No doubt remembering that the devil finds work for idle hands, my friend Vlad has been a busy boy.

Thereby he has stayed on the side of the angels, even though not every one of his numerous exploits can be truthfully described as angelic.

For example, his Chinese hosts took exception to Vlad’s chivalrous gesture of wrapping a shawl around the shoulders of Peng Liyuan, President Xi Jinping’s wife.

That act of avuncular kindness was mistaken for a flirtatious pick-up attempt, which it probably wasn’t. The only thing Vlad could be accused of was ignorance of foreign mores, but that’s only a minor misdemeanour.

Other accusations fall more into the area of felony. For example, Vlad’s tanks are driving into the Ukraine, in defiance of the treaties, which, to be fair, no one this side of Peter Hitchens ever took seriously.

At the same time Vlad has been sending his warplanes on missions either invading the airspace of still independent nations or coming dangerously close to it.

Nato interceptors are being scrambled on a scale not seen since the Cold War, with Putin’s nuclear bombers overflying, well, the world. His tireless airborne activity has scared the wits out of Norwegians, Estonians, Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Canadians and even Californians.

At the same time Vlad has made arrangements to flog eight nuclear reactors to Iran, and there I was, thinking he was concerned about the Islamic threat. That bit of news upset me.

After all, since all the world leaders agree, in deed if not yet in word, that Iran is going to become a nuclear power come what may, it would be better if the Ayatollahs’ billions went to a Western country, such as France.

But what caught my eye more than anything else is Vlad’s foray into scholarly pursuits, specifically history.

Displaying the catholicity of interests not seen in any Soviet leader since Stalin, Vlad gathered historians together and taught them, well, history.

Or, to be more exact, he taught them how to teach history, to what purpose and based on which premises.

Vlad began by saying “Russia’s past was amazing, her present is more than marvellous and, as for the future, it’s greater than anything the wildest imagination could picture – that is the point of view for examining and writing Russian history.”

Oops, I’ve failed to check my sources yet again: Vlad didn’t say that. The author of that stimulating directive was actually Count Benckendorff (d. 1844), head of Russia’s secret police in the reign of Nicholas I.

Mea culpa, but I do plead extenuating circumstances. For what Vlad actually said faithfully reflected the spirit of Benckendorff’s command, and came close to reflecting the letter as well.

Not to cut too fine a point, Putin ordered historians to fiddle facts in the interests of the state.

A historian’s task, he orated, consists in defending “our views and interests”. He, the historian, must “convince the overwhelming majority of citizens that our approaches  are correct and objective [or rather]… win the battle for the minds, encouraging the people to adopt an active position on the basis of the knowledge you present as objective.”

To achieve this ambitious goal, “the content must be good, and the wrapper must be lurid and impressive”.

Benckendorff expressed himself more eloquently, but it’s the thought that counts, and the similarity between the two secret policemen that charms. Then again, Putin did say on 9 May that “continuity of generations is our chief asset”.

Another parallel I’ve unsuccessfully tried to suppress is between Putin’s lesson to historians and Stalin’s to writers.

In 1932 Putin’s idol assembled as many scribes as could fit into Gorky’s house and unveiled socialist realism, one artistic discipline obligatory for all.

The perplexed heirs to Tolstoy were more than ready to comply but, in order to avoid potentially fatal mistakes, begged the leader for a clarification. What exactly is socialist realism? “Write the truth,” explained Stalin. “That’s what socialist realism is all about.”

Eighty-two years later similarly inspired historians asked today’s leader to illustrate his meaning on the example of any event of the past.

Vlad kindly obliged, overturning with a magisterial swipe of hand every fact accepted as such by any historian pursuing the truth, rather than ‘our interests’.

An example, is that what you want? Well, here it is: the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Toxic falsifiers of history claim that it pushed the button for the Second World War. The two most satanic regimes in history formed an ad hoc alliance to divide Europe between them.

Both predators intended to attack the new ally at the first opportunity, with the victor feasting on the spoils of pan-European, and prospectively global, conquest. Meanwhile, they kicked off history’s most devastating war by assaulting Poland from two sides.

