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Last night’s TV debate among all 11 presidential candidates was convincingly won by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who’s now running fourth in the race.

Debates are usually won not by deep ideas but by glib oratory. In a time warp, Leon Trotsky would debate rings around David Davis (why, even Dave Cameron managed to do that) – yet I’d prefer Mr Davis’s policies to Mr Trotsky’s.

Hence one shouldn’t read too much into Mélenchon’s outdebating Macron, Fillon and Le Pen. But one can still read something into it.

After all, 25 per cent of viewers saw a rank communist as the most convincing candidate. And yet every one of Mélenchon’s policies, if brought to fruition, would be catastrophic. Collectively, they’d turn France into a pre-1989 Romania.

Like Mrs May, Mélenchon wants to increase workers’ rights. However, the unions already have more power in France than they had even in pre-Thatcher Britain.

Nowhere in the high-rent part of Europe can the unions organise such paralysing strikes as in France. This, though French workers are already among the highest paid in the world, while working on average 200 hours per year fewer than in Britain, and 300 fewer than in the US.

Giving the unions (which is what ‘workers’ means in practice) even more control would plunge the economy into chaos and eventually destroy it. And if that doesn’t do the job, Mélenchon’s other pet idea, increasing welfare spending, will surely do it.

France already tops the world in that category, spending almost a third of GDP on welfare, way above the global average of 22 per cent. Only Finland, Belgium and Denmark approach such stratospheric levels, but even they lag behind France.

Mélenchon’s plan can’t be realised without pushing public spending in France, currently at about 60 per cent, close to what it was in Stalin’s Russia (about 80 per cent). Similar political adjustments are bound to follow, but then that’s the general idea.

Jean-Luc has also worked out how to rid France completely of any people capable of driving the economy forward. To that end he proposes to introduce a marginal tax rate of 100 per cent on those earning over €360,000 a year.

Hollande’s similarly inspired initiative only managed 75 per cent, which was sufficient to trigger a mass exodus of bright, enterprising Frenchmen. It’s largely thanks to such punitive taxation that London has become the world’s fifth most populous French city.

If Mélenchon gets his way, during the years it’ll take us to curb free movement in the EU, London has a sporting chance of outstripping Paris in that department. That’s not necessarily bad news for us, since the French are still better educated than the English and definitely produce better bread, cheese and pastries. One just hopes that the last Frenchman leaving his country will remember to unplug all electric appliances.

What else? Oh yes, Jean-Luc also wishes to ease immigration laws, which already don’t strike me as being excessively severe: France currently welcomes about 250,000 migrants a year.

‘Welcome’ isn’t a figure of speech: my local village proudly displays a sign Bienvenus aux migrants dans l’Yonne, a sentiment not universally shared among the locals who tend to vote for Le Pen by a wide margin. Considering that France is already 10 per cent Muslim, one can understand their understated hospitality.

I recall being tortured at school with a mathematical puzzle about water flowing into a pool through one pipe and out through another. If Jean-Luc implements his plans, France will function like that pool: foreigners, mainly from the less desirable countries, will be flowing in; Frenchmen, mainly the more solid kind, will be flowing out. Draw your own demographic conclusions.

Then of course Jean-Luc advocates full reimbursement of healthcare costs, money no object. Actually, money would be no object if he got his hands on the lever operating the printing press. Alas, that lever is in the hands of the European Central Bank, which is to say the EU, which is to say Germany.

So naturally Jean-Luc wants a Frexit referendum, ideally to yield a Brexit-like result. That by itself is good – chapeau, as I’d say in French. Except that, considering why Mélenchon wants to leave the EU, my head insists on keeping its hat in place.

He believes that the EU is too ‘neo-liberal’. Now anybody fluent in communist will tell you that in that language words mean the opposite of their dictionary definitions.

Hence ‘truth’ means a lie, ‘justice’ means ‘injustice’ and so forth. What Jean-Luc means by neo-liberalism is proto-liberalism, which is to say an accent on free markets and individual liberties.

Thus the way he uses the term is a lie, but it’s a double lie: the EU is nothing of the sort. It’s a protectionist economic bloc run by a demonstrably illiberal, unaccountable elite. As such, it’s closer to being neo-fascist, but Jean-Luc wouldn’t be a communist if he used words precisely.

Then of course there’s the usual opposition to religion and NATO, along with support for homomarriage and euthanasia, but such details go without saying.

What’s deeply worrying is that 25 per cent of French TV viewers are either too stupid to realise that Mélenchon would destroy their country – or too wicked not to mind. And it isn’t just Mélenchon: 68 per cent went for extremist candidates of either red or brown hues.

Don’t you just love French politics? And German politics aren’t vastly different. So much for the core of the EU.

The official death toll stands at 14 so far, but it’ll rise: some of the remaining 49 injured are in a bad way.

But then a high casualty count is to be expected when a nail bomb equivalent to 300 g of TNT goes off on a crowded underground train, as it did in Petersburg yesterday.

Within hours, not to say minutes, the Russian authorities identified the culprit: Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Kyrgyzstan-born Russian citizen who has lived in Petersburg for six years.

Jalilov was photographed leaving the scene of the crime and looking like a caricature Muslim, complete with a long, dangling beard on his chin and a taqiyah on his head. Such accoutrements made him stand out in Petersburg considerably more than they would in London.

Now if I were a Muslim terrorist about to blow up a tube train, I’d do my best to try and look like Jacob Rees-Mogg, or at a pinch John Prescott, but the intrepid Kyrgyz wouldn’t demean himself by such cowardly subterfuge. He was a Muslim terrorist, glory be to Allah, and he didn’t care who knew it.

One has to compliment the Russian police and security services on such remarkable speed of action. Our MI5 and Scotland Yard never move that fast, but then our MI5 and Scotland Yard never investigate crimes they themselves have committed or commissioned.

Alas, some Russian naysayers on the few remaining independent websites immediately blamed the authorities and – are you ready for this? – Vlad Putin personally for this heinous act.

No corroborative or even circumstantial evidence has been produced, other than pure speculation. But speculation is the starting point of most criminal investigations, while the question ‘Cui bono?’ is the starting point of most speculation.

So let’s speculate. First, such vile accusations would be dismissed out of hand if levelled at any Western politician, no matter how revolting. Tony Blair, for example, is as revolting as they come, yet only a madman would suggest he, PM at the time, commissioned the bombings on London transport in 2005.

