossed that Hamas desist from provoking Israel for at least a year, ideally two. Then he’ll be able to retire as the pater familias of his extended clan and live out his remaining years in peace. Something that will be denied to Israel.

You’ve doubtless detected a note of pessimism in this narrative. I can only redeem myself by hoping with all my heart that I’ll be proved wrong. If I am, Donald Trump will merit not only the Nobel Peace Prize but indeed canonisation. Should that happen, I’ll be the first to genuflect.

The best way of hurting Putin would be for the West to take a more direct part in arming and supporting the Ukraine. That would entail either sending troops out there or, barring that, giving the Ukraine all the tools to do the job.

But let’s be serious here, now that’s it’s just us boys. That’s not going to happen, is it? You know it, I know it – more important, Putin knows it.

The hope that Russia will eventually bleed out in the on-going war of attrition is only marginally more realistic. Blood is one thing that’s always in ample supply in Russia. The country lost 27 million people in the Second World War and still didn’t exsanguinate.

A human life is worth next to nothing there, which the rulers assert with cynicism and the masses accept with fatalism. If the Russians have lost about 1.5 million people since 2022, it’ll take another 20 years at the same casualty rate for anyone there to worry.

Sanctions? There Russia resembles a boxer who smiles at his opponent after being rocked with a hard blow. Russia too pretends she isn’t hurt by the sanctions imposed by the West, but she is.

Yet she still remains upright, able to go on fighting. The only sanctions that really sting are those that limit the flow of high-tech products into Russia, especially those vital to armament production. Sanctions on Russian hydrocarbon exports are painful too, but countries like China, India and some EU members provide helpful analgesics by buying Russian oil and gas at dumping prices.

Commentators who insist that the Russian economy is tottering ought to descend from the ivory tower of Western economic criteria. Yes, the inflation rate is high there, the people’s living standards are rapidly going down, some staples including petrol are in short supply, the average monthly salary outside Moscow is around £200 – and millions don’t even get that.

Should a similar situation arise in Europe, Frenchmen, Spaniards and perhaps even Britons would be building barricades, torching cars and attacking politicians. But Russia isn’t like France, Spain or even Britain.

Her rulers don’t care about the plight of the people and never have. And the people are either too docile, too brainwashed or too scared to do anything about it.

No money, no jobs, no prospects? Not a problem. Young men, egged on by their mothers and wives, seek income opportunities by enlisting to kill Ukrainians or, more likely, to be killed by them. The mothers and wives don’t mind either way: wages are high on the frontline, while death benefits make their loved ones even more valuable dead than alive.  

So how can the West really hurt Putin, perhaps enough to force him into acting less aggressively? I have an answer, or rather 300 billion answers. That’s how many Russian dollars are currently frozen in the West.

These assets shouldn’t be frozen or impounded. They should be punitively confiscated and used as military aid for the Ukraine.

When this idea is floated from time to time, politicians, lawyers and bankers wince and throw up their hands in horror. Confiscating privately owned assets smacks of illegality, which isn’t a nice thing at all. We don’t do that sort of thing.

Such concerns shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. If civilised countries stop being ruled by law, they stop being civilised. Fine legal points matter, especially these days, when legality often replaces and sometimes contradicts morality.

But what if all legal obstacles in the way of confiscation were removed? What if it could be shown that taking that money isn’t only moral but also legal? This is what I propose to do, step by step.

The first step is to state that the Russian economy defies all the categories used by political scientists and economists. It’s not capitalist, socialist or corporatist because the sui generis Russian state is none of those things.

Russia is ruled by an organised crime group (OCG) formed by a fusion between assorted mafias and the secret police, KGB/FSB. No major country has ever had such a government, which makes null and void all the criteria, standards and terminology used to classify other economies.

One such defunct term is ‘privately owned assets’. This term has some validity in Russia only at the lower economic tiers, at the level of personal savings or income from a corner shop, a small one.

Any assets reaching millions and especially billions can be owned by private individuals only nominally. In reality, they belong to the OCG, which has total control of the money. Like any other mafia, it’s set up as a pyramid, with the godfather, in this case Putin, sitting at the very top.

