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Certainly not me. Not any longer, at any rate, and I regret having in the past described the Labour party as a collection of openly subversive nincompoops.

For the ex-minister David Lammy, MP, hasn’t just proposed a change in law. What he has come up with is nothing less than ditching a fundamental principle of legality.

In Britain equality before the law has been regarded as inviolable since God was young, but that doesn’t matter to Mr Lammy. He is out to blaze new trails, and the fire will consume all those outdated notions.

The wealthier the victim of theft, goes Mr Lammy’s proposal, the lighter should the criminal’s punishment be.

Forget about the thou shalt not steal nonsense. Forget about even the monetary value of the theft. What matters is its impact on the victim.

Focusing specifically on shoplifting, Mr Lammy argues that a theft of £200 would hurt the likes of Fortnum & Mason a lot less than a corner shop. This is where I start applauding, for this statement displays commendable factual accuracy, a virtue not always associated with socialists.

It has to be said that modern politicians, especially those of the leftish persuasion, don’t feel shoplifting is much of a crime anyway. Under the latest Labour government, for example, it was ruled that a theft of under £200 wouldn’t even be prosecuted – just pay an £80-pound on-the-spot fine, Mr Thief, and go on with your merry ways.

Mr Lammy’s proposal goes even further. He has made the step hundreds of generations of jurists have been reluctant even to consider: the victim’s wealth is to become a factor in sentencing (and no doubt prosecuting).

I think this idea is wonderful not only on its intrinsic merit, but also because of its unlimited potential for expansion. Mr Lammy doubtless realises that, but he is too modest to boast about the full implications of his proposal.

Congratulating him again, this time not on his daring but on his reticence, I’m willing to put forth a few possibilities. Each one comes out of Mr Lammy’s proposal the way Eve came out of Adam’s rib (if you happen to credit that bit of virulent anti-Labour propaganda).

1) The older the murder victim, the lighter should be the murderer’s punishment.

No one can deny the actuarial near-certainty that a 70-year-old’s life expectancy is considerably shorter than a 20-year-old’s. Hence being killed represents a smaller loss for the former – and must lead to a lighter punishment for the killer.

2) The older the rape victim, ditto.

As we all know, a sex crime – and you can interpret the concept as broadly as you like, to include, for example, patting a woman’s rump on a bus – traumatises the victim for life.

Since an 82-year-old granny has less of her life left than a nubile nymphet, her trauma wouldn’t last as long – hence a much lighter sentence for the chap who ‘likes’em well old’.

3) The bigger the target house, and the more auspicious its location, the less culpable the burglar.

Knocking off a Knightsbridge mansion stuffed to the gunwales with objets d’art should be punished lightly, if at all. After all, the owner’s wealth wouldn’t diminish all that much should a £100,000 painting get lifted (or slashed, to express the burglar’s well-justified resentment against poncy culture).

Conversely, nicking some underwear off a clothes line in the garden of a Peckham semi must be punished with all severity. After all, the cost of replacements may take a significant bite out of the victim’s social benefits.

 4) Cheating on income tax should be punished more severely than cheating on welfare (actually it already is).

Since, as we know, the whole is greater than one of its parts, then the social budget is by definition smaller than the whole Exchequer revenue. Hence the rich bastards who hide their income offshore – even if they do it legally – should have the book thrown at them, while welfare cheats must be politely asked to desist.

5) Knocking out a pedestrian’s teeth should be punishable in inverse proportion to the number of teeth he (or she) has left.

Indirectly this will also exculpate those who assault a rich bastard sporting provocative pinstripes. His dental work would tend to be better than that of the kind of chap who is likely to punch the pinstriped toff unprovoked.

Summing up Mr Lammy’s proposal and my slight embellishments on it, one has to say that they vastly extend the social ramifications of the law.

They are nothing but a continuation of class war by other means, and isn’t this what legality is, or should be, all about? Of course it is.

I hope you’ll join me in congratulating Mr Lammy on thinking up this advance in jurisprudence. And I do welcome any new ideas on how his breakthrough can be further expanded.

 

Do you know where Moscow’s CCTV cameras are? Neither do I. And, when it comes to surveillance cameras around the Kremlin, neither do the Muscovites, including those who live in the area.

However, they know there are lots of such cameras, keeping a watchful eye on one of the world’s most tightly guarded areas.

It’s not just the cameras either. The area around the Kremlin is crawling with trained FSB killers, there to make sure that nothing disturbs the daily toil of the Kremlin’s residents.

Hence a professional hitman would be unlikely to choose Red Square and vicinity as an arena for plying his trade.

Unlike a murderous fanatic who doesn’t fear, and may even welcome, death, a professional who is paid a lot of money wants to live to spend it. Obviously in his occupation he has to accept some risks, but a suicide mission isn’t for him.

If he takes a job, he has to be reasonably sure that, mission accomplished, he’ll walk away unscathed.

That means not being shot or arrested on the spot, and also not being caught on camera. Ideally there shouldn’t be many potential eyewitnesses either.

At 11.30 at night this last condition would have been the only one met by the southern approach to Red Square. Unlike the northern approach, it’s seldom overcrowded even in daytime, and but a handful of pedestrians grace it by their presence at night.

The other two conditions, however, would stack the odds against any assassin to the point of being suicidally prohibitive. And yet Nemtsov’s murderer bucked the odds: having fired his unsilenced pistol six times, he wasn’t caught on camera, and none of the security personnel present even gave chase when he fled.

How did he get away with the murder? And why did he choose such an unlikely ground?

After all, Nemtsov was out and about all day and, from the assassin’s standpoint, just about any other place in Moscow would have been more secure than the 100 yards separating the northern end of the Trans-Moskva Bridge from the southern end of Red Square.

Yet in an ideal world, with no cameras or cops present, this choice of murder site sends a powerful message, especially if the victim’s body is left on the pavement for three hours, as Nemtsov’s body was.

Hence the murderer had to be sure the site was indeed ideal, and he had nothing to fear from either the cameras or the heavily armed FSB chaps who at that time of night would have outnumbered pedestrians two to one.

His calculations were proved to be spectacularly accurate. He got away without even leaving an identifiable photographic memento behind.  

This brings us to the mysterious snowplough, never mentioned in the initial police reports and only uncovered when the CCTV footage had to be made available to the public.

But before we talk about the snowplough, let’s talk about the car, from which the assassin allegedly fired and in which he got away.

That he got away in it is beyond doubt, but the footage clearly shows he didn’t fire from it. He was on foot, conveniently shielded from the camera’s prying eye by the snowplough whose speed was adjusted to the assassin’s walking pace.