Alas, such accusations against Putin are eminently credible, for Vlad has previous. Back in 2001 he had his FSB blow up several residential buildings, then used the explosions as a justification for another attack on Chechnya. (Alexander Litvinenko co-authored a book about it, Blowing Up Russia, and was subjected to Russia’s unique genre of literary criticism.)

Back then Vlad’s bono was consolidating his position in the Kremlin, and he knew a successful war would do nicely. Alexander Herzen did observe famously that the strongest chains binding people are forged out of victorious swords.

So what would be Putin’s bono in this case? First, a serendipitous though possibly irrelevant coincidence: Putin just happened to be in Petersburg at the time, instructing the Byelorussian president Lukashenko in the ways of the world.

Second, a definitely relevant coincidence: Putin is in the process of tightening the screws internally, probably in preparation for doing so externally as well. Terrorism, especially that of the Muslim variety, has been used as a pretext for curtailing civil liberties even in the West – in Russia it could be used to inaugurate the reign of state terror.

Putin knows the history of the Soviet Union well, and tries to learn from it. He remembers that Stalin unleashed cannibalistic terror in the 1930s specifically to whip the population into unquestioning obedience in the run-up to the planned ‘wars of liberation’ against Europe.

He also remembers that Stalin overdid things so much that the population initially refused to fight for him. In just three months of 1941 the Germans took 4.5 million POWs, many of whom joyously marched into German captivity to the sound of regimental bands. More than 1.5 million enlisted in the German army and, had Hitler used that force properly, Stalin’s regime would have collapsed.

Putin would rather avoid such extremes, but neither is he prepared to tolerate dissent. On 26 March his stormtroopers brutally dispersed protests by thousands of people, hundreds of whom were arrested.

Simultaneously Putin’s Chechen stooge and occasional hitman Kadyrov launched a massive campaign of rounding up homosexuals, arresting hundreds and murdering dozens. No doubt all our ‘conservatives’ who applaud Putin for upholding traditional values are rejoicing. The real conservatives among us are more likely to recoil in horror.

Then a fortnight ago yet another opposition journalist was assaulted in Petersburg, an aspect of ‘conservative’ statesmanship in which Putin is past master. Nikolai Andryushchenko is still in a coma, but at least he isn’t six feet under. His luck is good.

The thumbscrews are indeed being tightened, and the explosion on the Petersburg underground can – and I predict will – be used as a pretext for replacing such outdated implements with more effective weapons of mass terror.

Let’s not ignore the foreign policy bono either. There’s little doubt that Putin has some kompromat on Trump, either fiscal or sexual or both. Hence there were celebratory banquets held in various branches of the Russian government upon Trump’s election. The Donald was seen as the Manchurian candidate.

Hopes that the new administration would be on Putin’s string were running high, but so far they’ve been frustrated. Trump started off by making positive, sometimes fawning, noises about Putin but, unlike his Russian counterpart, a US president isn’t a dictator.

When the intimate links between Trump’s entourage and Putin became known, both the press and Congress cried foul, and the word ‘impeachment’ began to waft gently through the air.

However, Trump didn’t get where he is by sticking his neck out too far. He realised he had to tread slowly and change the tune of his march song. He did, however, fight back by claiming that a close alliance with Putin was essential for combating Islamic terrorism – you know, the sort of thing that Theresa May doesn’t think exists.

The Petersburg explosion serves as a timely reminder that the Islamic threat is real, and that Putin and Trump have a common fight. This may dull the edge of criticism coming from the American press and Congress, including Trump’s own party. The floodgates of cooperation may well be flung open, and of course there can be no trade sanctions among friends and allies.

So did Putin organise the explosion? I don’t know. But, since he had the motive, the means and the necessary moral fibre, he must be regarded as a prime suspect in the investigation. However, if you think any honest inquest is possible in Russia, there’s a bridge across the Neva I’d like to sell you.

My condolences to the victims’ families.

I’m a champion of progress. Or rather I’ve always desperately tried to be one. Post hoc, ergo meliora hoc, if you’ll forgive a feeble Latin pun, are words I wish I could live by.

Ever since Darwin created the world, everything in it, including man, has been undergoing nothing but meliorative changes – that’s what I’ve always wanted to become my article of faith.

Everything mankind has ever done has pushed us forward with nary a backward step. The pace of progress has varied, but the overall tendency is inexorable.

Hence I’ve strenuously tried to convince myself that today’s professor of philosophy at, say, the LSE is a step forward from Plato; Tracy Emin has to be a better artist than Giotto; Andrew Motion is a positive development of Shakespeare; John Lennon represents progress compared to Bach, and Damian Hirst compared to Donatello.

Admittedly, I’ve had to override my mind and taste to feel that way, but I’ve been willing to do just that. One has to march in step with one’s time. Doesn’t one?

And then earlier this week I spent a couple of days in Chartres.

Suddenly, my hitherto unshakeable desire to believe in progress began to totter with an ever-increasing amplitude. Nothing short of a frontal lobotomy would make me accept that Chartres Cathedral – and especially what it represents – is backward compared to a modern skyscraper – and especially what it represents.

I’m not in favour of awarding ranking points, but, if pressed, I’d say the cathedral is the most beautiful thing created by man – perhaps because it wasn’t just created by man.

No other Gothic cathedral I’ve seen has such an intricate lattice of flying buttresses at several tiers, each providing niches for sculptures (which is also quite rare). This added reinforcement enabled the builders to increase both the number and size of the windows, and the extra acreage didn’t go to waste.

Nowhere can one see such a blazing glory of stained glass as in Chartres, not even in Bourges, where it’s as superb but less plentiful. Each window is bursting with colour, with life eternal – each tells the story of a great civilisation exhaling the air breathed into it by the pre-Darwinian Creator.

My father, a glass chemist, doubted we’d be able to reproduce today the technical mastery involved in colouring pieces of glass so luridly that they irradiate sparkle even with no sun shining through them. I don’t know about that. What’s certain is that, even if the technical know-how is extant, the inspiration isn’t.

Then there’s the mysterious labyrinth cut into the floor stones of the nave. It symbolises the tortuous road leading to Christ, and for the past 800 years pilgrims have walked it slowly and reverentially, their heads bowed, their minds and souls engrossed in mystical contemplation. They still do, unfashionably trying to recapture the part of life Darwin didn’t quite get around to explaining.

The cathedral took some 30 years to build, and God only knows how much effort. Every sinew had to be strained to erect such a massive structure without any modern construction equipment, with only human hands and the superhuman spirit that gave them strength.

