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Chesterton described Thomas Hardy’s work as “The village atheist talking to the village idiot.” Stephen Fry, a comedian, author, left-wing activist, and CELEBRITY, proves that the two personages can co-exist in the same breast.

He’s not the only one. Even men considerably brighter than Fry begin to sound idiotic the moment they spout arguments, never mind diatribes, against God. It’s as if God punishes aggressive atheists by turning their minds to ordure.

Fry’s diatribe came on Irish TV, where he was asked what he’d say if confronted by God. The poor chap got excited and began to sputter spittle:

“How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?… Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?”

It’s worth mentioning that Fry has largely built his public persona by purveying two assumptions: 1) that his manic depression makes him interesting and 2) his facile cleverness propped up by a good memory for quiz trivia makes him not just a CELEBRITY but also a THINKER.

That the two canards are readily swallowed by the public says more about our time than about Fry, who’s entitled to make a living as best he knows. But he ought to control his girlish emotiveness if he expects to be taken seriously by people a notch above his TV audiences.

Irish police are currently investigating Fry for blasphemy under the Defamation Act. If tried and convicted, he could be sentenced to a €25,000 fine, a derisory sum for a CELEBRITY.

But another charge, that of stupidity, has already been filed. Fry has been tried and convicted on the evidence of the above hysterical harangue.

Intelligent atheists – and this description approaches an oxymoron – know that trying to argue the toss will make them sound silly. That’s why they tend to hedge their bets by claiming to be agnostics, rather than atheists.

We just don’t know, they say. Neither the existence nor nonexistence of God can be proved, so it’s best not to talk about it. Naturally to this lot ‘proved’ means empirically proved: atheists can’t accept the existence of any other than empirical knowledge.

That by itself is a puny, not to mention self-refuting, position: denied thereby is the possibility of any knowledge obtained not only by grace or intuition but even by rationalisation, which is the tool they claim to be using. If empirical knowledge is the be all and end all of cognition, then not only philosophy but even natural science is impossible. Most great discoveries have been made not by rationalisation but by the post-rationalisation of intuitive knowledge.

But at least such men shy away from illogical attacks on God, who according to them doesn’t exist. Thus they prove that, though somewhat wanting in the area of high intelligence, they aren’t devoid of common sense.

Fry has neither. If he had some of the latter, he’d have answered the interviewer’s question by saying that he couldn’t possibly say anything to God because God doesn’t exist.

A theologian, incidentally, would agree: God indeed doesn’t exist, in the usual sense of the word. It’s because of God that everything exists. However, since TV hacks aren’t known for their command of philosophical subtleties, the reply Fry didn’t proffer would have ended the subject: “Next question, Stephen. How’s your husband these days?”

That way Fry would have stayed in his own world, one inhabited by CELEBRITIES and other luvvies. However, by implicitly accepting that God, however awful he might be, does exist, he entered a different world, one with its own philosophical system, language and corpus of knowledge.

In that world even an average theology student would be able to tear Fry’s hysterical harangue to shreds by arguing from basic theodicy.

He’d explain to Fry the concept of original sin corrupting both man and the natural world. He might even quote Russia’s first philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev, who said: “Our concern should be not combatting natural disasters but trying not to deserve them.”

The youngster could also point out that God is outside time and space, and therefore outside man’s notions of what is or isn’t just. A higher system can know all about a lower one, but not the other way around. Hence it’s not only possible but certain that divine justice differs from the human version.

If Fry chooses to operate within the world into which he barged without wiping dung off his shoe soles, he should accept the concept of life eternal, within which life in earth is but a passing instant. In earth, dying of bone cancer at 10 is more tragic than doing so at 90, but compared to eternity the difference isn’t just small but nonexistent.

It’s also worth mentioning that a man with artistic pretensions is singularly unobservant if all he sees in the world is misery, evil and cancerous children. God not only created man but continues to delight him with endless variety of flora and fauna, melancholy rivers and rowdy seas teeming with fish, craggy mountains, wild forests and gentle hills alive with birds and beasts.

My advice to Fry is to shut up on such subjects and stick to milking his bipolar disorder and homoactivism for what they’re worth. He’d still sound no less pathetic but considerably less stupid. And Stephen? Take on Mohammed next, see how you get on. You won’t get away with a fine, I can tell you that.

My French friends must be happy that for the next few years the Palais de l’Élysée will be inhabited by both a perpetrator and a victim of statutory rape.

The criminal is Brigitte Trogneux, who 24 years ago seduced her pupil Manny Macron. According to modern ethos, this was supposed to traumatise the poor boy for life. It was also supposed to put the offender behind bars or at least have her struck off for life.

Now speaking from personal experience, or rather lack thereof, I doubt I would have felt traumatised if one of my better-looking female teachers had seduced me at 15. I know that none of my subsequent experiences, modest as they were, left an indelible scar.

In Manny’s case, such a traumatic experience would have been even less likely because, as one hears, he’s otherwise inclined anyway. Oh well, as that Brooklyn woman said, “Oedipus, schmedipus, as long he loves his Mum…”

Still, there are legal aspects to consider here, mutatis mutandis. Yes, the age of consent in France is 15, which is truer to life than our own puritanical 16, but rather more restrictive than Estonia’s 14 (I wonder if my travel agent has good deals on London-Tallinn airfares).

So Brigitte wouldn’t have been culpable on those grounds, but even naughty France frowns on 40-year-old teachers seducing 15-year-old pupils over whom they have authority. Too bad that France has copied the US in having statutes of limitations in its laws.