Most major wealth in Russia derives from businesses linked to either natural resources, finance or infrastructure. As we climb up the steps of the aforementioned pyramid, we’ll find that ultimately and in effect they all belong to Putin.

All such businesses without exception have got rich by methods that would have produced multiple criminal convictions in any civilised country. By our standards, every Russian ‘oligarch’ is a felon – but he isn’t really an oligarch.

That term describes a man whose financial virility buys him political power. That’s not the case in any OCG and it’s certainly not the case in Russia. Power in Russia belongs to Putin, and he exerts it through intermediaries. The latter have influence for only as long as Putin lets them have it.

The same goes for their wealth. Russian ‘oligarchs’ don’t really own the capital currently in their possession. They are simply money launderers, frontmen given the task to legitimise the money by passing it as their own.

Their role is especially important because a great deal of those assets are invested in the West, impervious to the vagaries of fickle Russian politics. The nominal owners of that capital are people close to Putin, his accomplices in every crime committed by Russia, including her pouncing on her neighbours.

Some of them become Western citizens, like Leonard Blavatnik. Others may even ascend to the upper House of Parliament, as Lord Lebedev will testify. And they all live high on the hog off Putin’s money.

That means they are allowed to use some of it, calling it their own. Their cut varies depending on their proximity to Putin and their status in the OCG. According to experts, the range runs from 10 to 25 per cent, but never higher than that.

All these frontmen use some of their ill-gotten lucre to buy Western politicians, judges and journalists retail and wholesale. Such efforts differ in scale but not in kind from the usual mafia practices everywhere. There is a salient difference though.

Most of the Putin frontmen who hold his assets in Western institutions are under personal sanctions. They aren’t allowed to travel to the West and, if already living here, are denied access to their assets, other than paltry amounts (by their standards) they need for basic living expenses.

Those who manage to buy or trick their way around the personal sanctions use the money to fund the war in the Ukraine whenever Putin tells them to do so, and in the amount Putin specifies. The money belongs to him after all.

Some of those ‘oligarchs’ occasionally fall out with Putin and then, as a rule, out of the window. This pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched The Godfather and its sequels.

It’s important to realise that those personal sanctions would be instantly removed if the ‘oligarchs’ publicly severed all ties with Putin’s OCG, denounced the criminal war in the Ukraine, left Russia if still living there and refused to fund the Russian war effort. However, the Russian version of omertà, reinforced by the certainty of retribution, doesn’t allow them to do that.

When I refer to Putin’s war on the Ukraine as ‘criminal’, this isn’t just a figure of speech. On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) found Russia guilty of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, and issued arrest warrants for Putin and his closest associates.

The upshot of all this is that the $300 billion sitting in Western banks (a number that doesn’t include vast property holdings, many at some of the best London addresses) is money acquired by criminal means and used to perpetrate further crimes, on an increasingly greater scale. Practically all of it belongs not to private individuals but to the OCG run out of the Kremlin – and ultimately to its boss, Putin.

Every Western country has a law allowing confiscation under such circumstances. This is what British jurisprudence says: “The primary British law allowing the confiscation of criminally acquired assets is the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA). POCA provides powers for criminal confiscation… The Act’s goal is to deny criminals the use of their assets, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has a specialised unit to handle asset recovery”. 

I say let’s get that specialised unit busy. Considering that a good chunk of the OCG’s assets are held in Britain, it’ll have its work cut out for it.

How many wars does Trump have to bring to a peaceful conclusion for him to win the coveted Nobel Peace Prize?

More to the point, how many peace treaties has María Corina Machado, this year’s winner, negotiated? Has she ended the Punic Wars, the Hundred Years’ War, the Thirty Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars, either World War?

She hasn’t – and Donald Trump has. Or, if you insist on being pedantic about it, none of those wars would have started had he been US president at the time. I can just see him calling his best friend Hannibal and telling him, “C’mon, Hanny, give me respect and I’ll give you a zillion dollars. Yeah, yeah, I know Scipio is a douche, but lay off and I’ll owe you a favour. One hand washes the other, know what I mean? Pony up, okay?”

And just look what Donald has done for the Gaza conflict. Israel has signed the peace treaty, Hamas so far haven’t but have said they would, and 20 hostages will be returned to Israel dead or alive. Moreover, Trump has agreed to put 200 US servicemen in harm’s way by deploying them on the demarcation line, where any chap with a dinner napkin on his head and an AK in his hands will be able to take potshots at them.