Time wasn’t of the essence, as it always is with us. It was eternity speaking through stone and glass, and eternity has to take man outside time. It also takes man outside space for, like many Romanesque and Gothic buildings, Chartres Cathedral defies physics by appearing bigger inside than outside. That’s no coincidence: physics apart, spiritually it was built from the inside out. Its space isn’t just three-dimensional.

What does the cathedral say about its time? Just about everything, I dare say, in the same sense in which the Shard or Centre Pompidou says everything about our time. An age defined by filial devotion is manifestly capable of soaring to greater heights than an age circumscribed by hubris and self-indulgence.

I hadn’t seen Chartres Cathedral for some 15 years, and in the intervening period its interior had changed. Centuries enveloped in candle smoke had darkened the walls and columns so much that, the last time I was there, I didn’t even notice them.

It was as if they were there only to provide an invisible frame for the dazzling brilliance of the stained glass. One’s eye was instantly riveted to it, sliding over the rest.

In the past few years the interior has been painted pink and white, supposedly to restore the original look. There have been fierce debates about the project, and they’re still raging. For once I’m not going to join in.

The instant effect of the glass has doubtless been diminished – it now floors one with an accelerating series of visual punches, rather than with one mighty blow. But on the other hand, I could now divert some of the attention to the interior itself. The two do compete, but in the end neither loses – and neither does this awe-struck visitor.

Progress tried to make inroads on this glory in the fateful eighteenth century. The spirit that had inspired the cathedral had begun to attenuate, with the attendant hubris increasing pari passu. Hence some bright spark saw fit to plonk an awful 4-tonne sculptural concoction at the altar, which looks like the Baroque equivalent of a moustache painted on the Mona Lisa.

Other bright sparks later in the century were out to vandalise, or ideally destroy, the cathedral, as they had destroyed so many others. But the cathedral was spared excessive damage by being declared a Temple of Reason, one of several, and used for atheistic homilies to Philosophy and Progress.

The sort of progress we see all around us now, one disfiguring our cities and, more important, our souls. Here I must confess to a little fib: I’m really not, nor have ever tried to be, a champion of progress.

We’ve surrounded ourselves with all sorts of sophisticated trinkets, each supposed to make our lives better. And fair enough, my car took me from London to Chartres in a few hours – only for me to realise yet again that in everything that matters we’ve been travelling backwards, leapfrogging our sublime civilisation to land in the midst of pagan barbarism.

It takes an inert mind and deadened senses to discern any forward momentum in the development of man, except the kind that propels him towards perdition. And if you don’t believe me, go to Chartres.

Defying Euclid and vindicating Lobachevsky, parallels can converge, especially those drawn by Remainers between the EU and just about anything else. The point of convergence is feeble, spurious nonsense.

Yesterday I spoke about the frequent analogies imagined between the EU and the Holy Roman Empire or the USA; today Niall Ferguson, representing the neocons, has ploughed in with his professional knack at seeing parallels where none exist.

The historian will doubtless object that he speaks for himself only. But neocons, of whom he’s one, hardly ever do. Everything they write sounds as if it reflects what the Soviets called ‘the general line’.

In my book Democracy as a Neocon Trick, I even coined the term Collective Neocon, COLLENE for short, refusing to attribute numerous quotations from their books because they all say the same things the same way.

One fundamental thing about the neocons is that they’ve never shaken their Trotskyist heritage. They’ve only shifted the same radical animus from Trotsky’s ‘permanent communist revolution’ to a permanent war to promote Democracy (always implicitly capitalised).

It’s to them that we largely owe the criminal 2003 attack on Iraq, which has invigorated the Muslims’ present orgy of violence (not that they needed much invigorating). The neocons use Democracy the same way Trotsky used Communism, as a slogan to inscribe on the banners of incessant war.

That’s why, even though they insist on calling themselves neo-conservatives, they have to be out and out statists. Their cherished crusade for a particular political form (divorced in their minds from any content underneath) can only be undertaken by the state. To be able to do that, the state has to grow pari passu with the scale of global ambitions.

Since any one particular state has natural limits to its expansion, the neocons have to support the notion of a giant supranational state, ideally governed by America. The EU is seen as an essential intermediate step on the road to such unification.

That’s why American neocons, which Ferguson has become, if only by co-option, tend to be fans of the EU. British neocons, even if they don’t move to America, are all bound by the unspoken party discipline too. Therefore they’re all American patriots, and it takes a reader of their books no time to realise that their ‘we’ doesn’t refer to Britain.

Most of them also support the EU, although dissent occurs more often in their ranks than in those of their US Parteigenossen: transferring British sovereignty to the tender care of the EU is a more vital issue in London than in New York.

Since Ferguson is now firmly ensconced in the States, he has no such limitations. Hence in the run-up to the referendum he wrote articles like Fog in Channel: Brexiteers Isolated from Britain’s Duty to Save Europe and Brexit’s Happy Morons Don’t give a Damn About the Costs of Leaving, all filled with vituperative diatribes, masking the crepuscular thinking in the background.

(Britain did her part in saving Europe back in the 1940s. Now it’s Europe’s turn to save itself, and the EU isn’t the way to go about it. But of course what Ferguson means is the same old crusade for Democracy for which his neocon heart aches.)

Then six months after the referendum he changed his tune, while continuing to sing off-key. “My mistake,” Ferguson wrote, “was uncritically defending Cameron and Osborne instead of listening to people in pubs. Issue was not GDP but future migration.”

The issue was neither GDP nor even future migration, but political sovereignty. All else is strictly derivative, something that’s too simple for Ferguson to understand. But notice the sly dig at those who do understand that: they’re all pub crawlers, not a patch on superior intellects like Cameron, Osborne and, by association, Ferguson.

Now he’s back, bringing his professional credentials to bear on the issue of the supposedly awful cost of leaving the EU.

First Ferguson credits himself with having been the first to compare Brexit to a divorce, a trite simile if I’ve ever seen one. Now, he says, divorce doesn’t even begin to describe it.

It’s a schism “recalling as it does the great division between western and eastern Christianity in 1054, as well as the period between 1378 and 1417 when there were rival popes in Rome and Avignon. The defining characteristic of schisms is that they are drawn-out and bitter – and the more arcane the points at issue (such as… the precise wording of the Nicene Creed), the deeper the schism becomes.”

I’m amazed he didn’t compare Britain to Luther nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the door of that Wittenberg church in 1517.

As an aside, the ‘arcane’ point at issue in 1054 was about the nature of the Trinity, which, next to the divinity of Christ, is perhaps the most critical point of Christian doctrine – but hey, ours is an age of specialisation, and Ferguson is an historian, not a theologian.