Conceivably the murderer even arrived in the snowplough, getting out only to pull the trigger and then to jump into the getaway car.

Now the car was moving in parallel with the snowplough and at exactly the same crawling speed. Hence the larger vehicle obscured it too, until the moment the assassin’s job had been done.

Casting aside not just improbable but impossible coincidences, the whole operation shows every sign of being timed, orchestrated and executed with uncanny professional precision.

This means, among other things, that – unlike you, me and most Muscovites – the organisers and perpetrators of the crime knew exactly which camera covered the site, at what angle of vision, and how it could be blocked.

Such foreknowledge raises quite a few questions:

What happened to the snowplough afterwards? Has anyone interrogated the driver? How come a car crawling along at the snail’s pace of the snowplough and in parallel with it didn’t attract the attention of the security personnel? How come they didn’t pursue the getaway car?

That this was a professional hit is beyond doubt. The assassin used a short-barrelled 9mm Makarov pistol, designed as an improvement on the German wartime Walther PP.

While accurate by the standards of its weapon category, the Makarov wouldn’t be the first choice of weapon for a professional hit. Its rather heavy calibre and short barrel would make it inaccurate in any other than extremely well-trained hands.

The assassin’s hands satisfied that requirement. He managed to connect with four out of six shots – without hitting Nemtsov’s young girlfriend with whom he was walking hand in hand.

Even at close range this is extremely good going, especially under pressure. The assassin had to be absolutely confident he wouldn’t miss, in which case the 9mm rounds would have plenty of killing power.

One would think that the case is full of paradoxes. On the one hand, the assassin and his accomplices were consummate professionals able to plan the hit meticulously and execute it dispassionately and efficiently.

On the other hand, they chose a killing site that offered maximum PR value but practically no chance of escaping. Every hallmark of a suicidal mission was present, and yet the assassin(s) took it on.

There is only one way out of this paradox:

The assassin(s) knew exactly where the relevant camera was; they knew how to render it useless; they knew how to get hold of a snowplough; they knew the FSB security would be temporarily as unsighted as the camera; they knew neither they nor the snowplough driver would be pursued; they knew that, even if the snowplough driver is interrogated, he’ll be able to claim complete innocence credibly and in any case won’t identify the murderer.

Such knowledge couldn’t have been acquired without the direct involvement of the security services, or at least their acquiescence.

And security services wouldn’t have taken it upon themselves to take part in the murder of one of Russia’s best-known politicians without either a direct order or at least a transparent hint from the Kremlin.

Thus if anyone harbours any doubts that Putin is a serial murderer, this case ought to dispel them. The murder of Boris Nemtsov isn’t the first on Putin’s score sheet and, one fears, it’s far – very far – from being the last.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How many crimes does Putin have to commit before our ‘conservatives’ and ‘libertarians’ realise he and his regime are indeed criminal?

There is no limit, I’m afraid, as there is no limit to people’s idiocy – especially when it’s propped up by strident ideology.

Putin is self-admittedly proud of being a KGB officer “for life”? So what? George Bush was head of the CIA, which is fully equivalent, even if, unlike Putin’s sponsoring organisation, the CIA never murdered millions of its citizens.

Putin had Russian apartment blocks blown up, blamed the Chechens for the crime and used it as a pretext for uncapping a gusher of blood in North Caucasus? Oh well, say Putin’s ‘conlib’ groupies, there’s no proof he did it.

How, pray tell, would they expect to have proof if the terrorist and the investigator happened to be the same person?

Actually, there was ample proof, and Alexander Litvinenko published it in his book Blowing Up Russia. He was about to publish more when he was murdered with nuclear weapons in the middle of London.

And still the ‘conlibs’ found excuses. Yes, there was a clear motive and only Putin had the means, but Putin’s men weren’t found guilty in a court of law, so there.

Of course they weren’t. They fled back to Russia where they hid behind the wall of parliamentary immunity and Putin’s refusal to extradite them.

In between those crimes there was Russia’s blitzkrieg on Georgia whose purpose was mainly educational. All those ex-Soviet republics thinking of veering westwards had to learn, or rather re-learn, who’s boss.

Again there were excuses galore. It was Georgia that attacked Russia, not the other way around, claimed the ‘conlibs’.

Ever looked at the map, chaps? Compared the size of the two countries?

Georgia attacked Russia in 2008 like Finland attacked it in 1939, or Poland attacked Germany the same year. In both cases the aggressor claimed to be the victim, and Putin has learned from his role models.

In parallel, the last semblance of free speech was stamped out in Russia by means both quasi-legal, such as shutting down papers and broadcast channels or blocking websites, and downright criminal, such as beatings, assassinations and threats thereof.

More than 40 journalists were murdered, including such high fliers as Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Klebnikov, the American editor of Moscow Forbes. God only knows how many others were roughed up and crippled within an inch of their lives.

Opposition politicians didn’t fare much better: many were imprisoned if they were lucky or murdered if they were not. A few others, such as the lawyer Magnitsky, were both: murdered while in prison.

Libertarians! Conservatives! How could you find excuses for a transparently fascist regime brutally denying its people the same liberties you supposedly cherish?

Not a problem. Putin is leading Russia to freedom and prosperity, they said, but the road can’t possibly be straight. It has to meander a bit, some pitfalls are inevitable along the way.

Then came the Ukraine, and here the ‘conlibs’ have come into their own. Putin, they explain, is a true Russian patriot looking after his country’s national interests, and don’t you wish we too had such a strong leader?

The Ukraine is being used by Nato and the EU as a springboard for an impending attack on Russia, or at least Putin is within his right to feel that way even in the absence of any evidence of such an intention. In fact, all European countries are rapidly disarming, but this may well be a dastardly ploy to conceal war preparations.

We hate the EU, Putin hates the EU, so Putin is our friend. Actually, Putin detests ‘the Anglo-Saxons’ even more that he hates the EU, while we kind of like them, but we’ll let that pass.

And didn’t Putin ban homosexual propaganda in schools? Of course he did. So he’s one of us.

By that criterion Hitler was also one of us, along with Stalin, bin-Laden and Jihadi John, but hey – ours is still a vestigially free country, so Peter Hitchens can choose what kind of people he wishes to claim as his own.

Let’s not forget history, say those who are cretinously ignorant of it. Isn’t the Crimea traditionally Russian?

Actually, no, it isn’t. It belonged to Russia during the same period, give or take a couple of years, that India belonged to Britain. Would that justify sending the Royal Marines to New Delhi or shelling Calcutta?

And isn’t the Russian minority woefully persecuted in the Ukraine? It is, if you regard having to learn their country’s language as persecution.