Yet I’m happy to see that, even if Manny found the original experience traumatic, he has then parlayed it into a rather successful political career. The statutory rapist is now ensconced at the presidential palace, and she’s even getting an unpaid job in the government.

I’m not certain what her title will be. Minister for plastic surgery in charge of oedipal affairs? Whatever it is, I’m sure Brigitte will handle it with élan – she strikes me as that kind of girl.

If you detect a note of frivolity in my treatment of this momentous event in French history, you’re right. It’s that rotten habit I have of relying on levity when gravity is impossible.

If you can find anything serious to say about the bone-crushing nonentity that’s Manny Macron, by all means enlighten me. If you can’t – and I’m sure you won’t be able to – then you must agree that the only qualification Manny has for presiding over one of the world’s most significant states isn’t what he is but what he isn’t: Marine Le Pen.

Modern politics just about everywhere, not just in France, has become a secular answer to apophatic theology. People justify their vote in purely negative terms; they vote not for but against.

I can’t for the life of me see how anybody, with the possible exception of Brigitte, can be enthusiastic about Manny qua Manny. He mouths platitudes on every subject under the sun without even realising that some of them – well, most – are mutually exclusive.

He talks about free trade while professing undying devotion to the EU, which, as a protectionist bloc, is the exact opposite of free trade. He talks about loving France and then screams his banalities to the accompaniment of the EU anthem and against the backdrop of the EU stars.

(It’s telling that the EU chose one of Beethoven’s few awful pieces, the last movement of his Ninth Symphony, as its anthem, and one of Europe’s few ugly capitals, Brussels, as its own.)

He mouths utter gibberish about Britain having imposed ‘liberal values’ on the EU, to which Europe can now say good riddance with a sigh of relief – while reaffirming his commitment to those same liberal values that in actual fact haven’t been imposed on the EU by Britain or anyone else.

Manny is a typical internationalist socialist apparatchik, who first pretended he was a socialist and then pretended he wasn’t. There’s really nothing one can say about him that hasn’t already been said about our own Tony Blair – another jumped-up nonentity committed to self-aggrandisement via supra-national politics. And Manny doesn’t even have Tony’s gift of the gab, such as it is.

What is worth talking about seriously is the huge disappointment experienced by our own Ukip types at the defeat of Putin’s inept employee Marine Le Pen.

Yes, she dislikes the EU, but then so does Putin – and so does every fascist party in Europe. But Le Pen’s economics is pure Trotsky – and everything else is pure Mussolini. So how does one make a choice between a mindless EU apparatchik and a mindless national socialist? This is your clear-cut case of apophatic politics: voting not for but against.

Seeing the world through the prism of that one issue is exactly what killed Ukip, which should remind us of the moral and intellectual paucity of single-issue politics. I despise it even when I happen to agree with the single issue, as I do in this case.

I detest the EU as much as does any fully paid-up member of Ukip – possibly even more because my objections to it are not just parochially patriotic but generally moral. I’ve lived under a regime totally based on lies, and I know the pitfalls involved.

But the regime I’ve lived under was also fascist, in the broad sense of the word, and I’m aware of those pitfalls too. It’s a matter of choosing the pitfall into which to stumble.

Given that choice, I’d rather spend half of my time in a sovereign Britain with the toxic EU dust shaken off her feet. But I’d rather spend the other half (as I do now) in a France enthralled in the evil I know, a tyrannical, utterly corrupt, mendacious EU, than in a France reeling under a fascist despotism I don’t know, but know everything about.

Add to this another dimension, that of Putin calling in his chits if Le Pen had won the election, and Manny, despicable zero that he is, and married to his surgically modified surrogate mother, becomes the lesser evil – an evil though he undoubtedly is nonetheless.

A couple of years ago, a stand-up comedian cracked a joke about the royal family celebrating the Queen’s birthday. “It was a small affair,” he said. “Just the close family – and Harry.”

The joke was rewarded with uproarious laughter because the audience was familiar with the persistent rumour that Prince Harry was sired by his mother’s lover, Capt. James Hewitt.

Now, according to The Times, “this outrageous and discredited insinuation” will resurface in King Charles III, a BBC drama to be shown on Wednesday.

Apparently Harry’s love interest asks him: “Is Charles really your dad? Or was it the other one?” Now considering the pervasive nature of the rumour that just won’t die, the question is plausible if tactless and probably groundless.

Yet the very fact that it’ll be asked has caused an uproar from all sorts of predictable quarters fronted by Rosa Monckton. I don’t know what Miss Monckton’s CV actually says, but I know what it should say: Professional Friend and Closest Confidante of Diana.

I’m sure she must possess other qualifications as well, but much of her popular appeal comes from acting as a self-appointed guardian of Diana’s reputation and legacy, such as they are.

Donning that hat yet again, Miss Monckton said: “The BBC is deliberately causing pain to a real living person in a salacious fashion. The fact is this is not a harmless myth – these people are still alive.”

On her own touchy-feely terms she’s doubtless right. Prince Harry won’t enjoy watching that “insinuation” come back to life, “outrageous and discredited” as it may be. After all, this young man is endowed with extrovert hypersensitivity, as he doesn’t mind showing to all and sundry in the very same media.

Now I for one am ready to accept the evidence that Prince Harry was born before his mother two-timed his father, the eponymous King Charles III to be – especially since Hewitt himself says the same thing. Harry does look like Hewitt, but that’s no proof of paternity. Neither is Harry’s ginger hair, as anyone who has seen Diana’s red-headed brother Lord Spencer can confirm.