Trump has also appointed our own dear Tony Blair as his peace-keeping viceroy in the region, but that’s where Hamas have drawn the line. Thereby they’ve shown a great deal of discernment, and for once I applaud their decision. No undertaking headed by Tony can ever succeed, other than his prodigious efforts to enrich himself.

Still, though I doubt Trump has brought lasting peace to the Middle East (to achieve that he’d have to get rid of the feral hatred ‘Palestinians’ feel for Jews, which is an impossible task), he has certainly done more than Joe Biden. That, admittedly, isn’t saying much, but it is saying something.

Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded for less, as Barak Obama could confirm, not to mention such a tireless champion of peace as Yasser Arafat. So what do those Scandinavians have against Trump?

At this point, I have to withdraw myself from any consideration as a potential winner of this accolade. If nominated, I’d have no chance – according to insiders, most of the things that turned the Nobel Committee off Trump are the things I like.

He cut US foreign aid, which would have won the approval of the late Peter Bauer. Prof. Bauer defined foreign aid epigrammatically as a transfer of money from the poor people in rich countries to the rich people in poor countries. Trump is reluctant to transfer money into the numbered Swiss accounts belonging to assorted tinpot tyrants, and I can’t blame him.

Then Trump pulled the US out of the World Health Organisation, much to my enthusiastic approval.

His executive order said the US was withdrawing “due to the organization’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states”. And that’s putting it mildly.

My shouts of approval went up several decibels when Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. I share his conviction that this whole net zero nonsense is an elaborate unscientific scam perpetrated by professional malcontents who hate the West and everything associated with it.

As circumstantial support for this point of view, consider the ease with which eco-zealots float from one anti-Western cause to another. Just look at Greta Thunberg, and you’ll know what I mean.

Meanwhile, our own fanatics led by Ed Miliband, a worthy son of his Stalinist father, are dead set on destroying what’s left of the British economy by making us all drive electrical appliances and go back to the good old times, when energy was only produced by sun, wind and water.

Obviously, the Nobel Committee disagreed with me and, more important, with Donald Trump. Neither party is likely to concede the point, meaning that the Donald will have to redouble his peace-making efforts if he wants to have another shot at that prize.

The Committee had more legitimate concerns as well. Trump’s wholehearted attempts to start a global trade war, whatever their economic justification (which I think is scant), can hardly be described as peaceful. The Donald has been laying about him like Macduff, wielding the broadsword of tariffs, smiting friend and foe alike but, unlike his prototype, failing to kill the murderous king, this time called McPutin.

One way or another, the Donald has lost this time around – and to a woman, which adds insult to injury. Boy, would he like to grab that Venezuelan by her Nobel medal and show her who’s boss…

But not to worry – not all has to be lost if the Nobel Committee were to act on my modest proposal. If the Peace Prize has so far evaded Trump, the Committee ought to consider endowing a new category: the Nobel Gurning Prize.

Trump would be the odds-on favourite for this accolade, something he deserves for his talent and life-long application. No other politician I know, indeed no other person, boasts such a vast array of unlikeliest facial expressions – and does so naturally, without any visible signs of effort.

Endowing this new category would enable the Committee to reward Trump’s efforts without courting any controversy. This is what the potential winner would describe as a “WIN-WIN SITUATION!!!”

As the price of gold has surged over $4,000 an ounce, economists whip their trusted calculators out and moan about Gordon Brown.

Between 1999 and 2002, when he was Chancellor, Brown sold 395 tonnes of gold, about half our reserves, at an average price of $275 an ounce. That was low even then, as Brown knew perfectly well.

In today’s money, $275 is about $550, a meagre two-fold increase, whereas the price of gold… Stop it, don’t make me weep. Had Brown held on to that gold, the Exchequer would today be £35 billion better off – just think how many more illegal immigrants we’d be able to put up at four-star hotels.

Let’s make one thing clear. Gordon, for all his abominable socialist traits, is no moron. In fact, compared to his current counterpart, Rachel Reeves, he is a genius of Smithian proportions. So why did he do something even rank amateurs knew was foolhardy?