In fact, the Russians in the Ukraine are persecuted a lot less than German minorities were persecuted in Czechoslovakia and Poland in the late 1930s. So Hitler had a point, don’t you think? And if he didn’t, Putin certainly has.

Then, a few hours ago one of Putin’s leading political opponents Boris Nemtsov was shot dead a hundred yards from the Kremlin. His mangled corpse, riddled with bullets, was left on the pavement for three hours – no doubt pour encourager les autres.

Last week Nemtsov was interviewed on the website Sobesednik.ru. His mother, he said with a smile, was scared Putin would kill him.

“Interesting,” said the interviewer, “And are you too, after talking to your mother, afraid that Putin will kill you, either personally or through intermediaries?”

“Well, yes,” replied Nemtsov. “Not so much as my mother, but still… Actually, I’m not scared of him all that much. If I really feared him, I’d hardly be leading an opposition party…”

“I hope,” concluded the interviewer, “that common sense prevails and Putin won’t kill you.”

“God willing,” said Nemtsov. “I hope so too.”

Common sense didn’t prevail. What prevailed is the evil despot in the Kremlin. That energumen couldn’t stomach Nemtsov’s open opposition to the rape of the Ukraine, his gathering a dossier of evidence proving Russia’s direct involvement, which Putin mendaciously and cynically denies.

When Klebnikov was killed in 2004, he was shot by two men firing Kalashnikovs from a moving car. Putin’s FSB immediately spread rumours that the American had been shot by a jealous husband.

This time the Russian Investigative Committee has announced it’s exploring three similarly likely versions of Nemtsov’s murder: he was killed for his solidarity with Charlie Hebdo victims; then there were his commercial activities resented by many; and let’s not forget the possibility of a personal tiff.

I can save the investigators’ precious time: Nemtsov was organising a march of protest against the Ukraine war, and for that and other such misdemeanours he had to die – no doubt to the forthcoming accompaniment of ‘conlib’ hosannas.

None has come so far because they obviously have to catch their breath and think up another spurious excuse for the ‘strong leader’. If you’re stuck for one, chaps, ask Peter Hitchens. He’s good at that sort of thing. Christopher Booker is also available, and he can come cheaper.

Boris Nemtsov, RIP.   

   

 

 

 

 

On 25 October, 1854, a miscommunication in the chain of command caused the Light Brigade to charge into Russian guns at Balaklava. The unit was badly mauled, but that was just one battle lost in a war decisively won.

For the Crimean War achieved the strategic objective that had brought together Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia: barring the Russian navy from establishing a foothold in the Mediterranean.

The war wasn’t an isolated event. Ever since Russia acquired a navy in the early 18^th century, the tsars, the Bolsheviks and the post-Bolsheviks have sought a Mediterranean base and, ideally, control of the Straits.

It’s in pursuit of this objective that Russia fought eight wars against Turkey between the reigns of Peter I and Nicholas II.

Hence Russian strategic doctrine has always incorporated a major southward thrust. And that’s why subversive Soviet activity was at its most febrile in Greece, Italy and France.

Conversely, Western European powers, and especially Britain, have historically made every effort to prevent such Russian expansion. They knew that allowing Russia a permanent presence in the Mediterranean would shift the strategic balance of power her way, and no Western country regarded Russia as a long-term friend.

In fact, this was one issue on which Europe was united long before the European Union was a twinkle in Jean Monnet’s eye.

Austria was allied with Turkey in the 1735-39 war against Russia, the three Western powers joined Turkey in the Crimean war, Britain more or less created the Turkish navy and so forth, all the way to the Second World War, after which Britain and the United States prevented the Soviets from turning Greece into another Romania.

Hundreds of thousands died in those gallant efforts to keep Russia in check, but the strategic objective was achieved, and no one could say those Turks, Greeks, Austrians, Sardinians, Brits and Frenchmen died in vain.

That is, no one could say it until now. For it has just been announced that the Cypriot government has granted Putin’s Russia the use of Cyprus ports. The construction of a permanent Russian naval base is just round the corner.

The piquancy of the situation is that it’s not immediately apparent how Russia is any less of a strategic threat now than she was two centuries ago.

Not only has Putin launched an open aggression first against Georgia and now the Ukraine, but every shrill message from the state-controlled Russian press leaves one in no doubt that the Russians see such conflicts in the broader context of war on the West.

Moreover, the current aggression has been sacralised, which is the time-honoured trick of modern tyrants.

If you read the Russian press, you’ll get the impression that the Ukraine doesn’t matter one way or the other. What is supposed to be currently under way is a clash between the Russian World and the Anglo-Saxon World (of which, if you believe the Russian press, the EU is but a stooge).

Unlike the materialistic, soulless Anglo-Saxons, Russia represents unbridled spirituality that must be imposed on the world by paradoxically physical military means. God is with Russia, preach Putin’s media, eerily evoking the memory of the SS slogan Gott mit uns.

This sort of stance has historically tended to create firm opposing alliances, such as the one put together in the Crimean War at a time when Russia sounded much more modest in her aspirations.

Hence we must get down on our knees and give thanks. There is no need to put together such an alliance. It already exists, and it’s called the European Union.

You know, the entity to which we supposedly owe the absence of a major European war in the last 70 years. The EU has brought Europe together to ensure lasting peace, prosperity and cultural cohesion.

That’s why, whenever a regional conflict brews anywhere Europe, the EU closes ranks, blows the bugle, beats the drum and… well, does nothing, if truth be told.

In all those conflicts, from Yugoslavia to the Ukraine, the EU has been at best a useless presence and at worst a malevolent one, adding to the bloodshed, rather than subtracting from it.

But surely this time it’ll be different. Surely the EU will draw the line at reversing three centuries’ worth of strategic policy…

Hold on a moment. The last I looked Cyprus was a member of the EU and even, since 2007, of the eurozone. Is it still? Let me see on my trusted Google… there it is. Well, what do you know, Cyprus indeed belongs to the united front Europe presents to the cold world out there.

Fair enough, Russia can bring pressure to bear on Cyprus, what with Russian Mafiosi favouring her beaches for relaxation and her banks for money laundering. But if the EU can tell Britain (Britain!) how to run her foreign and domestic affairs, can’t Angie say Nein to Cyprus (Cyprus!)?

Apparently not.

In general, Putin is finding the EU unsportingly easy as a target for the old divide et impera strategy. His overtures to Greece, Hungary and now Cyprus are manifestly aimed at splitting the Union, and this recent development raises the question of how united the Union really is.

Not very, as you can find out by buying a glass of wine for a Greek, Spaniard, Italian or a Portuguese and asking him what he really thinks of the Germans. Or else you could buy a stein of beer for a German and ask him how he feels about those other chaps, and also the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and the French.