Still, it’s possible that Hewitt et al. are lying to protect her sacred memory and especially the reputation of the royal family – I doubt we’ll ever know or care to know the indisputable truth.

Yet the criticism levelled at the BBC is fully justified on both specific and general grounds. For the BBC makes it its daily business to violate the Charter it must obey to qualify for public money. The first three items specified therein demand “sustaining citizenship and civil society, promoting education and learning, stimulating creativity and cultural excellence.”

If the BBC ever does any of these things, it’s only by accident. Most of the time it runs tawdry entertainment (which I’m sure King Charles III will be) or else vents its left-wing bias through pseudo-serious programmes pitched at an intellectual level between mental vacuity and retardation.

Having said all that, Miss Monckton, or for that matter Prince Harry, shouldn’t get too worked up about this. For Diana only has herself to blame, posthumously as it may be. She herself besmirched her reputation by embarking on multiple affairs, of which the one with Hewitt was the most publicised but neither the first nor the last.

This was accompanied by expert manipulation of the media, culminating in that notorious BBC interview in which Diana flapped her eyelashes histrionically and admitted with girlish gasps that she “adored him”.

Now, even if the mauvaises langues cast aspersion on Harry’s paternal descent, his maternal lineage is in no doubt: he has inherited his mother’s vulgar tendency to wear her sensitive heart on her sleeve, unaware that this sartorial habit may cake that organ in grime.

He and his brother would do better choosing their paternal grandparents for role models. They’d then learn how to discharge their duties with reticent and selfless dignity, serving the public rather than acting out their own – and their mother’s – notions of emotional incontinence.

Both Diana and her paramour got off lightly, for both committed not just a marital indiscretion but a state crime. Specifically, they violated the Treason Act of 1351 that’s still in force today.

According to the Act, adultery with the wife of the king or heir to the throne is high treason punishable by death. At the time Diana played the beast with two backs with Hewitt, high treason was the only crime calling for the capital punishment, although that has since been replaced by life imprisonment.

The Act is ambivalent on whether or not the wife herself is equally guilty, but any clever barrister would doubtless cite precedents, such as Anne Boleyn, who lost her pretty head by supposedly having been unfaithful to Henry VIII.

Such touchiness in this matter is natural, for the wife’s hanky-panky outside the royal bed may raise doubts about succession, which can be deadly to the whole dynasty. This, to me, is a more interesting angle from which to examine Diana’s amorous record.

It’s also a good reason for Miss Monckton and other Diana hagiographers to moderate their indignation at the BBC’s lèse–majesté. People may accuse them of sharing their heroine’s talent for disingenuous manipulation.

When Christ said that his kingdom was not of this world, he must have anticipated the need to keep our Anglican hierarchy a safe distance away from this world.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have issued a letter, guiding 16,000 parishes to the right electoral choices. Since the letter doesn’t say what such choices would be, parishioners must be perplexed.

The letter manifestly lacks evangelical absolutism. It’s like tagging the phrase ‘on the other hand…’ to each of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not steal, but on the other hand…”

Their Graces start by exhorting Christians to live according to Christian principles. This is unassailable, but then truisms always are – that’s why they are truisms. The difficulty arises when Christian principles are related to political realities.

Theology is ‘the queen of all sciences’ because it reigns supreme in making intellectual demands on its practitioners. Only the deepest and subtlest of minds can grasp theological intricacies – and put political, economic and social realities on a theological footing.

I hope no one will take umbrage if I suggest that Justin Welby and John Sentamu aren’t in the upper tier of the world’s thinkers. In fact, if this letter is anything to go by, they’re closer to the basement.

Their Graces stress the importance of “urgent and serious solutions to our housing challenges”, flag the need for a “confident and flourishing health service” and decry “the exclusion of the poorest groups from future economic life”.

On the other hand, they warn that “there are dangers of an economy over-reliant on debt”. Really? And I thought Christ was in favour of borrowing: “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”

Then again, Jesus wasn’t laying down responsible fiscal principles for our Chancellor. In this world one wonders how Their Graces propose to reconcile the huge increase in public spending they seem to have in mind with reducing reliance on debt.

For a huge increase in government spending is exactly what it would take to meet “our housing challenges”, make our pathetic health service “confident and flourishing” and include “the poorest groups” into “future economic life”.

Where’s the money going to come from? Especially since Their Graces praise the pledge by the Conservatives and Labour to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid? It’s that sacramental phrase ‘on the other hand’ that’s implied here.

The issue of immigration also has two hands in the episcopal body of thought. On the one hand, we must extend “a generous and hospitable welcome to refugees and migrants”. But on the other hand, “We should not be deaf to the legitimate concerns that have been expressed about the scale of population flows.”

So which is it? Listening to ‘the legitimate concerns’ or extending ‘a generous and hospitable welcome’? Since ‘the legitimate concerns’ centre around keeping outsiders out or at least down to a bare minimum, the two are mutually exclusive.

Anyway, which party is more likely to uphold the virtues extolled by Their Graces, provided we understand what they are? Oh well, these “are not the preserve of any one political party”.

Now I’m really confused. Labour is a party of cosmic indebtedness (as opposed to the merely stratospheric kind favoured by the Tories). Moreover, when in government, it demonstrated its inability to solve our housing problems, sort out the NHS or include the poor into economic life in any other than a freeloading capacity. On the contrary, they made all those problems far worse.