Yet, if we accept Putin’s belief that truth is anything that advances his interests, none of this is true.

The pact, explained Vlad, proved Stalin’s peaceful intentions. And as to Poland, she had only herself to blame. Didn’t she grab a chunk of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when the Germans moved in?

Well then, the subsequent bilateral rape of Poland merely evened the accounts (“scored an equalising puck”, was how Vlad put it, somewhat frivolously, in the terms of his beloved ice hockey).

Hence Poland was at least as culpable for starting the war as Hitler and infinitely more than Stalin – such is the truth, as the word is used in the name of Putin’s favourite newspaper (Pravda is the Russian for truth).

The real truth, as known to every serious historian beyond the reach of Putin’s thugs, is somewhat different. None of them disputes that Stalin planned to conquer Europe, striking the Nazis in the back when they were bogged down in the western theatre.

The only disagreement concerns the date of the planned invasion. Some think Hitler beat Stalin to the punch by days, others by weeks, still others by months. The question to all of them isn’t if but when.

Such historians have facts on their side. For the Soviets had embarked on a military build-up unseen in history either before or since. By turning his enslaved, starving nation into a military cum concentration camp, Stalin mobilised the country’s resources to one end only: achieving military supremacy.

That things didn’t quite pan out the way Putin’s idol had planned shouldn’t distract us from the gruesome reality.

As of 1 June, 1941, the Soviets had 25,479 frontline tanks, as opposed to Germany’s 6,292, and 24,488 warplanes against Germany’s 6,852. The quality of the planes was comparable, but the quality of the tanks wasn’t: the Soviet machines were infinitely superior.

Their KV and T-34 didn’t have any German analogues until Stalingrad, and most of the Soviet ‘obsolete’ tanks, such as the 25.2-tonne T-28 armed with a 76mm cannon, were more than a match even for the Germans’ best tank T-IV (20-22.3 tonnes, 75mm).

The Soviets had more airborne troops than the rest of the world combined, and paratroops are only ever used for offensive purposes. These formed a significant chunk of the Soviet forces deployed in the west of the country before Hitler struck on 22 June, 1941.

The Soviets enjoyed a more than 2:1 superiority over the Nazis in the armies facing each other in Poland (with infinitely greater reserves), and both juggernauts were deployed in a strictly offensive battle order, putting a premium on first strike.

Stalin’s army formed two long salients aimed at the heart of Germany. This formation made them exceedingly vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike, as Nazi generals went on to demonstrate.

Cutting the Lvov and Bialystok salients at the base rendered them ripe for a series of lethal envelopments, which the Germans executed with well-drilled élan. The ensuing rout of Stalin’s regular army gave rise to the subsequent lies about his ‘peaceful intentions’.

Scientific historians have long since dispelled the lies for what they are. But Vlad doesn’t want Russian historians to be scientists. He wants them to be agitprop hacks – and I for one trust Vlad to get exactly what he wants.

This fiddler on the hoof can be as persuasive as Stalin, albeit still on a smaller scale.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

 

 

 

The debate about the European Arrest Warrant  predictably produced an ungainly mess. The pro and con sides mounted their rhetorical steeds and rode them into the joust, with only our constitution unsaddled in the end.

In the process Dave came within nine votes of losing the Commons, which may yet become a big problem for him. What is already a gigantic problem for us is that neither side seemed to understand the real issue at stake.

The Warrant effectively replaces, yet again, the law of our nation with the quasi-legal denationalised regulations imposed by the EU.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the English Common Law is inadequate when it comes to extradition, which inadequacy may at times be detrimental to justice.

Yet superseding it with a law of foreign provenance will do infinitely more damage even in the short term. Over time this will prove catastrophic.

Essentially the Warrant will enable police officers from any EU country to arrest, or demand practically instant extradition of, any British subject for any transgression, regardless of whether or not it would be illegal in the UK.