Unless the recipients of your largesse work for the European Commission, the illusion of a united Europe will vanish like a desert mirage. You’ll get a distinct impression that, contrary to its declared objectives, the EU promotes fractional enmity and consequently the possibility of a major war.

But ours not to reason why, ours but to do and… Well, let’s not end on a macabre note.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enoch Powell, claims the Ukip MP Douglas Carswell, “misjudged Britain’s ability to become a multi-ethnic society at ease with itself”.

That was the lead-in paragraph of an otherwise sensible article Enoch Powell Was Wrong About Immigration, arguing that, while a successful nation shouldn’t stop foreigners from coming, it must reserve the right to choose those it allows to come.

Why kick a political thinker long since dead, one would wonder, but only a political virgin would wonder for real. You see, Ukip’s emergence has scared our political spivs (regardless of party affiliation) so much that they’ve ordered their journalistic groupies to unleash a torrent of lies about Ukip, accompanied by hysterical invective.

The mendacious Channel 4 documentary is only one example – of thousands. Now, if you don’t think mass propaganda works, download some YouTube footage of a Nuremberg rally to see how wrong you are.

The anti-Ukip propaganda, for all its intellectual and factual dishonesty, seems to be working too, after a fashion. For example, I’ve seen some perfectly sensible people lower their voice and half-whisper that Ukip intends to nail Britain’s borders shut – in both directions.

“Do you realise,” asked a writer friend of mine, “that a Ukip government would make it impossible for you to go to your house in France?” Now politics isn’t my friend’s forte, but you can see the kind of damage the spiv agitprop is doing.

Mr Carswell isn’t a thinker in search of truth but a politician in pursuit of votes. That’s why, while arguing in favour of a reasonable immigration policy based on an Australian-type point system, he feels called upon to attack Enoch Powell posthumously.

That’s his doomed attempt to establish his own, and his party’s, PC bona fides, and also to counter some of the nonsense spread around about Ukip. Indirectly this serves to remind us that Ukip politicians are still politicians, of the modern variety.

Hence their commitment to truth is less passionate than their commitment to electoral success. And they know that in our political climate the two never go together.

If Mr Carswell suddenly decided to retrain for a different career, of course he’d admit that Powell was absolutely right, specifically in his Aeneid speech, which, according to Mr Carswell “made it difficult to even mention immigration in Westminster… Yet in his pessimism, Powell was wrong… [because he] underestimated the ability of a free society to adapt.”

One can’t expect even a generally benign politician to spot self-refutation in his own arguments. Still, one has to wonder how free our society is if, by Mr Carswell’s own admission, it’s “difficult even to mention immigration in Westminster”.

Immigration, continues Mr Carswell, “has been, overwhelmingly, a story of success.”

No doubt working-class Englishmen who walk the streets of their neighbourhoods without ever hearing an English word, other than ‘Social’, will agree – as will the denizens of our better boroughs inundated by Eastern European muggers, beggars and car thieves.

And does Mr Carswell really believe that the arrival of a million Muslims in the last 10 years, on top of about two million in the country already, has been “a story of success”?

I like couscous as much as any other man, but I’m prepared to forego this delicacy to be also spared the sight of Muslims dancing in the streets of Bradford in celebration of terrorist acts on London public transport.

I’m also slightly worried, to the point of doubting the overwhelming success of immigration, when reading that 25 per cent of British Muslims feel sympathy for jihadist murderers.

And how successfully has our ‘free society’ integrated 115,000 Somalis? Not very, unless Mr Carswell is prepared to welcome their enhancing our education on such worthy multi-cultural practices as female genital mutilation.

Enoch Powell, Mr Carswell, was absolutely right, and even his political enemy Edward Heath admitted as much three years after sacking Powell.

Powell’s Aeneid speech, which the spivs insist on calling ‘Rivers of Blood’, gave an intellectually sound shape to the people’s concerns, which is why 74 per cent of the population applauded it.

Unlike Ukip’s enemies and also, evidently, some of its members, Powell realised almost 50 years ago that mass immigration was sooner or later bound to reach a critical mass beyond which England would no longer be England.

Rather than waffling on this issue, Mr Carswell, and the rest of his party, ought to stick to their guns and continue to speak the truth. Alas, if they could do that they wouldn’t be modern politicians.

With friends like that, Ukip doesn’t really need Tim Montgomerie, yet he is the bad penny that keeps turning up – in The Times, where else.

To Mr Montgomerie’s credit he doesn’t pretend to be objective. He is a career Tory apparatchik and a fully paid-up member of the Tory beagle pack of trained journalists. Ukip baiting is thus his job requirement, and he is never derelict of his duties.

In today’s paper he predicts the demise of Ukip as a political force of any kind. That very well may be, but why does Mr Montgomerie think so?

Oh well, you see, neither Ukip membership nor its leadership is uniform in its opinions. The party, he says, “is hopelessly divided on many issues”.

This is yet another example of a factually accurate lie. The inference the reader is supposed to draw is that other parties, especially the one of the blue rosette fame, are solid monoliths of ideas and aspirations.

Yet Tim’s beloved Tory party was perfectly able to accommodate Heath and Powell in the past and, in more recent times, Clark and Tebbit. If these aren’t two pairs of political antipodes, I don’t know who would be.

And, if we assume that the Tory ideology is demarcated by Ken at one end and Norman at the other, one can find just about every political hue in between.

Surely Mr Mongomerie is familiar with dozens of Tory MPs who routinely vote against the government on Europe? Of course he is. Some of those rebels are even his friends.

“While its immigration and European policies are pretty well known,” continues Montgomerie, “I doubt one in 20 voters could name another Ukip policy.”

Possibly. But what proportion of voters would be able to pinpoint any policy of any other party, including the Tories? In the absence of such comparative data, Montgomeries’s statement is nothing but shrill propaganda.

In any case, he belongs in the select five per cent of those who know some other Ukip policies as well. “Ukip voters… want to spend more on defence, less on welfare…” Montgomerie helpfully informs.

That’s not too shabby, considering that all other parties’ preferences are the other way around. So it’s not just immigration and Europe then?

I do hope Ukip can discipline its friends and humiliate its enemies. The party may not be better than others, but at least it’s still different.

Looking at the Dave-Ed-Nick show, all I can say is vive la différence.

 

 

 

 

Just like their Anglican colleagues, the Catholic bishops have offered advice on how to vote in the general election.

That’s where the similarity more or less ends, for the Catholics never mentioned disarmament and joining a single European state as prime Christian values.

Instead they urged the faithful to vote for candidates who uphold Christian morality, with all it entails. Vote for candidates, said Their Graces, who support marriage and family life.