They’re sound on generosity and hospitality to migrants, but not on listening to the legitimate concerns about this generosity tearing our social fabric to tatters. I’d say that leaves the Tories in the driving seat by the process of elimination.

Their Graces then broach the subject of foreign trade, which ought to be “effective and just”. Meaning what exactly, other than another vapid bien pensant generality? Britain, they say, must remain an “outward looking and generous country”. It’s that G-spot again. Does this mean that we should continue to give money to the EU? Or do foreign trade at a loss? Or turn foreign trade into foreign aid?

Then they talk about “historic failures” of our educational system, which Their Graces ascribe to overemphasising academic subjects. Here we’ve left the area of meaningless circumlocution to enter one of ignorance and fatuity.

Some 80 per cent of our school leavers have problems reading, writing and adding up. Against that backdrop it’s sheer lunacy to talk about our schools being too academic. “Historic failures” have been caused by turning schools into social engineering labs, which project was animated by exactly the socialist ideology Their Graces really espouse.

What else? Oh yes, “the greatest burdens of austerity have not been borne by those with the broadest shoulders”, and it’s all Mrs Thatcher’s fault.

This is leftie waffle at its most soaring. Austerity means cutting government spending, not slowing the tempo of its growth from suicidal to merely promiscuous. Since public spending has been steadily growing, talking about austerity is simply ignorant. And yes, when public spending grows more slowly, recipients of government largesse will notice the change more than those who pay their own way.

There’s a hint at wealth redistribution here, but again Their Graces don’t come out and say it. By the same token they only talk about “re-examining” the Trident deterrent, when what they really favour is unilateral disarmament.

It’s only inadvertently that they said something that rings true. The election, according to Their Graces, is an opportunity to “…reimagine our shared values as a country”.

What’s only imagined (or ‘reimagined) isn’t real. Their Graces live in an imaginary world governed by imaginary, not real, ‘values’. Hence they’re outside the reality of both the United Kingdom — and that other one that is not of this world.

Vlad dislikes the EU, which is good. Alas, he dislikes it only because he wrongly thinks it epitomises the West, which he hates. That’s not so good.

You see, Vlad isn’t just a career KGB officer but a visceral one. The KGB has been encoded into his DNA, which is why he shares all the foibles of that sinister organisation. He’s capable of perfidy, but not of subtlety. Cleverness, but not depth. Tactics, but not strategy.

His tendency is to rely on the more primitive tricks from the KGB bag: ‘whacking in the shithouse’ (to use his inaugural phrase), bribery, honey trap, blackmail.

At times he gets so carried away with such expedients that he loses sight of the desired goal, running the risk of the means not so much justifying the end as sabotaging it.

Vlad has taken Russia out of a short siding and put her back on the imperial track, which she has ridden for 500 years or so. Yet the mysterious Russian soul is such that the Russians seldom pursue imperial ambitions for material gain. Expansion is usually their aim in itself, and in pursuit of it they’re prepared to let their self-interest suffer.

Putin has found a way of exploiting this craving on the part of the populace, but at a cost. Moscow is full of posters and bumper stickers saying “To Berlin!”, “We can do it again!” and some such. Some of these also feature portraits of Stalin, who’s now almost as popular as he was in his lifetime.

The KGB junta is expertly whipping such grassroots sentiments into a hysteria, hoping this will make people forget that their standard of living is in the Chad and Gambia territory, while their human rights occupy an even lower plateau and their press is less free than in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Venezuela (Reporters Without Borders rating).

The downside is that an openly hostile stance towards the West may shake it out of its normal torpor. There are signs already that the West is losing, albeit slowly, some of its demob happiness. Military budgets are growing at a snail’s pace, if at all, but at least Russia is now generally identified as a hostile power.

Vlad could change all that, but his KGB viscera won’t let him. For example, if he saw the EU for what it is, a nail in the coffin of Western polity, he’d portray himself as its friend rather than implacable enemy.

Perhaps he could even ingratiate Russia into EU membership and then slowly take over by subverting that wicked organisation from within. As the only virile military power in Europe, Russia could then make the entire EU work for her, the way it now works for Germany.

Instead, KGB Vlad does what comes naturally: provocation, blackmail, disinformation, sabotage, cultivation of extremist parties – all bound to kill the dairy cow he could instead profitably milk.

Witness his current meddling in French elections. Le Pen’s National Front isn’t so much Putin’s client as his employee – it’s on Putin’s payroll. Hence he has thrown his KGB knowhow behind Marine, knowing that her victory would enable him to recoup his investment with a huge interest.

Not being an expert in clandestine tradecraft, I wouldn’t presume to offer Vlad any advice. But it’s reasonably clear that his own undoubted expertise has backfired by making Marine come across as the vicious demagogue she really is.

Every molecule in Vlad’s KGB body says that dripping some dirt on Macron into the public domain will give Marine a leg up. And then who knows, she might win and gratefully act as Vlad’s battering ram bringing the EU down.

To that end Russian heirs to the KGB First Chief Directorate expertly spread rumours that Macron evades taxes by hiding money in an offshore account. Realising that she was losing the presidential TV debate, Marine alluded to the rumours – only to get herself sued for her trouble.

I’ve followed numerous televised debates in various countries, but I’ve never seen one candidate suing another for libel. Macron would never have done that if he were unsure of the outcome: he knows that Le Pen’s KGB sponsors won’t be able to come up with any prima facie evidence.