The argument in favour of this crypto-totalitarian measure is that career criminals will presumably find it harder to stay on the run. That may be, although I doubt that the few lifelong fugitives one has heard of will ever present a serious danger to our constitution.

But one way or the other it doesn’t really matter. The constitutional issues at stake are much more vital than the purely utilitarian considerations.

Britain has by far the best and the oldest system of justice in Europe. It’s not ideal, for nothing in this world is, except perhaps a decent single malt after dinner.

However, eschewing absolute standards in favour of relative ones, there’s nothing about our laws for which we have to apologise to anyone in Europe, including its most civilised parts.

If our laws are being abused or not applied properly, then such mechanical problems must be fixed internally. However, replacing our laws with those of different provenance, different principles and different design is tantamount to ditching a car because its ashtray is full.

Many cornerstones of the English Common Law, such as jury trial, the right to refuse to provide self-incriminating evidence, double jeopardy, habeas corpus etc., either don’t exist in many European countries or are treated as mere statements of intent.

And even in places where they do exist, such cornerstones have no patina of age that can only come from centuries of trial and error.

I for one would hate to be tried in a country where a mere generation ago people were put into concentration camps for disagreeing with the government, especially if my crime wouldn’t be treated as such in Britain.

If, after committing such a non-crime in, say, Bucharest and then returning home, I’d hate to find at my London doorstep a couple of Romanian cops armed with handcuffs and the European Arrest Warrant. So would any Brit, and some have suffered this outrage already.

By debating this vital issue solely, or even mainly, on the basis of utilitarian considerations, our MPs show how little they understand the very essence of their country.

Dave’s flagship policy, that of scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a new Bill of Rights, guaranteeing, among other novelties, freedom of the press we’ve had since at least William III, shows exactly the same failing.

Given the choice between the two documents, any right-thinking person would instantly cast his vote for neither.

The very philosophy of the English law precludes any need for a written document to enshrine a practice that has already been enshrined by centuries of experience.

We don’t need the state to protect our traditional liberties. We need to have our traditional liberties protected from the state.

When the state attacks such liberties, which it does with increasing regularity, the counterattack can be launched in the time-honoured battleground of our own courts and Parliament – no help from a piece of paper is needed, thank you very much.

That Blair’s Human Rights Act, policed by the European Court of Human Rights, is toxic is beyond dispute (just consider the source). But Dave’s brainchild, another Bill of Rights, is just as defective in the context of the world’s most ancient extant constitution.

And you know what is the scariest thing of all? That such things need saying at all – in a country that centuries ago showed the world the value of just laws based on national experience lovingly collected and passed on from one generation to the next.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

 

   

Dave tried to move Angie closer and turn her around. “Assume a more flexible position, Liebchen,” he said.

“Nein,” gasped Angie, “nein, bitte, nein…”

“Nine?” thundered Dave. “Eight-fifty and not a million more!” He spun around and left.

Or, to be more exact, he left and George spun. Angie agreeing to an EU surcharge of merely £850 million payable in two instalments next year, as opposed to the initially demanded £1.7 billion on the nail, said George, proves that she’s ready to bend over backwards to satisfy us.

However, upon closer examination it turned out that Angie’s position remained as unbending as ever. All she did was agree to apply to the payment demand the rebate we were due anyway.

That makes the whole thrust of Dave’s and George’s triumphant declaration as feeble as we suspected. They’re impotent in the face of an irresistible EU fronted by Angie.

Having failed at conducting any meaningful intercourse with Angie, HMG switched its attention to promoting sexual intercourse among consenting infants.

Children as young as nine, decreed our Department of Education, ought to be taught the whole gamut of exciting and acrobatic possibilities offered by both heterosexual and homosexual fornication or, in the absence of a partner, masturbation.

That way they’ll be ready to put theory into practice by the time they turn 13, exploring such wide-open avenues as “consenting oral and/or penetrative sex with others of the same or opposite gender who are of similar age and developmental ability.”

This would reflect “natural curiosity, experimentation, consensual activities and positive choices.” In the past children used to apply all such commendable impulses to playing with erector sets together, but now that’s deemed to be a wrong kind of erection.