As to the rest of it, comparing Britain’s desire to regain her ancient constitution to a religious schism is vulgar stupidity at its most soaring. The EU isn’t a religion. It’s a wicked political contrivance based entirely on secular aspirations.

A more exact (if still not exhaustive) parallel was Britain resisting further European integration in 1940, during Germany’s previous attempt to unite the continent under its aegis. No price was seen as too big then, and no price is too big now.

I shan’t bore you with repeating Ferguson’s musings: you can read them in today’s Times. The gist is that Brexit will cost us a lot of money – not the destroyed cities or thousands of lives Britain suffered in 1940.

Uninteresting if true. The issue is that of principle, morality and intellectual integrity (all those things the neocons know about only by hearsay), not of a few billion here or there.

If HMG plays the card dealt by the referendum with intelligence and resolve, we won’t suffer any horrendous economic consequences, quite the opposite. We should just resist the EU blackmail with the same staunch spirit as that evinced during the Blitz.

Contrary to what the likes of Juncker, Tusk – and Ferguson – claim, we can negotiate from a position of strength, as one of only two nuclear powers in Western Europe, a lynchpin of European security and an irreplaceable market for European goods.

But even if regaining our ancient constitution does cost us money, it’s a price eminently worth paying. Really, Ferguson ought to continue peddling his wares to credulous Americans and leave us alone.

Honest to God, it’s not an April Fool. My friend Junk, as Jean-Claude Juncker likes me to call him, refuses to discriminate against the other 11 months too.

Leave Junk in the company of friends and a bottle of single malt (more than one bottle if the friends have some too), and he can come off the wall on any day of every year.

Responding to President Trump’s understated affection for the EU, President Junk demanded instant love. And if that’s not forthcoming, as Junk fears it won’t be, he threatened to break the US apart – or at least work towards such an outcome.

Specifically, he singled out Texas and Ohio as prime candidates for secession. The idea is interesting, but one wonders if Junk has fully considered the practicalities involved.

When I lived in Texas, I did meet some locals whose thirst for independence hadn’t been quenched. Most of them were the type who said things like “if y’all’s heart ain’t in Texas, get y’all’s ass out”, drove pickup trucks with deer antlers on the roof and a rifle rack in the back, wore silver buckles on their belts, Stetsons on their heads and spurs on their cowboy boots.

They also professed to hate the Yankees, while their views on race were rather pre-war (the Civil War, that is). A typical exchange went along the lines of: “Are y’all a Yankee?” “No, I’m from Russia.” “D’y’all have niggers there?”

Sometimes those chaps exhibited linguistic curiosity by asking “Did y’all speak German at home?” At first I thought that recurrent question was posed in jest, before realising that it wasn’t. At that point the didactic part of my nature would kick in, and I’d start mumbling: “Er… well… we did sometimes. But most of the time we spoke Russian.”

Perhaps in theory the rednecks could form the fifth column, applying secessionist pressure from the inside, while Junk did the same from the outside. In practice, however, I doubt they’d welcome his mediation in their eternal conflict with the Yankees. They wouldn’t see Junk as a good ole boy, would they?

Other than relying on sedition, Junk’s options in Texas would be limited, especially since the good ole boys are in the minority everywhere, except perhaps on the boards of major oil companies. He could try to offer Texans a cut-price deal to enter the EU, but one suspects he wouldn’t find many takers. The Texans would probably feel that this ‘furriner’ is only after their ‘awl’.

But at least Texas was a sovereign republic until 1846, so one could say it has form as far as independence is concerned. By contrast, Ohio joined the Union in 1803 and to the best of my knowledge has never since shown any appetite for splitting away. So Junk would have even more of an uphill struggle fomenting sedition there.

However, considering that Ohio boasts the ugliest cities in the US (which is saying a lot in a country that doesn’t apply aesthetic principles to urban planning and architecture), one suspects Junk’s drive for its secession would resonate among other states. Worth a try, Junk, but I wouldn’t hold your breath in the hope of success.

However, I’m proud of the standard of statesman rising to the top in the EU. In a way I’m even sorry we’re leaving – what shall we do for amusement if Junk and his ilk no longer talk to or about us?

Proceeding from levity to gravity, Junk’s drunken delirium is an echo of the Eurocrats’ persistent effort to seek legitimacy by drawing parallels between themselves and other composite political entities, such as the Holy Roman Empire or, bizarrely, the USA.

Such parallels are invariably spurious, reflecting the general intellectual paucity of that wicked pan-European contrivance. This is exemplified by Junk, whose brain couldn’t have been up to much even before it got pickled in single malt.

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose federation of principalities brought together by one powerful adhesive: Christianity. In that sense it was indeed both holy and Roman – and not neither, as Voltaire quipped with his typically facile wit.

National particularism didn’t exist then, certainly not sufficient to exert enough pull to keep those atoms within the same molecule. But while Europeans didn’t feel an overpowering sense of identity as, say, Franks, Gauls or Iberians, they certainly felt one as Christians. This was their factor of homogeneity.

What’s the EU equivalent? Desire for 6-week holidays?

The EU operates in a world created by the Enlightenment and dominated by nationalist pressures – something Charlemagne didn’t have to contend with. So, while factors of homogeneity are in short supply, those of cleaving self-determination along national lines are strong, if kept quiet for now. The slightest push, and the whole rotten structure may explode into a red mist.

If parallels with the Carolingian empire are spurious, Junk’s implied parallel with the United States is simply mad, possibly produced by insipient delirium tremens (this suggests a good title for a Junk biopic: DT, the Extra-Terrestrial).

Different as Texans may be from Ohioans, they are nowhere near as different as, say, Swedes are from Greeks, Spaniards from Belgians or any of them from Germans. The USA is a culturally, linguistically, socially and politically homogeneous entity, while Europe isn’t. Even Junk must realise this, at least while he’s still on his first bottle.

Moreover, the USA is old-fashioned in a perverse sort of way, in that it’s brought together not by ethnic commonality but by a clearly definable metaphysical idea, that of Americanism. Even those who, like me, have misgivings about it, can’t deny its gravitational power. Now does Junk think that a Greek and a Dutchman feel a strong kinship because they both subscribe to the European idea?

If he seeks more accurate parallels, he can find the EU’s antecedents in Germany, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the earlier period, Prussia used the proto-EU model of the Zollverein either to bribe or to force other German principalities under its sway.

Later, Hitler created a pan-European federation dominated by Germany and sharing natural resources, laws, single currency, foreign policy, united multi-national army under German command and economic policy. The parallels with the EU, while not wholly exact, are surely more evident than those between the EU and anything else.