So far Marine hasn’t referred to the other rumour also spread by the FSB, one referring to Macron’s ambivalent sexuality. Unlike the accusation of financial impropriety, this one has been around for a while and it’s probably less groundless.

Some of my French friends have inside knowledge of their country’s politics, and for them Macron’s bisexuality is hardly a secret. His close friendship with the male head of Radio France is also widely known.

Manny’s denials would sound more convincing if he stopped wearing two wedding rings and in general were less blatant about it. That he doesn’t go out of his way to conceal his predilection shows that he doesn’t regard any possible revelations as unduly damaging. Basically, no one in France gives a damn.

My friends, who despise Macron but detest Le Pen, fear that the Russians may at the last moment produce some photographs that could scupper Manny’s bid, but those photos would have to be truly disgusting to impress the blasé French.

I for one would love to see Vlad wearing a long mac and whispering “Hey, handsome, wanna see some feelthy pictures?”, which is roughly his natural level. But meanwhile he has reinforced his growing reputation as a geopolitical saboteur of legitimate politics.

Many Westerners are aghast, and their governments are beginning to take heed. What they’re going to do about it remains to be seen. But before long they’ll have to do something to neutralise the growing Russian threat. Vlad is bound to learn sooner or later that KGB tradecraft isn’t quite the same as statecraft.

Driving home from France yesterday, I stopped for a long and boozy lunch at a lovely medieval town called Laon. Along with a glorious cathedral, it boasts a tattooing and piercing parlour at every corner and a hairstyling salon called ‘Blond Shag’.

It’s good to see that the English ethos and language are making inroads into the very heart of the EU. Makes one feel at home, that, Brexit or no Brexit.

And speaking of Brexit, Jean-Claude Juncker, ‘Junk’ to his friends, is getting a lot of bad press these days – mostly because of his demanding a modest exit fee from Britain.

People call him intransigent, fanatical, greedy, alcoholic and many other things that can’t be mentioned in a public medium accessible to children. This is most unfair, especially since Junk always runs his list of demands by me before making it public.

This morning, for example, he sent me the most recent list he compiled last night, or rather at five in the morning, when Junk had just got home after a most profitable time out with friends. Apparently, Junk had bet them €100 that he could drink a yard of whisky – and won.

(For the benefit of those of you who haven’t lived, a yard is measured out on the bar and full shot glasses are set all along the line. The bettor then empties them in turn, going from left to right without stopping.)

Appropriately refreshed, Junk felt positively magnanimous, which is why his demands are so reasonable, and I for one could find nothing wrong with them. See what you think (I’m quoting Junk’s prose verbatim, including his customary mishmash of languages):

“Dear Alex, it’s stark raving verrückt to think of Brexit as leaving a club. Ces Schweinhunden rosbifs ought to think of it as a divorce. Britain is a rich old homme who marries a beautiful much younger Mädchen and 15 years later files for divorce. It’s only fair that he maintain her for Leben in the style to which she has become habituée, nicht war? Let’s stop dickering about a billion here, billion there and call it an even trillion Deutschmarks, aka euros. Jawohl?

“La même chose applies to the Mädchen’s Kinder, who reside in Britain or will do so in the future. Britain must pay lifetime child support for them, otherwise known as welfare. Much has been made lately of the unemployment rate among EU immigrants, which currently stands at 14 per cent, three times the national average. That misses le point. It’s outrageous that 86 per cent (sick!!!) of the Mädchen’s Kinder are forced to work for a living. Nostalgic for those Victorian workhouses, are you, britische Schweinhunden?

“And just because Sie leben in Britain, it doesn’t mean these pauvres Kinder should obey British laws. They’ll live and die by the laws of their Mutter, the EU. Ordnung surtout!

“Ireland wasn’t so much married as violée. If Britain the rapist doesn’t wish to spend the next 50 years in prison, a compensation is called for. Ulster springs to mind, and I mean not the overcoat but the seven northern counties Ireland lost along with her virginité. They must be incorporated into the Republic and therefore the EU: Ein volk, Fourth Reich, ein Juncker.

“Committed as I am to liberté, fraternité, Aligoté, I think that not only Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales must stay in the EU if they so choose (or even if they don’t), but also such formerly independent parts of England as Mersey and Wessex. Les rosbif are obsessed with sovereignty, nicht war? Bien, what’s sauce pour l’oie is sauce pour le gander. Heil sovereignty!

“These are the only major demands I can think of this late at night or rather early in the morning. There are also some minor ones:

“Les rosbifs must stop describing me in pejorative terms, such as ‘alkie’, ‘whisky breath’, ‘piss artist’, ‘juicer’, ‘boozer’ and ‘wino’. Just because an homme can drink a yard of whisky he’s none of those choses. Call me a bon vivant if you must. But do call me to a piss-up.

“They must also stop comparing mon amie Angie Merkel to Hitler. Her moustache is smaller, her poitrine is bigger, and she doesn’t gas Juden. There are other differences as well, but I can’t think of them this early in der Morgen.

“Write to me if I’ve left anything out. Must pop out to les toilettes now. You know how they say ‘in vino vomit us?’ A bientôt. Your Freund Junk”

I haven’t replied to Junk’s letter yet, but at first glance I find his demands perfectly reasonable. And if you don’t, you’re a bigot, Little Englander, reactionary and – in all likelihood – also a homophobe, global warming denier and a male chauvinist Schwein.