Lest there be some misunderstanding, they clarified their meaning: “The Christian understanding of marriage, founded on a loving and faithful relationship between a man and a woman, is the basic building block of society.”

How antediluvian can you get? ‘Between a man and a woman’? This suggests that the bishops disapprove of homomarriage, showing yet again how hopelessly out of touch the Church is.

Any union between any two mammals is as valid, and as worthy of the word marriage, as the outdated notion favoured by the bishops. Surely they must know this? Surely they aren’t challenging the consensus? Surely they aren’t challenging DEMOCRACY?

Then it gets really bad. Their Graces say we ought to vote for candidates opposed to abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

“Each person matters,” they pronounce, “ and the foundation of Catholic teaching is the respect for human life from conception to natural death” (my much needed emphasis).

Now if that doesn’t take the Eucharistic wafer, I don’t know what does. Clearly the bishops haven’t been following Oliver Kamm’s columns. No, I’ll go even further – they haven’t been following modern life.

Otherwise they’d know that human life begins at 24 weeks and ends whenever a person becomes a pain in the gluteus maximus to himself and his family. Or, at a pinch, just to his family. Or to the NHS. Or to his neighbours.

Contrary to what fossils like you may think, Your Graces, man is created in his own image. Actually, to be more precise, he isn’t created at all. He has evolved from another mammal, whose likeness modern man now closely resembles inwardly and, increasingly, outwardly.

It follows from this with ineluctable logic (well, modern logic at any rate) that man has any value only for as long as he’s a useful member of society. Now, what the bishops provocatively call ‘unborn babies’ aren’t useful yet, and wrinklies and crumblies aren’t useful any more.

That’s why it’s an act of Christian mercy towards society to coerce them into suicide or, if they are too small or too far gone to commit one, to do the job for them. The greatest good of the greatest number, right? That’s the ultimate Christian value, and shame on Their Graces for failing to grasp this.

I wonder if the bishops realise that their advice, which is in such stark contrast to the Anglican bishops’ secular leftie gibberish, is tantamount to telling the Catholics not to vote at all.

For there is no mainstream party in the running that supports what Their Graces tell us to support and opposes what they tell us to oppose.

The Tories (and possibly Ukip, if it qualifies as a mainstream party) should be their only natural allies in upholding Christian morality. Instead Dave triumphantly pushed through the profoundly anti-family homomarriage law, compromising the party’s core vote.

I have yet to hear the Tories make an unequivocal statement opposing abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide. They haven’t and they won’t – the focus groups won’t let them.

The Kamms of this world have corrupted the British public so thoroughly that the numbers are stacked up against any such statements. And no modern party will jeopardise its electoral chances by going against majority opinion. That’s what democracy is all about: the ultimate truth is determined by the calculator.

Hence the Tories choose to ignore the pro-family minority of traditional Tory voters. But they do so at their peril, for, while this minority is insignificant in the electorate at large, it’s quite sizeable within the Tory party.

This just may explain the current polls that show that the Conservatives are extremely unlikely to win the general election outright. At least I can’t think of any other explanation.

After all, the political wisdom, as enunciated by James Carville, Clinton’s strategist, says that “It’s the economy, stupid”. Now it doesn’t take a PR genius to communicate to the masses that a) the Labour government dragged Britain into an economic quagmire and b) the Tories pulled her out of it.

Britain enjoys lower unemployment and higher growth rate than anyone else in Europe, the FTSE 100 is at an all-time high, the pound is strong, and the French flock to our shores in droves because our economic prospects are so bright.

If Carville was right, the general election should be done and dusted by now. Instead most polls show a dead heat, and only a few yield a Tory lead of a point or two. Over Labour!

One explanation could be that the British people are so well-versed in economics that they detect something phoney about this prosperity. They may feel that, with the national debt at around £1.5 trillion, our economy is a beautifully decorated house resting on a termite-ridden foundation. Hence, to punish the Tories for their dishonesty, they would be ready to vote for the party that’ll take a wrecking ball to the house.

Alas, much as one would like to credit the Brits with such sophistication, two generations’ worth of comprehensive education make economic, or any other, astuteness rather unlikely.

So perhaps it’s not just the economy, stupid. Perhaps Dave, with his maniacal war on traditional family, has shot the party in the foot and all it can hope for is limping feebly to another emasculating coalition. Perhaps many natural Tories will, like me, register a protest vote, probably for Ukip.

This leaves the bishops’ advice hanging in the air. It is no doubt a most welcome statement of what it means to be Christian in the moral mess of modernity, but as a practical recommendation it’s well-nigh worthless.

Much as we’d like to follow their guidance, there is no party we could vote for in good conscience. So, as one applauds Their Graces, one would be justified in shedding a tear for the country.

 

    

 

 

I like to have my cherished notions confirmed as much as any other man. That’s why I‘m grateful to Oliver Kamm of The Times.

This pundit never tires of vindicating my life-long judgement that lefties aren’t just misguided but stupid. The distinction between the two is relevant here.

A misguided but clever man will be able to erect a solid intellectual structure in support of his opinions, and it’ll take a particularly discerning eye to detect any logical faults.

On the other hand, someone who’s not only misguided but also stupid will commit every rhetorical fallacy known to man, and he wouldn’t even be aware that what he says makes no sense.

Kamm falls into the second category, which is why I often invoke his name when questioning the intellectual competence of lefties as a group. What Ollie writes about doesn’t really matter – he can utter equally refreshing inanities on any subject.

A few days ago, for example, he delivered himself of various linguistic insights that can all be reduced to one: anything people say is correct simply because people say it. Why, he has even written a book attacking usage pedantry.

Of the two cognates, ‘pedantry’ and ‘pederasty’, the former strikes me as more acceptable than the latter, but I’m sure old Ollie feels differently.

In common with all left-wingers, he’ll wax positively libertarian when defending anything that has a destructive potential for our civilisation. Destruction is the underlying aim, and a seemingly laisser-faire leftie will in the next breath turn dictatorial when that suits his purpose better (for example, when banning country sports).

Hence, wearing his libertarian mask, Ollie welcomes every lexical or grammatical perversion because he senses viscerally that such permissiveness promotes cultural and social egalitarianism, thereby adding another twig to the pyre of our civilisation. QED.

His today’s article extolling the virtues of sex-selective abortion is another example of exactly the same destructive pursuit.

Ollie espied with his eagle eye that most people who are against sex-selective abortion oppose abortion in general. This is perfectly logical, for both issues hinge on whether a foetus is part of a woman’s body or a separate person.