I’m appalled. Here we have a government supposedly committed to equality and yet indulging in blatant ageist discrimination.

The whole timeframe must be moved several years back. Instead of imposing arbitrary age limits on healthy ‘consensual activities’, HMG should embark on a campaign under the provisional umbrella of ‘Eight Is Too Late”.

After all, in our enlightened and physically stimulating age, many boys, and more girls, are technically capable of ‘consenting oral and/or penetrative sex’ at the very age of nine at which, according to the discriminatory guidelines, they’re still supposed to be in the training stage only.

How much better would it be then to start such training when the tots are still in their prams. Their dummies could then be used as valuable teaching aids, augmented by their parents’ gently whispering obscenities in their ears.

By the time their age moves into double digits (no pun intended), boys will be fully ready to impregnate girls and exchange not the obsolete vows but utterly modern and upbeat STDs.

Neither eventuality is particularly off-putting, what with the instant availability of both antibiotics (or antiretroviral drugs if appropriate) and abortion.

Speaking of which, another news item has caught my eye. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy will soon subject women to criminal prosecution, as is already the case in some American states.

I must say I don’t get it. Here I was, thinking that a foetus has no legal rights because it’s dependent on the mother’s body and therefore constitutes but a part of it, like the appendix or, say, an ingrown toenail.

Hence a mother is perfectly justified to have the foetus scraped out of her womb bit by bit, which is a moral and legal equivalent of appendectomy. But God forbid she should harm the foetus by doing what these days comes so naturally to our women of child-bearing age: getting pissed.

The whole thing doesn’t seem to add up, but perhaps I’m missing a couple of intermediate logical steps. As it is, it sounds to me as if killing a human being is fine, but buying him a drink isn’t.

According to our laws, the foetus has no legal rights more or less throughout pregnancy, and some women get abortions in the third trimester, even though this isn’t recommended. Yet the very same foetus, once pregnancy tests establish the fact of conception, instantly acquires legal rights when the mother decides to keep it.

I’m confused, and fresh news about those Libyan soldiers confuse me even more. As their officers kindly enlightened us, some of those chaps had never seen a woman other than their mothers and sisters before being sent to Cambridgeshire for training.

That means they had led a rather cloistered existence, but I don’t know enough about life in Libya to prove or disprove the claim. However, the explanation still strikes me as wanting.

For example, I was roughly the same age as the Libyan warriors when I first saw an armadillo. Yet that visual jolt didn’t make me try to corrupt the morals of a sheep.

Similarly, I don’t understand why, shaken by the seismic exposure to a strange woman for the first time, some of those Libyans went on to rape a man, and some others tried to buy a few male British soldiers for sexual purposes.

To be fair, some of them did rape women too, which is a more logical, if no less objectionable, response to the visual shock. But then those Cambridgeshire lasses had been warned by the police not to go out ‘for their own safety’.

At first glance, staying under virtual house arrest for five months (the planned duration of the training programme, now cut short) would have been a hard thing to do for the local women and, come to think of it, men.

Such advice was probably also difficult to accept, for the locals must have been labouring under the misapprehension that their village was their home. This goes to show the government must step up its already impressive efforts to educate people about the delights of multiculturalism.

Well, at least they’re doing a superb job training prepubescent children to experience the joys of ‘consenting oral and/or penetrative sex’ – and the rest of us to accept economic chicanery at face value.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

In the past I’ve found myself in the ranks of Dave detractors. So much more pleasing it is to be able to commend our beleaguered PM on his enlightened approach to selecting possible successors to the office Dave himself occupies with such distinction.

Specifically, he expressed a heartfelt desire to see an Asian prime minister in his lifetime, and the multi-culti egalitarian in me has to rejoice.

The occasion for this coup was the GG2 Leadership Award Dave had the honour of presenting to the Culture Secretary Sajid Javid.

Now, for the benefit of outlanders, in this context the word ‘Asian’ doesn’t mean a Korean, Japanese, Chinese or Mongolian. It means a Pakistani, whether born in this country or not.