Oh well, back to my deep thoughts about the EU and sordid fantasies about the Blond Shag, which, according to the sign, is only available at that hairstylist’s. A la prochaine, Laon!

Jean-Claude ‘Just call me Junk’ Juncker told Theresa May that Brexit “cannot be a success”.

Now Junk ought to be breathalysed before anything he says can be taken seriously. But even some relatively sober people say the same thing with monotonous regularity.

They’re right. Depending on how success is defined, nothing can ever succeed. If military victory is expected to be achieved with no casualties whatsoever, then every war in history has ended in defeat. If only zero mortality makes a hospital successful, then no hospital is.

The success or failure of Brexit can be judged on an endless list of criteria, which list can be modified to produce whatever result we want. For example, I’m certain that Brexit won’t succeed in enabling England to win the next World Cup, eliminating crime or increasing the average life expectancy to a hundred.

I therefore propose we crystallise the proposition down to its essential element, always keeping in mind the dictionary definition of success: achieving the desired effect.

Here Britain and Junk are indeed “galaxies apart”, as has been suggested. For Britain, the desired effect of Brexit is to leave the EU, thereby regaining sovereignty. For Junk, the desired effect is exactly the opposite: to sabotage Brexit altogether or, barring that, make it so costly that no other member will dare follow suit.

Hence leaving the EU, whatever it entails, is ipso facto Britain’s success and Junk’s failure. The line of demarcation couldn’t be clearer than that, yet our government continues to aid Junk in his efforts to smudge it into invisibility.

Mrs May must understand – or, if she already does, acknowledge – that no Brexit negotiations with Junk and his friends are possible because they’ll never negotiate in good faith.

Actually, there’s really nothing to negotiate. HMG should forget all that Article 50 nonsense and withdraw the country from the EU effective immediately. We could then discuss the attendant technical details from a position of sovereign strength, not as victims of blackmail. Simple, isn’t it?

No deal isn’t just better than a bad deal, in Mrs May’s phrase. No deal is better than any deal, because Britain’s sovereignty shouldn’t be subject to any horse trading.

Simplicity breeds simplicity. For example, once we’re out, Mrs May could make a simple counteroffer to Junk’s demand for a £50 billion exit fee: not a penny. Show me a contract, she ought to be saying, that stipulates a cancellation fee. You can’t? Sorted. Next item. Sue us? Go ahead. But which court do you suggest, considering we’re out of the European Court’s jurisdiction?

Ireland? None of your business. That issue was settled in 1921-1922, long before the EU was a twinkle in those Vichy eyes. If any border issues exist, we’ll sort them out with the Republic. No outside help necessary, thank you very much.

Gibraltar? It has been British since the 1713 Treaty of Urtrecht. That’s long enough for Junk not to burden his head with such trivia – especially since Gibraltarians have almost unanimously rejected Spanish sovereignty in two separate referendums.

The right of EU citizens? The same as they had been before Maastricht. Europeans are welcome to visit Britain, without visas.

However, if they wish to stay, each case will be considered individually, depending on a variety of factors, such as employment, criminal record, family ties etc. The same applies to EU citizens already resident in Britain. Those we consider useful and acceptable can stay. Others will be asked to go – and that includes the 14 per cent of EU immigrants currently unemployed (three times the national rate).

Since the desired end of Brexit is sovereignty, leaving the EU will be Britain’s success whatever the economic consequences. Though hard to predict, one suspects they’ll be neither as catastrophic as the Remainers suggest nor as benign as their opponents believe.

If the EU indeed wanted fair negotiations, all trade issues could be decided instantly. Considering that Britain had been the world’s greatest trading power for centuries before the EU blessed the world with its presence, the matter can’t be unduly complicated.

But the EU isn’t a negotiator looking for a fair deal. It’s a blackmailer threatening to send various portions of the hostage’s anatomy in the post. Or not just the hostage’s: the EU is ready to cut off its own nose to spite its face.

The essence of business negotiations is trying to arrive at a mutual benefit. When one side is willing to accept vast losses for the sake of punishing the other, the only possible response was suggested by Clint Eastwood: “Go ahead. Make my day.”

Specifically, we should do in any case what our Chancellor only dangled as a threat: attract foreign trade by drastically reducing corporate taxes and regulations. Since the City is already the world’s financial centre, this would go a long way towards nullifying EU threats.

They may start a trade war but, unless they’re ready to defy WTO rules, they won’t be able to impose tariffs greater than four per cent. Even provided we reciprocate, we’ll be paying only a bit more for German cars or French wine.

Or we might bite the bullet and start driving Japanese cars and drinking Australian wines. This would be a serious hardship, but not in the context of restoring our ancient constitution.

Personally, I’d make this sacrifice for the sheer pleasure of watching Frau Merkel squirm under the wrath of German car manufacturers – or observing French vintners building barricades in the middle of Paris.

Junk got it wrong: Brexit can’t fail to be a success even if the bean counters have a point. Whatever price there’s to pay for freedom, it’ll be trivial compared to the price Britain paid in 1939-1945. You know, during Germany’s previous attempt to unite Europe.

Campaigners for all sorts of perversions, sexual or otherwise, are no longer content with tolerance. They demand – and are able to enforce – enthusiastic support.

Like those Red Guards in China, they force their elders and betters to debase themselves by recanting publicly. And what turns them particularly violent is a statement of any position informed by Christianity.

In that spirit, Tim Farron, the LibDem leader known for his sincere Christian faith, was hounded for days with shrill calls to surrender. Time after time his tormentors demanded he acknowledge that homosexuality isn’t a sin.