In conclusion, I’d like to wish Junk a very happy April Fool’s Day. It’s your day, Junk, so here’s to you, my boozy friend.

I don’t mean Theresa May now works for a takeaway pizza place. No, Trish (as I still call her years after we… well, a gentleman shouldn’t mention such things), has delivered on her promise to trigger Article 50.

I immediately went to see her to offer profuse congratulations. “Well done, Trish,” I said. “Now we’ll definitely come to the defence of those Etonians if they’re attacked.”

“Alex, you blithering crypto-Russkie idiot,” replied Trish, not bothering to conceal the slightly naughty affection she still feels for yours truly.

“You clinically retarded nincompoop twat. You got it all wrong. First, it’s Estonians, not Etonians. Second, you’re thinking of Article 5 of the NATO Charter. What I’ve delivered was the letter triggering Article 50, telling the EU we’re leaving.”

“Beats delivering pizza,” I quipped in my customary nonchalant manner.

“Could you spare me your puerile, immature so-called humour?” said Trish with a half-smile that brought back the memories of… Well, being a gentleman, I can’t tell you.

The question was rhetorical, so I didn’t bother to answer. Instead I asked, “So does this mean we won’t defend those Estonians if they’re attacked?”

“Alex, you geographically challenged ignoramus,” explained Trish. “Just look on the map, where Estonia is and where we are. You can’t possibly expect us to die defending a faraway land about which we know nothing.”

The ghost of Neville Chamberlain came wafting into the room, but I chased it away. “No, of course not, Trish,” I said. “How silly of me to think that you’ll comply with the NATO Charter. But at least now we’ll stop all those immigrants flooding in…”

“Not so fast, Alex,” smiled Trish. “But then you always were quick on the trigger, as I recall. The pizza… I mean the letter I delivered says we start withdrawing from the EU. And when you do it right, withdrawal takes a long time, if you catch my drift.”

“How long?” I wanted to know.

“Well, longer than two seconds, if you catch my drift,” smiled Trish. “Longer even than two years. The short answer is, I don’t have a clue. May take a while. Get it? May take a while? As in Theresa?”

“Righty-ho,” I said. “But then we’ll stop those hordes of immigrants…”

“First, they aren’t hordes,” objected Trish with her customary firmness. “They are individual human persons endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…”

I had to chase another ghost away, this time of Thomas Jefferson, before replying, “So we aren’t going to stop them coming?”

“Not everything is black and white, you daft simpleton,” explained Trish. “We’ll have to be subtle about it.

“We’ll keep the free movement and tell the EU about it – truthfully. But then we’ll tell the British people that we’ll respect our borders – also truthfully. Respect and control are different things, if you catch my drift.”

“I get it,” I said. “We’ll announce that we respect our borders and keep them open.”

“You got it in one,” smiled Trish with loving indulgence.

“Well, at least we’ll repeal EU laws and revert to our tried and true Common Law,” I offered.

“Er… yes and no. We’ll repeal the European Communities Act that gives effect to EU law in Britain. But then we’ll take all the same EU laws and declare that henceforth they’re English. Get it? We’ll naturalise EU law.”

“I get it. We’ll continue to obey EU laws while calling them English. It’s like pasting a cheddar label on brie and then scoffing it.”

“See, even someone like you can understand it,” said Trish, who has always admired my ability to get my head around the most recondite problems.

“Thanks, Trish,” I said, accepting the accolade in the spirit in which it had been offered. “And I take it we’ll stop paying billions into EU coffers now.”

“Wherever have you heard such an asinine thing, Alex?” asked Trish with her usual unquenchable inquisitiveness. “Must’ve been at the place where you asinine halfwits congregate.

“Of course we’ll continue to pay. We are leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe – and we want to remain committed partners and allies to our friends across the continent.”

“And that means continuing to give them money?”

“Just that. First there will be a down payment, say 50 billion or so, then the rest in annual instalments. It’s all about the deep and special partnership we hope to enjoy with the European Union once we leave. A partnership that takes in both economic and security cooperation.”

“So we’ll join the EU army too, once it’s formed?”

“Don’t see why not,” agreed Trish. “Last I looked we’re in Europe. So why shouldn’t we have one army for all? We’ll be stronger that way. God is on the side of the large battalions,” said Trish, gently waving the ghost of Napoleon away.

Suddenly everything clicked into place. “I say,” I said. “Thanks for making it crystal clear, Trish. I now know what Brexit means.

“We’ll leave the EU at some unspecified time in the future, two, three, ten years, whatever it takes. But even when it happens, we’ll only have respect for our borders, not control over them. We’ll still be governed by their laws, now called English for propriety’s sake. We’ll still be paying billions to the EU. And we may even join the EU army under the command of a Belgian general.

“Have I got that right?”

“You have, Alex, you imbecile dullard,” said Trish with the seductive smile she always reserves for yours truly. “Plus ça change, as François says. I knew even chaps like you would catch my drift.”

François Fillon’s wife Pénélope has been charged with fraud for doing for him what my wife Penelope does for me.

She looked after her husband’s affairs, opened his mail, drafted replies, stood in for him at parties he either couldn’t attend or didn’t want to.

This is where the similarity ends. Penelope is English, while Pénélope most emphatically isn’t, though the French press routinely refers to her as such. She’s Welsh, and trust the French to be deaf to such vital distinctions.

The Welsh serve as the butt of English jokes, which answers the question once posed in jest by quiz show hostess Anne Robinson: “Why do we need the Welsh? What are they for?” Much of the mockery is aimed at their language that sounds as if it’s all sibilants and no vowels. It’s certainly written that way. The Welsh also chose as their national symbol that most unprepossessing of all vegetables, the leek.

The important difference is that I’m in no position to make the state pay Penelope for her help, whereas François did just that for Pénélope. This raises all sorts of interesting moral dilemmas.

Can we monetise the domestic service provided by a wife to a husband? I’ve seen all sorts of calculations to the effect that, for a wife to improve the family’s fortunes by going off to work and outsourcing domestic services, she’d have to make over £50,000 a year.

I don’t know how that sum is calculated, and whether, say, sex is included. After all, if a man had to seek solace on the side, he’d have to have either amateur or professional mistresses, and both cost, especially the former.

But excising the naughty rubric and accepting that calculation as a base, Pénélope got paid considerably more than €60,000 a year (today’s derisory equivalent of £50,000) for being parliamentary assistant to her husband. This, though she hardly ever went anywhere near Luxembourg Palace and only did for François what Penelope does for me, free of charge.