Yet Dave had to say ‘Asian’. First, it sounds more inclusive than ‘Pakistani’, though in fact it means exactly the same thing. Second, it sounds less specific than ‘Muslim’, and also less potentially threatening.

Had Dave said he dearly hoped that one day we’d have an Arab Muslim prime minister, there would be more defections to Ukip, which could put Dave on course to a lucrative lecture tour immediately after May, 2015.

As it was, who could have possibly complained about the word ‘Asian’? Only inveterate racists and Ukip members, or simply Ukip members who, as we all know, are inveterate racists to a man.

Oh yes, then there are those reactionaries, some of whom are also to be found among Ukip members, who come up with the outdated objection that the race of a prime minister matters rather less than his ability to govern.

This can only mean that they too are inveterate racists, but those lacking the courage to come out and say what they really mean. What’s important in a candidate for any political office is his ability to tick all the relevant boxes. Any other ability is irrelevant and often undesirable.

Dave in his wisdom realises this better than anyone. Hence in 2012 he promoted to the cabinet Baroness Sayeeda ‘Token’ Warsi, whose sole prior foray into politics had been losing a winnable Tory seat.

Therefore she had to be fast-tracked into Dave’s cabinet via the House of Lords. After all, Sayeeda Warsi ticked all the relevant boxes. Woman – tick. Muslim – two ticks at least. Working class – tick. Multi-culti accent – tick. Under 40 – tick.

Painfully aware that neither he himself nor anyone else in his cabinet possessed all such vital qualifications, Dave used the Lords as a clever detour to pave Sayeeda’s way into government.

However, eventually the ungrateful Baroness let Dave down. She resigned from the cabinet because it didn’t overtly share her deep – in fact only – conviction that Israel has no right to exist.

Still, on the scale of Dave’s criteria, Mr Javid must be distinctly second best to Baroness Warsi. But judge for yourself.

When still at university he campaigned against the disastrous decision of Margaret Thatcher’s government to join the ERM. This may suggest that he harbours latent Eurosceptic views – that’s one point against him, actually a handful of them.

Then, before entering politics, Javid had had a successful career in finance, earning the better part of £3,000,000 a year. That’s another two points against him: he’s clearly out of touch with the prevalent trend in our politics, and he’s probably clever. Call yourself a politician, Sajid?

Two more negatives: though a son of a Pakistani bus driver in Lancashire, Javid neither espouses Islam nor sounds like a son of a Pakistani bus driver in Lancashire.

The first negative suggests he isn’t sufficiently multi-culti, and nor does he realise the importance of appealing to the growing bloc of Jihadist voters.

The second black mark shows that, while Dave and his fellow Etonians in the cabinet are desperately trying to drop their ‘haitches’ all over the place, Mr Javid speaks in the cadences of his education, not his birth.

How reactionary is that? Dave must have made a mental note to tell Sajid to start working on his glottal stops if he’s ever to become the first Asian PM.

To throw a bit more black dye on his record, Mr Javid is the wrong side of 40, which is almost a disqualifying circumstance in our paedocratic (not to be confused with paedophiliac) times.

Then – are you ready for this? – Javid is on record as saying that “we should recognise that Christianity is the religion of our country”. Dave knows we should do no such thing. Christianity is only as good as any other religion, and not nearly as good as atheism.

Next thing you know Javid will suggest that our policies should agree with Christian principles, which is another way of saying that Dave should be out of a job. Can’t have that, can we now?

And to crown it all, this overachiever dares to say that, if he had to live in the Middle East, Israel would be the only country that would make him and his children feel free.

Now, in view of the recent parliamentary vote inspired by Dave, this is borderline treasonous. What’s wrong with Saudi Arabia, Sajid? Don’t you remember where oil comes from?

It’s a massive feather in Dave’s cap that he’s ready to overlook all these tragic failings and still reward Mr Javid with the leadership accolade. In Dave’s eyes, Sajid has one merit that outweighs the demerits: HE IS ASIAN.