Now Mr Farron’s religion is unequivocal on this subject. A true Christian like him can’t accept that homosexuality is a valid, morally neutral option. He simply can’t reconcile his faith with this view of life (how he can reconcile it with socialist politics is puzzling, but we’ll leave that aside for now).

To Mr Farron’s credit, he held out for days under a constant bombardment, refusing to answer the question, while his tormentors refused to talk about anything else. That was the modern equivalent of tossing Christians to the lions or, to draw a more up-to-date analogy, of torturing them into renouncing their faith, communist-style. The threat to “smash their dog heads” is always in the background, figuratively for now.

Sooner or later something had to give. Faced with a looming possibility of throwing his political career away, Mr Farron finally admitted grudgingly that homosexuality isn’t a sin. Actually, I agree with him, from a purely Christian perspective.

Homosexuality is usually an innate condition and, as such, doesn’t involve a free choice between sin and virtue. Choosing a wrong moral option is a sin; choosing a right one is virtue. If no choice is possible, then such categories don’t apply – it’s as simple as that.

A useful parallel would be with hunchbacks and redheads. At different times and in different places, both were believed to have been stigmatised by the devil. Yet that belief wasn’t faith but superstition – it had nothing to do with Christian orthodoxy.

Mr Farron’s inquisitors missed a trick. They should have asked him whether he thought homosexual acts were a sin, as opposed to homosexuality in se. For, unlike an innate propensity for homosexuality, actually practising it involves a wrong moral choice. From a Judaeo-Christian standpoint, this unequivocally constitutes a sin, and a statement to the contrary would go against the tenets of both Testaments.

Such lexical laxity on the part of our young fascists enabled Mr Farron to get off with a mere slap on his wrist – and, technically speaking, he didn’t even have to compromise his Christian conscience.

Andrew Turner, Tory MP for the Isle of Wight and another Christian, wasn’t so lucky. A group of students led by a girl describing herself as an LGBT activist invited him to attend a homosexual rally, or whatever that Walpurgisnacht is called.

Mr Turner could have weaselled out of a confrontation easily enough, for example by claiming an unbreakable prior commitment. Instead he took the challenge head on by stating that homosexuality was “wrong” and a “danger to society”. He was thus caught in the trap laid by the fascist agent provocateurs.

Mr Turner was immediately tarred, feathered and drawn through the mud. His chief tormentor proved that her ‘activism’ left her no time to learn how to speak proper English by saying: “It’s terrifying that in this age and point in our development as a society, there are still people that can’t care enough about a person’s wellbeing to just accept who they are.”

“I do not want that person representing the Island,” she added, “because that opinion is not what we think here.” Irrelevant if true, dear. Mr Turner is his constituents’ representative, not their delegate (Burkean distinction).

He’s obligated not to share his constituent’s opinions but to represent their interests, as he sees them. It’s not immediately obvious how Mr Turner’s views on homosexuality jeopardise his ability to uphold the Island’s interests at Westminster.

Agree or disagree with his position, it’s defensible on any grounds, not just Christian but also generally moral, demographic, medical, aesthetic and so forth. But fascism of any kind isn’t about reason, nor about tolerance in whose name it’s mostly practised these days.

That homofascist whippersnapper doesn’t demand tolerance. She demands public surrender and self-debasement – just like her Soviet, Chinese and Khmer Rouge role models.

Amazingly, her illiterate drivel was seconded by the Tory Chief Whip’s office: “We want to make clear there is no place in the party for those views.”

Mr Turner was forced to resign, his political dog’s head smashed by today’s vintage of Red Guards. Never mind freedom of speech and conscience: the braying mob never does. They’re after blood, and their bloodlust won’t be quenched merely by meek acquiescence.

Those of us who have lived under fascism shudder when seeing its incipient signs. Destroying people’s careers for any expression of Christian beliefs is one such.

It’s typologically close to pumping bullets into recalcitrant crania, and the watershed separating the two is instantly bridgeable. Fascism, thy name is now tolerance – Orwell would have a field day.

It’s hard to describe the symptoms of modernity’s malaise in two words. But if you held a gun to my head and insisted, the two words I’d choose would be ‘Kim Kardashian’.

I’ve nothing against Kim herself. The sun is shining and she’s making hay, bales of it. But I do have something against a time when a girl devoid of any discernible abilities can parlay a genetic deformity into fame and fortune.

Ever since an unretouched photograph of Kim’s misshapen, cellulite-loaded buttocks made the papers, more column inches have been devoted to that anatomical feature than to the likelihood of nuclear war with that other Kim.

In addition, Kim has almost 100 million Instagram followers – I suppose there’s one born every minute. And in 2015 Time magazine named Kim on its list of 100 most influential people, thereby adding a whole new meaning to doing things arse backwards.

I use the words ‘genetic deformity’ advisedly. For, retouching or no retouching, even a rank medical amateur can see that Kim suffers from steatopygia, an abnormal build-up of adipose tissue in the buttocks. This condition is mostly found among women in sub-Saharan Africa, but isolated cases also occur elsewhere.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first case of steatopygia-shaped buttocks becoming a money spinner. The precedent happened in the nineteenth century, involving the sub-Saharan girl Saartjie Baartman, otherwise known as the ‘Hottentot Venus’. It’s instructive to see how the stories of Saartjie and Kim are similar but also different.

Saartjie was espied in her native village by two enterprising Frenchmen, who immediately saw money hiding in her cantilevered behind. Saartjie was tricked into signing a contract in a language she didn’t understand and effectively became a slave.