The answer is, dumping that gold only seems stupid to you and me. To Brown, it made perfect sense: he was acting on an inner imperative of all modern governments.

This is encapsulated in the title above, but I’ll rephrase that statement to make it airtight: because governments love inflation, they hate gold. For you to agree, you have to accept the hypothesis I invariably use as the starting point of probing into governments’ motives.

A hypothesis is vindicated when it explains all the available facts, as this one does. So here it is: the only thing modern states are after is a steady increase in their own power at the expense of the power of the individual.

It doesn’t matter whether the state in question is totalitarian, authoritarian or, as in this case, democratic. They all share the same overarching goal even if they may pursue it in different ways.

Not all state officials arrive at this realisation by a rational process. But all of them understand it viscerally – and act accordingly.

That’s why, even though all governments make noises about reducing inflation, none has ever succeeded in doing so long term. Market fluctuations may sometimes push inflation down, but state action never does.

The motivation is clear: inflation is a tax that requires no legislative approval. By inflating the currency, the government effectively transfers money from the people’s accounts into its own, with a parallel transfer of even more power the same way.

It was only in the 20^th century that governments realised that inflation could be a useful power tool. Once that realisation, or rather post-rationalisation, sank in, they cranked up printing presses to high gear and buried sound money under an avalanche of virtual, effectively counterfeit, currency.

Wishing to bind its citizens hand and foot, the state itself had to slip the tethers of fiscal responsibility. Thus promiscuous public spending achieves a dual purpose: it makes more people dependent on the state while also ushering in high inflation. The upshot is the same: greater state power. Job done.

This explains the innate hostility to gold all modern states feel in their bone marrow. An economy based on gold deprives modern governments of their flexibility to meddle in the economy.

The difference between people keeping their assets in gold or in currency is critical to my hypothesis. Gold coins or ingots sitting in a bank vault are a factor of their owner’s independence: the money is beyond the state’s reach, more or less. Not so banknotes: we are welcome to stuff suitcases full of paper, but the government, its hand on the printing press button, has an almost absolute control over its value.

Hence the attraction of the gold standard to those who value their freedom above an ability to ride the economic rollercoaster through hair-raising rises and dips. It puts people, as opposed to the state’s whim, in control of their own pecuniary destiny.

The gold standard may make an economy less upwardly mobile, but in return it will make it more stable and free. For that reason, it’s anathema to any modern government – and the more socialist a government, the more it hates gold.

That’s why all such governments, whether totalitarian socialist or socialist democratic, declare war on gold the moment they take over. Thus immediately after the Revolution, the Bolsheviks confiscated all gold owned publicly or privately. Anyone caught hoarding gold was summarily shot (if he was lucky).

However, when FDR took over, he did exactly the same thing, and replacing execution with fines was his only sop to democracy.

In 1933 Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates” by US citizens and demanding that they sell all their gold to the government at the price set by the buyer. Failure to comply was punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment of up to 10 years, or both.

The amount of the fine is staggering, especially in relation to the one dollar a day then paid to the millions employed in public works. As to the threat of a tenner in prison for failure to hand in all privately owned gold within a month, Roosevelt, as we have seen, was treading a well-beaten path: the Bolsheviks had shown the way.

Having forced Americans to sell their gold to the treasury for $20.66 an ounce, the next year FDR used the Federal Reserve machine to ratchet up the price to $35, a level at which it stayed fixed for the next 38 years. However, at that point it was allowed to float, which is to say to rise in parallel with the practical pulping of paper money.

Now the price of gold has floated upstream to $4,000 an ounce, which means the economy is heading for the rocks. A sharp increase in gold price is almost always a sign of impending economic catastrophe.

The markets lose faith in the states’ ability to manage their spending and service their mounting public debt. Hence they rush out of government bonds and currencies, seeking instead the relatively safe haven of gold.

Since the law of supply-demand hasn’t yet been repealed, the price of gold shoots up. But explaining this in purely economic terms will never work. It takes not economists but philosophers and, yes, theologians to explain why the combined British inflation in the second half of the 19^th century was 10 per cent, while in the second half of the 20^th century it was 2,000 per cent.