If it’s the former, then an abortion is no different from an appendectomy: a woman is within her right to correct either condition. She may choose to abort because she doesn’t want to have her style cramped, because she doesn’t know who the father is or because the foetus in her womb is female and her husband wants a boy – logically speaking, it makes no difference.

If, however, a foetus is regarded as a human being from the moment of conception (the only logically defensible moment, for anything else, including the current legal limit of 24 weeks, is totally arbitrary), then a woman has no sovereign rights over its fate.

A debate between pro-abortionists like Ollie and anti-abortionists like, well, me must revolve around this solely valid distinction. The victory in such a debate ought to go to whomever makes the better case.

Any debate is an exercise in rhetoric and logic, and both are intellectual disciplines with their own rigid rules. Stepping outside such rules leads to committing rhetorical fallacies, and intelligent people tend to avoid those.

Ollie, on the other hand, has never known a rhetorical fallacy he couldn’t love. His particular favourites are argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people: the proposition is true because folk believe it) and petitio principii (begging the question: using what is the conclusion of the argument as a premise).

These fallacies are intelligent people’s taboos, but Ollie’s workhorses. In this case he harnesses them to carry his arguments in favour of abortion in general and the sex-selective variety in particular.

Argumentum ad populum: “A YouGov poll in 2013 found only 7 per cent support for a ban on abortion. A substantial majority either supported the law as it stands… or favoured relaxing it.”

On hearing such a statement, an intelligent man would shrug and say “So what?”. That most people think something doesn’t make it right. But for Ollie vox populi is vox dei, or would be if he believed in God.

Petitio principii: Ollie then attacks Fiona Bruce, MP, for tabling an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill to outlaw sex-selective abortions. “The amendment attempts to undermine by stealth one of the most important social advances of the past half-century” (meaning abortion on demand).

Here Kamm uses his premise (that abortion is a social advance because it strikes a blow for women’s rights) as his conclusion. Yet it takes proof to turn the former into the latter.

I happen to disagree with both the premise and the conclusion. Moreover I’m prepared to put forth a cogent argument that legalising abortion on demand negates one of the founding principles of our civilisation, that of the sanctity of human life.

The sheer logical impossibility of pinpointing the beginning of human life to any moment other than conception means that abortion violates what has always been held to be inviolable.

That seems perfectly logical to me. Yet I am prepared to entertain counterarguments – provided they are intellectually sound, which Ollie’s musings aren’t.

He then brings the two fallacies together in one sentence, with argumentum ad hominem thrown in for good measure: “Having lost the argument and knowing they are out of step with social mores and public opinion, the zealots are attempting to get their way by procedural manoeuvre and obfuscation.”

Had Ollie lived in Germany around 1943, he doubtless would have favoured the Holocaust – after all, ‘social mores and public opinion’ welcomed it. It’s only a few ‘zealots’, most of them conservative Christians, who opposed mass murder.

The upshot of it all is that Ollie is incapable of making a sound argument in favour of abortion in his words. Yet he does better when making it in his person.

Had Mrs Kamm detected in an early stage of pregnancy, circa 1962, that her future son Ollie was afflicted with the terrible genetic disorder of strident stupidity, she would have had a strong argument in favour of termination.

Well, perhaps not a strong argument, but certainly a better one than her son has grown up to enunciate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the risk of dating myself, I remember the case as if it was yesterday.

Alas, it wasn’t. This granddaughter of the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst was kidnapped by the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974.

Those Marxist thugs abducted Patty, 19, who was living with a boyfriend at the time, and kept her in a wardrobe for a few weeks, indoctrinating her in their ‘philosophy’, a hodgepodge of Marx, Mao and Malcolm X.

The indoctrination was literary, oral and sexual, with Patty regularly raped by two of the Liberators. Rape eventually turned into consensual sex, and Patty went on to keep for many years a cherished memento given to her by one of the rapists.

In due course she became a willing participant not only in the sex but also in some of the Liberators’ less amorous activities, such as bank robberies.

During one of them Patty, who had adopted the nom de revolution Tania, was filmed pointing an M1 rifle at terrified bank employees sprawling on the floor.

“Keep your mother****ing heads down or I’ll blow your mother****ing heads off!” bellowed the newly converted heiress.

In another incident she gave covering fire to her comrades, and only her poor marksmanship saved the lives of several police officers.

Eventually the police caught up with the SLA. Patty got away at first but was caught soon thereafter.

As she was led to custody, Patty asked the throng of reporters to “send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there”, and she wasn’t talking about her siblings. Filling in a prison questionnaire, she listed her profession as ‘urban guerrilla’.

At her trial Patty was defended by the fashionable lawyer F. Lee Bailey. The phrase making the rounds in the legal profession at the time was: “God asks himself every morning ‘What can I do for F. Lee Bailey today?’”

In Patty’s case God didn’t do much for either of them. Bailey’s defence was based on brainwashing, which supposedly turned Patty into an unthinking automaton. It was during her trial that the term ‘Stockholm syndrome’ gained common currency.

Under Bailey’s expert guidance, Patty eventually repudiated her SLA allegiance, but it took her weeks to do so. Perhaps because of that delay, the brainwashing defence failed, and Patty was sentenced to seven years in prison.

In passing his verdict, the judge commented that “rebellious young people who, for whatever reason, become revolutionaries and voluntarily commit criminal acts will be punished.”

Patty ended up serving two years and then dropped from the public eye – until this week, when her pet shih tzu Rocket won the top prize in the ‘toy’ category at America’s leading dog show.

This is undoubtedly a better way of getting into the limelight than firing an assault rifle at policemen, knocking off banks and scaring bystanders out of their wits.

But Patty’s re-emergence makes one wonder again whether brainwashing really can override people’s free will so thoroughly. After all, following her indoctrination programme Patty roamed free – and armed.

She must have had endless opportunities to get away from her captors, yet chose not to do so. Patty clearly no longer regarded them as her abductors and rapists. They now were her friends, lovers and comrades-at-arms.

My natural impulse would be to dismiss the whole notion of brainwashing as another psychobabble con.

Free will is an ontological property of man, and it’s one of the key differences between us and animals.

To think that violence, sensory deprivation and a litany of cretinous slogans can turn a decent person into a murderous robot would be demeaning not only to the person but to mankind at large.

In fact, one could cite many examples of people exposed to much more cruel indoctrination who nevertheless managed to resist. Some American POWs in Vietcong ‘re-education’ camps spring to mind, many Germans who hated everything the Nazis preached, and many Soviets who retained their humanity in the face of non-stop inculcation backed up by death threats.

Yet one can also site many other examples, including those American POWs who did succumb to communist indoctrination, Soviet citizens who did swallow the part line sincerely, and Germans who greeted Hitler’s deranged speeches with millions of heartfelt ‘Heils!!!’.