There’s also the small matter of the €100,000 Pénélope received for writing two articles in Revue des Deux Mondes, a magazine owed by François’s friend and donor.

Even assuming that Pénélope’s literary gifts are much superior to my own, that kind of fee makes me turn green with envy: the most I ever received for an article was 600 quid. Then again, the Fillons’ detractors may have a point when saying that the sum represented not so much a fee as a donation in disguise.

Immoral? Corrupt? Probably. But do let’s put it all in context.

Different groups have different feelings about various transgressions. If, for example, an Englishman or even a Frenchman dined on a friend’s leg, we’d recoil in horror and scream about throwing away the key. However, in a cannibal tribe such a culinary practice might only elicit a request for the recipe.

Extrapolating from this reductio ad absurdum, things like sex scandals are viewed differently in England and France. Being caught in flagrante delicto could derail the career of an English politician, while for his French colleague it might provide a boost – as long as he doesn’t look ridiculous, as Hollande did with his motorcycle helmet.

The same goes for fiscal corruption. An English politician may be fundamentally corrupt in his approach to his duties (Dave Cameron, ring your office). However, for as long as this corruption remains intellectual and moral, he’s on safe grounds. But a whiff of the odd backhander, and the safe grounds turn into a minefield.

Now, from what I’ve seen, the French attitude to the corruption that really matters in a politician is as lackadaisical as ours. But their attitude to fiscal corruption is much more so. The French tend to shrug their shoulders in that inimitable Gallic manner and say something like “of course, my friend, the whole world does it, but no?”

However, from time to time a fiscal scandal does break out, with some sticky-palmed politico singled out pour encourager les autres. Given the generally permissive atmosphere, a suspicion always lingers that the poor sod was picked on for reasons other than moral indignation.

This isn’t a far cry from Putin’s kleptofascist regime, where a public figure is only ever charged with corruption for political reasons, of which falling out with Putin is the most frequent. The difference is that in France the accused is seldom ‘whacked’, at least not since Mitterand’s tenure, but we aren’t into details here.

Hence François and Pénélope fight back, claiming that the chat was let out of the sac by those trying to scupper François’s presidential campaign. They’re even prepared to hint at the culprit by saying that his Christian name is the same as M. Fillon’s.

Since neither Hollande nor his party is likely to benefit electorally from besmirching the Fillons’ reputation, perhaps the finger ought to be pointed in a different direction, but that’s not the point. The point is that in all probability the charges against Pénélope are indeed politically motivated. The cui bono principle would suggest it was Macron who was the instigator, but one never knows.

How would I vote in the French election if I could? It’s when this question comes up that I’m happy I don’t live in France full-time. The choice is between a fascist openly financed by Putin, a right-of centre chap who seems to like the British (especially the Welsh) but has also taken Putin’s rouble, and a left-of-centre chap who may dislike Putin but definitely hates the British.

The other two being totally unsavoury, I suppose I’d have to vote Fillon, if only because our wives are namesakes. But a note to my French friends: Pénélope and Penelope are pronounced differently.

Whenever I write about yet another peccadillo perpetrated by Vlad and his jolly friends, be that a ‘whacking’, money laundering or shooting down an airliner, there’s always one blithering… well, person accusing me of hating Russia.

Nothing can be further from the truth. I have every faith in Russia, especially now that it’s in the safe hands of its ruling KGB dynasty.

I’m even prepared to accept, pain in heart, that Russia and Putin are co-extensive, as once explained by Vlad’s deputy chief of staff Vyacheslav Volodin: “There is no Russia if there is no Putin”.

This analysis is painful because Vlad is only immortal in heaven but, alas, not in earth. Since he’s now 64 – a muscular, bare-chested 64, but still – presumably his demise can’t be further than 2-3 decades away, so Russia isn’t long for this world.

But I’m sure Volodin didn’t mean it literally. He merely expressed a boundless faith in the KGB dynasty and a certainty that it’s leading Russia in the right direction. I share both the faith and the certainty. I’m even prepared to go out on a limb and put an approximate timeframe (ATF) on each imminent improvement.

I believe that one day the Russians will learn to put money in the bank without laundering it first.

As it is, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project details 70,000 laundering transactions, with 1,920 involving UK banks.

As Her Majesty’s subject, I deplore the contempt thereby shown for the City. Just 2.5 per cent? Surely we deserve more. What does Panama have that we don’t have?

However, I’m partly reassured by the amounts involved. It’s estimated that £100 billion is laundered through London every year. Now maths isn’t my forte, but if we handle 2.5 per cent of all such transactions worldwide, and if the same ratio of amounts to transactions holds globally, then the overall amount…

Well, I can’t count that high. Yet one can understand why leading economists believe that summary withdrawal of Russian offshore assets could precipitate a global financial crisis from hell.

Anyway, that isn’t an issue because Russia is well on her way to fiscal probity. ATF: 200 years.

And I believe that one day the Russians will learn to feed themselves.

As it is, almost half of the food enjoyed by the Russians comes from abroad.

Over the past 20 years, the number of people employed in agriculture has declined 5-fold. Of the original 67,000 villages, 20,000 have disappeared. The remainder are mostly populated by old people patiently awaiting death.

The country has reverted to barter agriculture, with manual labour predominant. Agricultural productivity in Russia is eight times lower than in the EU. Small private holdings produce 50 per cent of all meat and milk, and 90 per cent of all vegetables.

But all that is going to change. Russia will again become one of the world’s top food exporters, as she was before 1917, rather than one of the top importers, as she is now. ATF: 100 years.

And I believe that one day the Russians will learn to make internationally competitive products designed to help people rather than kill them.

The Russians are about to deploy the new Mach 5 Zircon missile, which, according to our experts, is too fast for our defences to intercept. This is one of the many weapon systems coming on stream at a pace suggesting a thriving manufacturing sector.

Alas, this only suggests where the Russians’ priorities lie, and why almost half of their budget is spent on ‘defence’. Americans spend more in absolute terms, but their GDP is almost 10 times higher, and a great deal of their defence spending goes on personnel salaries and pensions – a rubric hardly overstressed in the Russian budget.

Other than that, over the past 20 years Russia’s manufacturing capacity has shrunk by two-thirds. What it does produce makes Russians laugh sardonically.

As a small example, their motor trade can’t even make a government limousine worthy of the name. Vlad has to imitate African dictators and make do with a Mercedes. As to the domestic goods usable by poor mortals, Russians mock them mercilessly. No self-respecting Russian will use anything made in Russia, and most essentials (such as tampons) aren’t made there at all.