Both the public and especially the state had to change their economic behaviour drastically to effect such a cosmic shift. And the current price of gold is among the most reliable indicators of a shift gone wrong.

Its present jump to $4,000 an ounce screams calamity loudly enough for even our deaf (and dumb) government to hear. Yet its love of inflation and hatred of gold are the spots this particular leopard can never change.

To make the economy sound and gold cheaper the modern state would have to stop being modern. This is a logical and, if you will, ontological impossibility. So brace yourself for a rough ride. It’s definitely coming.

The concept of taking the rough with the smooth comes alive every time I watch football, which, I’m ashamed to admit, is quite often.

Alas, the occasionally enjoyable visual experience comes with an invariably irritating aural one. You see, matches have commentators, usually a professional journalist in tandem with an ex-footballer, with the former trying to keep the latter on the straight and narrow.

Not all retired ball-kickers graduate to TV commentary. Judging by those who do, the selection criteria include the ability to speak with at least a marginally comprehensible accent and without obscene intensifiers.

The second criterion is met more widely than the first, but with some training one can learn to follow the general thrust of remarks made by Scousers like Jamie Carragher or Scotsmen like Ally McCoist. As a lifelong student of English, I’m even grateful to them for widening my dialectal horizons.

Also required seems to be a knack for uncovering a deep intellectual content not wholly encompassed by the phrase “he hit it first time, and there it was in the back of the net.” By such standards, Sky and BBC commentators do a good enough job.

I for one don’t mind hearing them drone on in the background, especially when they make technical observations escaping rank amateurs like me. Yet at times I wince as if two pieces of glass were rubbed together to produce a grating sound.

This happens every time they say ‘melodramatic’ to mean ‘dramatic’, ‘decorative’ to mean ‘beautiful’, ‘lacksadaisical’ to mean ‘lackadaisical’, ‘amount’ to mean ‘number’, ‘willy-nilly’ to mean ‘at will’, ‘fortuitous’ to mean ‘fortunate’ and so on, ad nauseam.

I realise that most viewers are less sensitive to solecisms than I am, with me and other such pedants languishing in a distinct minority. But minority rights being such a burning issue these days, we must insist on upholding ours.

Hence my first proposal: not just sports commentators but all public speakers in mass media should be fined every time they misuse a word, utter an ungrammatical sentence or maul English in any other way.

Fines ought to be means-tested. Thus football commentators drawing seven-digit salaries should be fined thousands for each solecism; billionaires like Donald Trump, millions.

No, come to think of it, forget that second one. We don’t want the president of a great nation to end up on the bread line after just a handful of speeches.

You’ve doubtless detected a note of levity in my first proposal, and it is indeed there, if only to protect my anguished soul of an inveterate pedantic snob. My second proposal, however, is dead serious. It has to do with political statements public figures make on- or off-camera.

I realise I’d be on a losing wicket proposing to ban politicians like Donald Trump from talking about politics. Though some things they say are unconscionable, we have to suffer in silence – talking is what those chaps do for a living (apart from launching cryptocurrencies on the side or promoting their family businesses in variously iffy countries).

So let’s limit ourselves to sports commentators, specifically those who can’t contain their logorrhoea in social media. It’s our hurricane-strength zeitgeist that forces people to believe that anyone who has achieved success in one field, no matter how trivial, is qualified to lecture the public on all others.

Even footballers whose IQ seldom creeps into three digits – and that’s before they’ve headed thousands of balls – find a ready audience for their political pronouncements. Considering such humble beginnings followed by repeated cerebral trauma, it’s hardly surprising that most of their declarations are left-wing, and all are inane.

Enter Gary Neville, right back turned pundit, property developer, club owner and Labour activist. Gary tirelessly campaigns for worthy causes, such as the human rights of putatively oppressed minorities.

To his credit, he doesn’t let his passions interfere with the business at hand, which is business. Thus, when the 2022 World Cup was held in Qatar, Neville formed a lucrative partnership with that country’s government, whose record on human rights is less than exemplary. Then again, Gary must have looked at the Qatari links of the Trump family and decided that he could be the gander to their goose.

The other day, Gary drove through Manchester, the site of a recent terrorist Muslim attack on a synagogue. He was appalled but managed to control his emotions long enough to analyse the situation the way he analyses football formations.