One could also cite the psychotically charismatic cult leader Jim Jones, who in 1978 brainwashed 913 of his followers to commit ‘revolutionary suicide’ by cyanide.

Much as one detests the dehumanisation of humans, evidence does show that brainwashing works famously on some people. But what kind of people?

Having grown up in a society where brainwashing propaganda was screamed at the populace every minute of every day, I firmly believe that indoctrination works only on those who are emotionally and intellectually predisposed to accept it.

Not everyone can be a hero, and some people who detest the ‘re-education’ may pretend to go along to save themselves. But pretend they would, and once the threat disappeared such people would instantly recover their former selves.

Patty Hearst didn’t, which means her captors found her to be a receptive audience. Patty’s life at Berkeley University, which was then the hotbed of left-wing radicalism, must have made her receptive to left-wing propaganda.

As an heiress, she must have had strong feelings of guilt, and if she hadn’t to begin with, a year at Berkeley would have enlightened her to the Berkeley version of reality. Thus her SLA indoctrinators enunciated her own thoughts, if with an added radical twist. Their job was easy: a bit of coercion, a bit of propaganda, and Patty was all theirs.

“People move on,” she said the other day, accepting congratulations on her canine triumph. They certainly do, and I hope Patty, now 60, has moved in the right direction.

That, however, doesn’t make me doubt the justice of her prison sentence all those years ago. She should have served the full whack.

 

 

 

 

Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon put it in a nutshell: “I very much doubt whether the UK could sustain a shooting war against Russia.”

Air Commodore Andrew Lambert concurs: “If the Russians turned up the heat, we would struggle badly.”

No wonder. Since 2010 HMG has cut £4.7 billion out of the defence budget, along with 33,000 servicemen and hundreds of warplanes, warships and tanks. The numerical strength of our army is now down to the levels of the early 19^th century.

Our solitary carrier has no planes on it, and we are down to 17 surface ships. The two carriers under construction will be useless pieces of metal if, and it’s a big if, they ever sail. We’ll have neither the planes to put on them nor the escort ships to turn them into carrier battle groups.

Britannia not only doesn’t rule the waves any longer – she can’t even make them.

Moreover, according to some expert reports, the Russians’ new tracking systems can more or less nullify our Trident deterrent, which is our sole hope of giving the Russians second thoughts.

The number of our fighter squadrons has been cut from 26 to seven, and the other day, when Russian nuclear planes buzzed just off the coast of Cornwall, our two Typhoons had to be scrambled from a Lincolnshire (!) base to intercept them.

If the Russian mission was launched to test the rapidity of our response, whoever runs the Russian air force must a have a broad grin on his face.

Those who know what they are talking about reacted to this Russian provocation in a way that’s in worrying contrast to the response of those who haven’t a clue, namely Dave.

We shouldn’t, he said, “dignify it with too much of a response… this episode demonstrates that we do have the fast jets, the pilots, the systems…”

We know we have those things, Dave, but thanks for telling us. We also know we don’t have enough of them to defend the realm against the Russian threat, which our Defence Secretary considers “real and present”.

If HMG abandoned its maniacal commitment to foreign aid, our defence budget could be increased by 40 per cent without any additional appropriations. But, especially in this election year, Dave has to be seen to perform within the culture of care, share, be aware. This takes priority over defence of the realm, which is after all the main function of government.

It has to be said though that, compared to Germany, the UK is a thoroughly militarised, sabre-rattling, testosterone-driven power. Germany’s armed forces are down to 63,000 personnel in active service, while her arsenal is hopelessly outdated and short of even spare parts.

As always, such gross negligence on the part of Western powers is rooted in ignorance, stupidity and chronic inability to think strategically.

This was pointed out yesterday, in slightly more diplomatic terms, by the House of Lords EU committee.

Its report says that Europe has “sleepwalked” into the Ukraine crisis. There is a chronic shortage of Russian experts at the Foreign Office, claims the report. Thus we suffer from a vastly curtailed analytical capacity and a compromised ability to formulate an “authoritative response” to the crisis.

I’m not sure that Britain’s analytical capacity would be tangibly heightened by adding more bureaucrats to our already bloated public sector.

However, the report correctly attributes the looming catastrophe to the fact that Europe has proceeded for too long from the “optimistic premise” that Russia is on the road to democracy, moral goodness and Christian probity.

I seldom blow my own trumpet but in this case I find indulging in this kind of musicianship impossible to resist. For, as those who’ve kept the back copies of The Salisbury Review can find out, I’ve been writing for 25 years that the Russian leopard still has all its spots in place.

Being rather bloody-minded by nature, I persisted in screaming that all those glasnosts and perestroikas were fundamentally bogus, a stratagem to achieve the same ends by different, more flexible means. Sooner or later, the flexibility was bound to disappear, while the evil ends would take over openly, rather than surreptitiously.

Some readers agreed, but most felt that I had an axe to grind, a chip on my shoulder and no objectivity, a faculty that’s an exclusive property of those blessed with ‘an open mind’ (another word for ignorance).

I don’t claim any unique insights or an uncanny analytical ability. Every educated ex-Russian of my acquaintance knew what was going on as well as I did, and some of them wrote exactly the same things.

The trouble was that we wrote for small journals whose readership numbered in thousands, whereas the perestroika groupies wrote for mainstream publications with millions of readers.

Why, even now, when Russia’s evil designs have been laid bare for all to see, Peter Hitchens still knocks off his pro-Putin drivel for The Mail, our most conservative paper.

Most pundits, however, have now seen the light with the unrivalled acuity of hindsight. So, as the Lords report suggests, have some of the politicians.

Let’s just pray that it isn’t too late for this newly acquired vision to be translated into appropriate action. Personally, I am not holding my breath. 

 

 

 

 

Putin poses a ‘real and present danger’ to the Baltic states and therefore to Nato, says the Defence Secretary. Nato, according to him, is getting ready to repel any aggression.

The first part of the statement is easy to welcome. The second is hard to believe.

The welcome part is that Mr Fallon realises Putin is a great threat to the West, as great as that presented by ISIS.

What makes Putin dangerous isn’t necessarily the scale of his current aggression. It’s the steady escalation from one stage to the next, with each probing the West to test how far he can push.

“SO WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?” is the perennial implicit question.

This didn’t start a year ago. The opening shots in the war on the West were fired in 2008, when Georgia was the immediate target.

As his booty, Putin got two provinces of Georgia, veto rights over the country’s policies and, most important, a reply to his question. The answer, in deed not in word, was – eh, not much. Nothing, if truth be told.