All this will change in short order. ATF: 250 years.

And I believe that one day the Russians will live as well and as free as, well, Romanians.

In a recent poll, Russia comes in at 51 out of 56 countries rated for quality of life, behind Pakistan and Egypt. But then true Russians disdain soulless materialism (until they come to the West, that is, where they’re seduced into it while still clearing passport control).

According to Russian data, 28 million live under the poverty level of $175 a month and qualified medical care is available only for the rich.

To compensate, Russia comfortably leads Europe in killing. According to UN data, 70 per cent of all murders on Europe’s territory are committed in Russia, home to only 19 per cent of Europeans. The country’s murder rate is 20 times higher than in Norway, which makes one wonder if perhaps soulless materialism isn’t without its benefits.

Nor does the country do noticeably better in metaphysical categories. In the Freedom House rating, Russia stands at 181 out of the world’s 199 countries in freedom of the press, below Sudan, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Burundi and Chad.

At 195 out of 198 countries in the corruption rating, Russia finds herself in a similar neighbourhood, next to Sudan and Burma.

The country’s democracy rating of 129 puts her below Saudi Arabia, that famous bastion of pluralism, but – and here one must doff one’s hat – just a whisker above Somalia.

But I’m sure that under the guidance of the KGB dynasty all this will change, soon. ATF: 300 years, roughly the lifespan of the Romanov dynasty.

And I believe that one day the Russians will learn to regard adjacent countries as neighbours rather than prey.

Here one regretfully has to be more pessimistic. After all, Russia can’t fall back on a rich heritage of neighbourly friendliness. She began to attack the West the moment she became, well, Russia under Ivan IV. That fine tradition has ebbed and flowed without ever petering out – as I’m sure it will. ATF: 500 years.

These Martin Luther King cadences prove that, rather than being the cynical Russophobe I’m alleged to be by those blithering… well, detractors, I’m an incurably credulous romantic. Well done, Vlad. I’m proud of you.

I’ve always thought that Peter Hitchens is only bonkers on the subject of Russia, while his other commentary is usually sound.

But his analysis of the root cause of Islamic terrorism shows he isn’t willing to content himself with just one mania. Now his other hobby horse, marijuana, has bucked violently and thrown him off.

“First,” he writes, “we have absolutely no evidence that the Westminster murders originated with Islamic State.” True. However, Islamic terrorism doesn’t have to originate with Islamic State to be Islamic. It may simply be inspired by Islam. Nor is ISIS the only Muslim terrorist group.

Islamic State didn’t exist in 2001, which didn’t prevent Muslims from flying large planes into tall buildings, nor in 2005, when Muslims blew up London buses and underground trains. In effect, Hitchens is repeating, if not in so many words, the inane statements uttered by Blair, Bush, Cameron and now May, who all deny any link between terrorism and Islam.

Then comes a contortionist pat on his own back: “As I have pointed out so many times before, many of these actions are committed by criminal misfits with long histories of theft, petty violence and drug abuse.”

We should thank Hitchens for this oft-repeated penetrating insight. Here we were, thinking that chaps who strap explosive belts to their bodies are all law-abiding, non-violent gentlemen who limit their intake of intoxicants to the odd sherry before supper.

Now we stand corrected: they’re misfits. However, why is it that it’s specifically Muslim misfits who do all those nasty things? A close friend of mine, a prison doctor, spent years working with criminal misfits who all abused drugs. However, according to him, they didn’t necessarily seek short-term employment as suicide bombers.

Hitchens doesn’t restrict himself to just one insight. He goes on to inform us that “cannabis is linked to long-term, lingering mental illness.” Yet authorities obsessed with the Islamic link to terrorism “are almost totally uninterested in the amazingly strong correlation between mind-altering drugs and crazed violence.”

This negligence is the fault of “sympathisers with drug legalisation” or “dogmatic neoconservatives” whose livelihood depends on “exaggerating the genuine but limited Islamist threat”. (Islamist, as opposed to Islamic, threat is indeed limited.)

Now I belong to neither of those pernicious groups. Yet one doesn’t have to be a neocon to observe that just about all current terrorist acts are committed by people who scream ‘Allahu akbar!’, not ‘Legalise weed!’. Some of those acts, such as 9/11, require the kind of meticulous planning that would be beyond drugged up zombies.

I happen to agree with Hitchens on the subject of drug legalisation, but not because the odd spliff makes a chap blow himself up on a crowded bus. The argument has to be more nuanced than he seems to be able to put together.

Mind-altering drugs aren’t immoral in se. Drug use in Britain was unrestricted until the 1868 Pharmacy Act and uncriminalised until the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act, and one can’t seriously believe that what was moral in 1919 suddenly became a sin in 1920. The outer edge of the moral argument reaches only as far as malum prohibitum, which puts dropping acid into the same category as dropping a seat belt.

One is on equally shaky grounds with a utilitarian argument. Taken in moderation, drugs are no more objectionable than alcohol. Taken in excess, some drugs can indeed have undesirable social consequences, but anyone who has ever been attacked by a drunk will agree that weed isn’t unique in that respect.

Hitchens has the causality all wrong. People don’t blow themselves up because they smoke pot. They’re more likely to smoke pot to overcome the fear of blowing themselves up. Cannabis is the Muslim version of Dutch courage.

This isn’t the first time in history that drugs have been used that way. For example, the Viking berserks gave rise to a good English word by munching magic mushrooms before battle, the Saracens went on cannabis-fuelled suicide missions behind the Crusaders’ lines, and Soviet soldiers charged tanks with bayonets under the influence of ethanol.

Drugs have some bad effects, but one can’t build a rational argument on such a shaky foundation. There’s no proof that moderate use of drugs is harmful – and immoderate use of anything, from tap water to tofu, can kill you.

To sum up, the rational case against legalising drugs is weak, and bits of anecdotal evidence won’t make it stronger. A case does exist, but it’s cultural and existential.

Drug taking, whether it’s a joint passed around by youths sitting on the floor or a line of coke cut with a razor blade on a marble top, is a ritual. And any ritual is a semiotic system – not a philosophy but a way of communicating one.

So what do these rituals, as distinct from drugs qua drugs, communicate? Why, they transmit the signals of sex-drugs-and-rock‘n roll modernity, a disease even more communicative than bad taste. And in doing so, they reflect many other dynamics involved in the collapse of our civilisation.

A relativist, empiricist society preaches that absolute truth isn’t only unknowable but nonexistent, and one can discover puny half-truths by experimentation – so why not addle one’s brain with drugs?