In a subsequent video, Gary put his finger on the real culprits in that outrage: “I just kept thinking as I was driving home last night that we’re all being turned on each other. And the division that’s being created is absolutely disgusting. Mainly created by angry, middle-aged white men, who know exactly what they’re doing.”

That statement drew much criticism, with many an irate viewer unable to get his head around the logic. A Muslim killing Jews outside a synagogue is an act that seems to exculpate angry, middle-aged white men. Unless, of course, Gary means that those Jews in the crowd who fit that description had only themselves to blame.

Come on, fellows, give Gary credit for some nous. He doesn’t mean that at all. All he is saying is that people to the right of Jeremy Corbyn are creating a climate conducive and clement to rampaging Muslims thirsting for Jewish blood.

Just listen to his own explanation, will you?

“Brexit has had a devastating impact on this country and the messaging is getting extremely dangerous. 

“All these idiots out there spreading hate speech and abuse in any form, we must stop promoting them.

“We must stop elevating our voices towards them and it needs to stop now, and get back to a country of peace, love, harmony and become a team again.”

That’ll be a ten grand fine for the grammar, Gary. As to his nostalgia for the Garden of Eden that Britain used to be, does he mean during his lifetime? Now I’ve lived in England almost as long as Gary has lived, but I can’t recall any semblance of paradise.

Things were indeed more peaceful and harmonious a few decades ago, fair enough. But then, according to Gary, angry, middle-aged white men began to arrive in droves, disturbing the peace and destroying the harmony by egging Muslims on to kill Jews.

I’m not sure I’ve got it right, but that’s how it sounds. But hold on a moment, Gary doesn’t blame all white middle-aged men, only those who put up Union Jacks all over the place:

“Funnily enough on one of my development sites last week there was a Union Jack flag put up and I took it down instantly,” said Gary. Personally, I don’t find this funny, but then Gary’s sense of humour must be different from mine.

However, now he makes sense. Angry, middle-aged white men put up Union flags, which has the same effect on the oppressed Muslim community as a red rag has on a bull. Justifiably incensed, Muslims go out and kill Jews. There, I’ve finally got to the bottom of it.

I can also heave a sigh of relief because I’m not on Gary’s hit list. Though shamefully white and occasionally angry, I’m beyond middle age and neither do I have a Union Jack hanging out of my window.

By this circuitous route we’ve arrived at my second  proposal.

Former football players working as TV pundits must undertake to refrain from public pronouncements on politics or any subject other than their sport. Failure to comply should be punished by summary dismissal and a fine equal to the chap’s annual salary, £1.1 million in Gary’s case.

Should my two proposals be acted on, I’ll be able to watch a football match without feeling the urge to throw a slipper at the screen. And I don’t even wear slippers.

In welcome contrast to his predecessor, Pope Leo XIV has so far kept a rather low profile, refraining from comments on quotidian issues.

However, His Holiness has recently delivered himself of a statement I find puzzling:

“Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion, but I am in favour of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life. Someone who says, “I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

Let’s see if I can decipher this message, and if I can’t I’ll appreciate all the help I can get.

Starting from the end, the Pope seems to believe that immigrants to the United States are treated inhumanly, which denies their right to life. The statement is so earth-shattering that I for one would like to see some supporting evidence.

To begin with, I can testify from the personal experience of someone who arrived in the US as an immigrant 52 years ago, that no inhuman – nor indeed inhumane – treatment was anywhere in evidence. Granted, unlike illegal arrivals in today’s Britain, I wasn’t put up at a four-star hotel. All I got was a Broadway fleabag with a carpet of cockroaches that made a crunching sound whenever I got out of bed.

Still, I didn’t suffer from any encroachment on my essential rights. Quite the contrary, for the first time in my life I found myself in a country where my essential rights were recognised and upheld.

I don’t know whether that situation has changed in the intervening half century, but, even if it has, I’m convinced that new arrivals aren’t slaughtered en masse. If they aren’t, then I can’t see how their treatment violates their right to life.

From where I sit, the US government is indeed trying to limit the right of illegal immigrants to life in the US, but that’s hardly the same thing. Unless, of course, His Holiness can demonstrate, facts in hand, that all those huddled Mexican masses legitimately fear for their lives in their native land.