That’s exactly what he wanted to hear. The time had come to up the stakes and move on to the table where the game is bigger. Hence the brutal attack on the Ukraine.

Even that unfolded gradually, though the time lines were now compressed. First Putin used Russian troops modestly withholding Russian insignia to occupy the Crimea and pose his lapidary question to the West.

Again he got the answer he wanted: next to nothing. Some derisory sanctions, a few stern words and no single-minded response across the board. Some misguided Western opinion-makers even went so far as to argue that perhaps Putin had a point.

Didn’t Crimea belong to Russia before Khrushchev transferred it to the Ukraine?

It certainly did – for almost exactly the same number of years as India belonged to the British Empire.

Granted, the British Empire no longer exists. But then neither does the Russian Empire, for which Prince Potemkin annexed the Crimea, or the Soviet Union, within which Khrushchev moved it sideways.

The colonel was listening and drawing conclusions. Time had come to attend to serious business.

The serious business was to use his proxy bandits, armed to the teeth by the Russians and reinforced with regular Russian troops (again without insignia) to grab two eastern provinces of the Ukraine.

This time the reply to Putin’s question came in rather higher tones. Russia was hit with mild sanctions, which nevertheless had a deleterious effect on the country’s economy, especially when accompanied by oil losing half its wholesale price.

Moreover, there were some consequences for Putin personally, which was the worst bit. Rather than being fêted as a world statesman, friend to US presidents and German chancellors, he began to be treated as a leper belonging in a quarantine.

This started in Brisbane, where Putin found himself in shunned solitude. Merkel tried to talk to him, and her subsequent accounts clearly discouraged all other leaders from conversational conviviality towards Putin.

He now felt like a pariah, with precious little he could do to regain his seat at the table. One possible way out of the conundrum was to stop the carnage, withdraw the troops and start playing honestly, without swiping some chips off the table when no one was looking.

That, however, was out of the question. Putin’s early life was guided by the unwritten code of street gangs: if you start a fight, you can’t stop it until either you or your opponent writhes on the tarmac sputtering blood.

Either way you’ve earned respect (rispetto, in the Italian equivalent). If you lose that particular fight, there will be others. But if you sue for peace, there won’t be – because there won’t be any respect. Your former mates will turn on you, join forces with your enemies, and you’ll be history.

That’s the only code Putin knows, the only one that has left a deep imprint. He acted accordingly.

His sinister propaganda machine, otherwise known as Russian media, was cranked up, and the messages it spewed out got more and more menacing.

If the West arms the Ukraine, Russia will use low-yield nuclear weapons. To start with. Make no mistake about it, screamed one Putin Goebbels after another, we can turn any foe, including the USA, to radioactive dust.

We’ll burn Paris and London to cinders with napalm, screamed another acolyte. Russian military doctrine, explained Putin’s high command, no longer excludes a nuclear first strike.

Putin himself used the trick beloved of all fascist dictators: he sacralised his aggression.

Before Grand Duke Vladimir baptised Rus, he himself had been baptised in the Crimea, explained the colonel. That, and not Khrushchev’s administrative shenanigans, is what gives Russia the right to claim the peninsula.

And isn’t Kiev known, since time immemorial, as the Mother of Russian Cities? Well, then it’s time for Russia to return to her mother, or rather it’s time for the wayward mother to return to Russia.

Putin then declared that Russia is the hub not of the world proletariat and all oppressed masses, but of a mysterious entity called Russian World, a sort of Pax Russica.

His, Col. Putin’s, task was henceforth to protect not just Russian citizens but all ethnic Russians, regardless of where they live. If they see themselves oppressed, then oppressed they are, and it’s Putin’s sacred duty to spring to their defence.

Long-term this may sound worrying to any country that includes a Russian minority. For example, I know quite a few aggrieved Russians in Paris, London and New York.

But those aren’t the immediate targets. What Putin sees in his evil mind’s eye is Russia’s reoccupation of the former Soviet republics, all of which have considerably bigger Russian minorities than Paris, London and New York.

Putin is on record describing the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century”, a rating not countenanced by a single former Soviet republic other than Russia herself.

But Putin is president of Russia, so he owes it to his namesake who baptised Kievan Rus a millennium ago to bring the republics back into the fold.

The Ukraine’s turn is now – who’s next on the list? Belarus? Possibly. Kazakhstan? Even more likely.

Still, the West could live with the rape of those former provinces of the Soviet Union, as it’s currently living with the rape of the Ukraine.

The real problem could come from Putin’s attack on Latvia, with her 556,422 Russians, Lithuania, with 174,000 and Estonia with 321,198 (a whopping third of the population). The three Baltic republics are Nato members, and Article 5 of the Nato Charter says that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

This realisation dawned on Merkel, Hollande and other European leaders, especially since Putin was using nuclear blackmail as a prompter.

If, encouraged by Europe’s inactivity, Putin acts on his threat, Nato will have only two choices: fight or surrender. The second option is really a non-option: surrendering would be such a show of testicular weakness that Putin would almost certainly press on to the Channel at least.

Fighting, on the other hand, isn’t a valid option either. Europe has nothing to fight with – no arms, no armies, no will above all.

It was 26 years ago that Western leaders pretended they believed that Russia had gone vegetarian. Now we will all get fat on the peace dividend, was the universal hope.

That promoted a demob-happy mentality, which led to demob-happy policies. The Nato target of military spend equal to two per cent of GDP was never met by Europe. Britain’s defence budget stands at 1.7 per cent, and going down. Germany and France are even more parsimonious.

Hence Merkel and Hollande rushing off to Moscow to offer surrender, while begging Putin to let them keep face. They don’t want to fight, they can’t fight, they hope Putin won’t make them fight.

Amazingly Western papers are describing this cowardly act as a peace initiative. The Russians read the situation better: their papers are full of headlines like “Europe got scared”, “Europe crawled to us on her knees” and “Europe has to welcome Putin”.

The blackmailer’s ploy has worked.

So what exactly does Mr Fallon mean when claiming that “Europe is getting ready”. How is Europe getting ready?

Is it embarking on a rapid rearmament programme? Is it firming up relationships within Nato to make sure all members present a united front? Is it setting up lines of defence at depth? Is it communicating to Putin that we aren’t necessarily averse to a nuclear first strike either?

Don’t be silly. It’s election year, and the blessed electorate knows nothing about Putin and cares even less.

Spending large amounts on armaments would mean not spending them on buying the votes of the underclass, and we can’t have that, can we now?

Britain had started to rearm in the nick of time before Hitler marched. The 21^st-century nick of time is now, and all we get from our leaders is talk. Which, as we know, is cheap.