The two Frenchmen took her to London and used Saartjie as a freak sideshow at theatres and fairs. Gentlemen were paying large sums to ogle the ‘Hottentot Venus’ who stood naked on stage, displaying her massive bottom at various angles.

Saartjie’s owners made a lot of money fast, which encouraged them to take the show on the road, first to other English cities, then to Paris, where she became an even greater success.

But protests were mounting in parallel with the Frenchmen’s wealth and Saartjie’s fame. Slavery was a sensitive issue at the time, and abolitionist sentiments were strong, in this case enhanced by inchoate feminism. Eventually the ‘Hottentot Venus’ was sold on, to a dealer who withdrew her from the fairground circuit and hence the public eye.

Instead he organised viewings at private clubs where Saartjie was not only displayed but also pimped out. Anyone with the price of a ticket could have sex with the ‘Hottentot Venus’, not just marvel at her jutting Gargantuan attraction.

After several years that life took its toll on Saartjie, whose health deteriorated rapidly, and she died young, possibly of syphilis. But death didn’t put an end to her performing career.

Saartje’s body was dissected, and her brain, genitals and skeleton were exhibited at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. In 1984, following a petition from Nelson Mandela, her remains were returned to Africa where they were properly buried.

So there you have it, two sufferers from the same genetic disorder, a nineteenth-century slave, whose degrading treatment caused mass protests, and an enterprising modern woman, who became one of the world’s ‘100 most influential people’ with nary a protest to be heard.

Unlike Saartjie, Kim pays her handlers, rather than the other way around. Unlike the African, the genetically challenged American is a free person who doesn’t think she’s being degraded, and neither does anyone else.

That’s why this story isn’t about Kim but about our time. For Kim is exactly the same kind of enslaved sideshow that Saartjie was. The difference is that in the nineteenth century, before progress began to accelerate at Mach 3, everybody knew the naughty spectacle for what it was.

Some gawked at it, some protested against it. Nobody lauded it, nobody saw Saartjie as a social guru or international trendsetter. Saartjie was an aberration of her time. Kim is the distillation of ours, a slave to a morally, spiritually and aesthetically crippled public.

This walking, talking gluteus maximus is a celebrity because she’s celebrated. Her 100,000 million panting followers hang on to every vulgarity she utters, for vulgarity is all she can utter. Cynically catering to their market, formerly serious newspapers see fit to discuss Kim’s buttocks and run photographs of them, while a growing army of masturbators are gagging for more.

Kim obliges by regaling them with PC platitudes interspersed with more pictures of her naked attractions. She’s being degraded all the way to the bank, accompanied by howls of admiration and envious gasps.

Saartjie, meet Kim. Kim, meet Saartjie. You girls have so much in common, even though you’re centuries and civilisations apart.

You know how it is. All sorts of petty concerns get in one’s way, and somebody’s birthday slips one’s mind. So here’s a belated happy birthday to Russia’s beloved statesman.

Vlad Lenin, the founder of the very same Soviet Union Vlad Putin wants to recreate, thereby reversing “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”, was born on 22 April.

There’s no date of death, for Lenin never died, at least not in the hearts of his grateful countrymen.

That godlike immortality was promised by posters providing the backdrop for my childhood: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live!” Sure enough, Lenin’s canonised mummy still adorns Red Square, much to the delight of an adoring nation.

A birthday poll conducted by Levada Centre, Russia’s sole credible pollster, proved Lenin’s enduring popularity: 56 per cent of Russians rate him favourably, only 22 per cent negatively and as many neutrally.

As a lifelong champion of arithmetical democracy, I know the majority is always right. Therefore I shan’t say anything against the great man, instead allowing him to speak for himself through his letters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In setting up history’s unique state, the recent birthday boy made full use of his legal training. He knew how to make laws sufficiently open-ended not to limit the state’s self-expression.

For example, Lenin once amended the proposed text of the USSR Criminal Code, one of whose articles stipulated the death penalty for “aiding and abetting the bourgeoisie or counterrevolution.” The great legal mind knew instantly that something was missing, but at first he didn’t know exactly what.

Then it dawned on him: the article wasn’t broad enough. Lenin took his trusted blue pencil out and inserted, after the words ‘aiding and abetting’, an invaluable amendment: “…or capable of aiding and abetting.” And behold, it was very good: anyone could now be deemed so capable and shot.

The same broad sweep shines through the excerpts above, something that was beyond the reach of such small-scale copycats as Hitler. Comrade Hitler identified the main enemy with narrow demographic precision: the Jew.

Hence there was a natural genetic and demographic limit on Nazi murders. They knew who was and who wasn’t Jewish, and how many people had drawn that short straw. Comrade Lenin regarded such restraints as amateurish, nay suicidal.

His bogeymen were identified as ‘the bourgeoisie’, but identified doesn’t mean defined. Who were they? Factory owners? Definitely. Landlords? Of course. But what about teachers, engineers, doctors, artisans? Those too, unless they proved otherwise.

Add to them the clergy and the kulaks (peasants, successful or otherwise, who resisted new serfdom), and you realise that the enemy slated for extermination was anyone Lenin didn’t like very much, the kind of people he called “particularly noxious insects”.

That cherished legacy was supposed to have been lost with the demise of the Soviet Union. But Lenin’s namesake is well on his way to restoring it at least partly. As another poster used to say: “Lenin’s cause lives on!”