A youth is taught that his own self is uniquely important – so why not give it a boost?

A self-indulgent girl grows up never having encountered real beauty, be that art or religion – so why not create a surrogate?

As their senses rival their minds for hopeless ignorance, the modern lot feel not happy but high, not sad but depressed – so why not use drugs? Unskilled in semantics, they have to use semiotics to scream defiance, to spit in the face of the moribund beauty they despise.

Drugs have not always had this hidden semiotic agenda. But semiotics change with age, and what was meat for Messrs Coleridge or Conan Doyle is poison for us.

Thus Hitchens’s campaign against legalisation is commendable. But his crazy attempts to link the unlinkable – cannabis and Islamic terrorism – make one wonder what he himself is on. I wouldn’t mind having some of it.

Putin’s former ally, MP Denis Voronenkov, asked for it.

Throughout Vlad’s tenure, Denis has remained loyal, proving with his every vote that the Communist Party he represented was opposition in name only. He supported Vlad’s every bright idea, including aggression against Georgia, the theft of the Crimea and the de facto annexation of East Ukraine.

A good egg all around in other words, and appropriately rewarded: properties, fleets of luxury cars, a fair chunk of beautifully laundered Panamanian assets.

That means Voronenkov personified Russia’s indigenous government blend of organised crime and secret police. The first ingredient is demonstrated by Panamanian millions, the second by… well, Panamanian millions. Voronenkov wasn’t a full-time officer like Vlad, but no one could have jumped on that bandwagon without being hand in glove with the KGB/FSB.

And then things went wrong: Denis was charged with fraud. It’s important to realise that this charge could be justifiably levelled at every member of Russia’s government, her every billionaire and most millionaires. (The first group overlaps with the other two in its entirety.)

However, it’s never brought up for as long as the chap stays on Vlad’s right side. The fraud charge thus matters not so much in itself as in what it signifies: the loss of Vlad’s favour. And that crime trumps any other, including murder.

Punishment comes swiftly, ranging from judicial imprisonment to extrajudicial killing. There’s no mercy, no appeal, no tariff – Vlad is as likely to forgive disloyalty as a Mafia don would be to spare an associate about to testify.

I don’t know what the beef was between the two men, but it must have been something major. Voronenkov knew the score and didn’t sit around waiting to be ‘whacked’, in his former friend’s jargon.

Last October he and his wife upped sticks and slipped across the border to the Ukraine. There Voronenkov was immediately granted citizenship, promising in return to testify against the former president Yanukovych.

Seemingly out of Vlad’s reach, Voronenkov relaxed and began to taunt his former chieftain from afar. “What’s he going to do?” he tweeted. “Whack me in the middle of Kiev?” Well, yes, was Vlad’s answer and, as a competitive man myself, I know how hard it is not to take a direct challenge.

On Thursday Voronenkov was shot dead at the location specified, the middle of Kiev. His assassin was killed on the spot, so it was a nice, clean hit in the best traditions of Vlad’s alma mater.

I must give Vlad this: he’s a man of his word. He once said: “There’s enemies and there’s traitors. Enemies I can reason with; traitors I wipe out.” Even easier done than said.

This ‘wet job’ came in the wake of another one just two days earlier, when the lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov was defenestrated in Moscow.

The unfortunate jurist dared to represent the family of Sergei Magnitsky, Bill Browder’s lawyer beaten to death in prison, and Browder himself. Yet that transgression alone didn’t call for a mandatory death penalty – a cautionary beating would have sufficed.

But Gorokhov went further than that by agreeing to testify at a US trial of Russian money laundering. Now that’s a capital crime for sure, and the lawyer is fortunate to end up in a coma rather than a coffin.

Every window in Russia can be a window of opportunity: defenestration is a popular method of settling political and commercial disagreements.

Kommersant reporter Ivan Safronov was defenestrated in 2007 for exposing Russia’s secret supplies of arms to Iran and Syria. Financier Sergei Korobeinikov, who had first-hand knowledge of the Russian laundromat, suffered the same fate a year later. (He actually was tossed off his balcony, but let’s not quibble about details).

Yet Vlad can’t be accused of being stuck in the rut of the same old technique. Nor does he always draw a fine line between enemies and traitors – both are high-risk groups, and the methods of dispatching them are as varied as life itself.

Speaking of only the past few years, opposition politician Nemtsov was ‘whacked’ a few feet from the Kremlin, where Vlad could enjoy the spectacle from his window.

Opposition Mafioso Berezovsky was garrotted in Berkshire.

Ex-KGB colleague Litvinenko was poisoned with a radioactive isotope in Mayfair – the first known case of nuclear terrorism.

Another opposition Mafioso Perepelichny, who was singing to the Swiss authorities about Russian money laundering, was poisoned in Surrey with gelsemium, a toxic plant only found in China and widely used there for the same purpose.

Yet another opposition Mafioso Gorbuntsov was shot six times in Canary Warf but miraculously survived.

But never mind talkative Mafiosi – it’s journalists and political opponents who are the usual target. At least 200 of them have been murdered on Putin’s watch and – as anyone familiar with Russia will know – on his direct orders. Hundreds more dissidents have been imprisoned on trumped-up charges, mutilated, savagely beaten up or threatened into silence.

This is how the KGB operates, and Putin once proudly said that “There’s no such thing as ex-KGB. This is for life.”

Not only Vlad himself but also 85 per cent of his government are career KGB officers and agents. The second group also comprises the entire hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church including its patriarch, which may explain the recently developed piety of Putin and his jolly friends.

It would be counterintuitive to expect these old dogs to learn new tricks. Tradecraft has penetrated their DNA and, if you know what the tradecraft is, you won’t be surprised at Russia’s actions.

Look at how the KGB did business and juxtapose it with Vlad’s MO. Assassination – tick. Recruitment through money – tick, as any number of Western politicians demonstrate, from Marine Le Pen to the ex-Chancellor of Germany Schroeder to various members of Trump’s inner circle. Provocation – tick, a technique widely used in the Ukraine and the Baltics. False flag operations – tick. Money laundering – tick, an activity in which the KGB began to indulge when it was still called OGPU.

What I find amazing is that the same people who say all the right things about Islamic terrorism extol the virtues of Putin’s frankly terroristic regime. There’s an important difference between ISIS and Putin: the former can only kill a few hundred people here and there; the latter could ‘whack’ whole countries – something of which Vlad and his mouthpieces never tire of reminding us.

Come to your senses, ladies and gentlemen, and readjust your moral scales before it’s too late. That appliance has gone haywire.