Barring such proof, let’s charitably put the tail end of the Pope’s statement down to a rhetorical flourish that amounts to little more than a non sequitur. However, the rest of what he said deserves closer examination.

His Holiness clearly finds opposition to abortion incompatible with support for the death penalty. Someone who combines both beliefs is thus disingenuous if he insists he is pro-life. Decide, my son, he seems to be saying to me, if you are against abortion or in favour of the death penalty. You can’t be both.

I’m afraid I disagree, with every requisite deference.

We have to assume that the head of the Roman Catholic Church is anti-abortion. If we can’t make that assumption, we might as well pack up and go home. That would be worse than believing that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner sees no need for law enforcement, although at times one can be forgiven for getting that impression.

Logically then, His Holiness thinks that both abortion and the death penalty constitute the denial of the right to life, which makes them wrong. Any Christian, actually anyone capable of logical thought, will agree that abortion discontinues a human life without due process, which violates that sacred right.

However, an argument can be made that the death penalty actually asserts the value of a human life, rather than denying it.

By sentencing a murderer to death, society sends a message orbi et urbi that the wanton taking of a life is a crime so heinous that it can’t be offset by any length of imprisonment. Only the death penalty is a punishment truly commensurate with the crime.

Neither a theological nor historical argument against the death penalty cuts much ice. Yes, the Church has always taught that the taking of a human life is wrong. However, it may be righteous if it prevents wrongs that are even worse.

Logic and any understanding of human nature suggest that the death penalty has deterrent value: any sane person would risk prison more readily than the chair. Any murder statistics in states or countries practising capital punishment are a priori meaningless. While irrefutably showing the number of murders the death penalty didn’t deter, they give no inkling as to the number of murders it did deter.

While no statistics are available on the number of lives taken by recidivist murderers who’ve served their sentence and then killed again since the death penalty was abolished in Britain, it’s generally believed that number runs into hundreds, possibly thousands. Any number greater than one proves the positive net effect of the death penalty, and any newspaper reader will agree it’s much greater than one.

But deterrence apart, since at least the time of St Augustine of Hippo, the Church has recognised the doctrine of just war. Since any war, just or unjust, presupposes killing, no Christian prelate can argue persuasively that any killing is ipso facto abhorrent.

Most theologians believe the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” means “Thou shalt not murder”. This leaves room for capital punishment, with the state acting as a divine agent. (As Burke wrote in his Reflections, “He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed therefore the State”.)

This view is supported by the distinction between the Hebrew words for lawful killing and murder, as well as by Scriptural accounts legitimising lethal force used in self-defence, warfare and under divine law.

To use the expression borrowed from His Holiness’s native variant of the English language, any unequivocal statement on capital punishment invariably opens a can of worms. These invertebrates crawl out and curl around logical and theological inconsistencies.

This isn’t to say that no opposition to the death penalty can ever be sound. One could, for example, cite the corrupting effect it has on the executioner, or else doubt the right of mortal and therefore fallible men to pass irreversible judgement.

Such arguments are noble, but they aren’t modern arguments. For it’s not just the death penalty that the modern lot are uncomfortable with, but the very idea of punishment as such.

More and more, they betray their Enlightenment genealogy by insisting that people are all innately good and, if some behave badly, they must be victims of correctable social injustice. More and more, one detects a belief that justice is an antiquated notion, and law ought to be only an aspect of the social services.

Far be it from me to suspect His Holiness of holding such essentially irreligious views. One can only wish he recognised that the issue of capital punishment has to be discussed in a broad secular and theological context. It can’t be resolved with a simple yes or no statement.

Good job then that the Pope wasn’t speaking ex cathedra, and infallibility doesn’t apply.

Our established church has just received a coup de grâce, which could be loosely translated in this context as a blow delivered by Her Grace Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London.

At least, that’s what she had been until yesterday. Now she has been consecrated to the highest clerical post in the Anglican Church, she is the Most Reverend and Right Honourable the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

Or scratch that ‘Lord’ business. As a self-described feminist, Dame Sarah will doubtless insist on being called ‘Lady Archbishop’. And since she sits in the House of Lords, that chamber should drop its misogynistic, transphobic name and call itself the House of Lords, Ladies and Others.

I’m not sure Dame Sarah will insist on making such changes, but I do know they would be close to her heart. She is also described as a ‘theological liberal’, which, again contextually, means theologically illiterate and aggressively antagonistic to church tradition.

Dame Sarah claims to respect those who are less theologically liberal than she is, specifically on the subject of female ordination, but her “belief is that Church diversity… should flourish and grow; everybody should be able to find a spiritual home.”

You could see me genuflecting even as we speak. Yet no one disputes that “everybody should be able to find a spiritual home”. However, for some that home is at the altar and for others it’s in the pews, and for over 2,000 years women resided in the latter.

And of course she finds nothing wrong with blessing homomarriage. “We can offer a response that is about it being inclusive love.” Dame Sarah has missed her true calling, She’d be perfect running a DEI department at some corporation.

The Church, she adds, “reflects the God of love, who loves everybody.” True.

God does love everybody. But He doesn’t love everything, which even cursory familiarity with Scripture would establish. In fact, He positively loathes those little transgressions He calls sins. If Dame Sarah is unsure whether that rubric covers sexual perversions, she should read Leviticus or, in the second half of the Bible, Romans and Corinthians.

The new Archbishop can be equally woolly on a whole range of subjects. Such as abortion, which is abhorrent to any Christian, and has been for the same 2,000 years. But it’s not abhorrent to the Most Reverend Lady. Neither, by the looks of it, is talking gibberish:

“I would suspect that I would describe my approach to this issue as pro-choice rather than pro-life although if it were a continuum I would be somewhere along it moving towards pro-life when it relates to my choice and then enabling choice when it related to others.”

One can never be sure what this lot mean, but it sounds as if she finds no theological objections to abortion. She herself would rather not scrape a foetus out of her womb, but she has no problem when other women do that if they so choose. Considering Dame Sarah’s age, her personal pro-life preference doesn’t amount to a meaningful commitment.

I could go over Dame Sarah’s views one by one, but there is no need. Just name a woke abomination, and she’ll support it. Deportation of illegal immigrants, for example? You know exactly where she stands. The Tory government’s Rwanda policy should, to her, “shame us as a nation”.

Do you ever wonder why just about every woman ordained or especially consecrated in the Anglican Church is a raving leftie? Many of their male counterparts are too, but a sizeable minority remain conservative politically, socially and certainly theologically.

The minority of such fossils among the female clergy isn’t sizeable. It’s infinitesimal to the point of being non-existent, and I have a ready explanation for this tendency.

Any woman seeking ordination invokes a purely secular fad, and a perverse one to boot, defying scriptural authority and church tradition. Both have chiselled in stone the rule that apostolic ministry is the business of men.

Contrary to what hysterical advocates of female priesthood claim, this doesn’t mean women should play no role in church life. No Christian would ever suggest anything like that – the examples of hundreds of great woman saints, starting with the Mother of God, speak for themselves.

It was women who, when the male disciples cowered out of sight, had the courage to witness the Crucifixion; women who attended Christ’s burial; women who found his tomb empty – women who kept the Christian tradition alive by running convents, monasteries, schools; women who inspired the Crusades; women who were martyred for Christian proselytism.

Women’s contribution to Christianity is equal to men’s, but that doesn’t mean women should be priests. Any woman who insists she has a right to ministry has little knowledge of Christian tradition and no respect for it. What she does respect and enforce is woke diktats, in this case feminism.

And any woke person is ipso facto wicked, which failing has to reveal itself in any activity such a person undertakes. This is my a priori conviction, and Dame Sarah has done nothing to disprove it.

Her consecration may be the final blow to finish off the Church of England – at least as the Church of England. While parishes all over Britain are haemorrhaging communicants, various Anglican communities in Africa and Asia are doing well.

Unlike the mother Church, they tend to be conservative, which means properly Christian. This is the only thing any Church should be, the only way it can survive.

I’m not an Anglican myself, but our established Church is an essential part of British polity. Hence what’s happening to Anglicanism has the makings of a constitutional catastrophe, not just an ecclesiastical one. That’s why even those Britons who don’t care about the latter, should care about the plight of the Church of England. And weep.