I’m sure Mr Javid is happy to know that, if he ever ascends to Downing Street, everyone will think that it’s because of his ethnicity, not his other accomplishments that would be extremely impressive in a man of any other genetic makeup.

While praising Dave for grasping what’s really important in statesmanship, I have to admit with some sadness and bemusement that not everyone joins in. One commentator, for example, quipped that he wished we’d have a conservative prime minister in his lifetime.

The implication is that Dave isn’t one such, which is most unfair. Dave is conservative in exactly the same sense in which Nick is a liberal.

It’s just that the modern political lexicon operates on the principle of inversion: party nomenclatures mean exactly their former opposites.

Thus a party dedicated to increasing the power of the state vis-à-vis the individual would have been called anti-liberal in the past. However, it’s called Liberal now because, as the less literate of my acquaintances keep telling me, the language changes.

And someone like my friend Dave, who believes in reverse discrimination on the basis of PC criteria, is a true conservative PM.

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, as Dave must have been taught at Eton, and he knows he must atone for that blip on his CV.   

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

Before all my friends disown me, my wife hits me on the head with a frying pan and my detractors flash QED smiles, allow me to reassure you.

I’ve in no way changed my views on the EU generally and our membership in it specifically. In fact I go quite a bit further than my Ukip friends in my contempt for this wicked offshoot of the wartime alliance between Nazi Germany and Vichy France.

Just as they do, I dearly hope we can shake the dust of that foul obscenity off our feet. But I also hope all other countries will follow us out of the door, reducing the EU to a ghastly memory that’ll for ever make them cringe recalling it.

Since I’m still opposed to the In-Out referendum so dear to Ukip hearts, it’s obvious I don’t believe this vehicle will carry us to the desired destination.

As a general observation, direct democracy by plebiscite is the worst possible kind of this method of government, which isn’t without fundamental problems even at its best.

This sort of thing only became possible after the Enlightenment perverted the metaphysical premise on which Western civilisation was built. Our formative notion of original sin was replaced with the modern notion of original virtue.

Rather than being compromised by the Fall, man, according to Rousseau and his jolly friends, was both perfect and tautologically perfectible ab initio. Since man demonstrably didn’t end up perfect, it was the fault of society, what with its two-pronged oppressive strategy based on the crown and the church.

The conclusion was obvious: man could return to his original virtue if the oppressors were eliminated and paths leading to liberation were opened.

One of the paths was political: the Enlighteners insisted that perfect and further perfectible citizens could play a hands-on role in government with no outside help necessary. Hence democracy, the rule of the people.

Such Enlightenment thinkers as Smith and Hume realised that people would vote on the basis of their selfish interests, not all of which would be praiseworthy. They just felt that all those private, often clashing, interests could be tossed into a giant cauldron to produce a tasty stew of public virtue.

The two Scots made one fundamental error. They thought that society could for ever continue to draw on the moral capital amassed by Christianity, thereby keeping base passions in check. They couldn’t imagine in their scariest dreams that one day their own atheism would reign supreme.

Once the transcendent restraints on behaviour were removed, no tasty stew would emerge from the cauldron. On the contrary, the resulting concoction would emphasise the rancid taste of each ingredient.

Liberty without “wisdom and virtue”, wrote Burke prophetically, “is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice and madness, without tuition or restraint”. The great Whig had no doubts on the sole possible source of such restraining mechanisms.

That source has run dry in our public life. Consequently collective wisdom and virtue are no longer in evidence, and therefore neither is liberty in whose name modernity conquered.

Democracy no longer reliably produces virtuous results, nor brings to power virtuous people. The nature of modern politics, nay modern societies, is such that people will vote wrong even when they have a valid choice (which they increasingly don’t).

This isn’t to say that people’s instincts are always, indeed usually, wrong. It’s just that, in the absence of Burkean ‘wisdom and virtue’, those instincts can easily be overridden by mass propaganda and general demagoguery.

That’s why democracy, when it goes unchecked by competing methods of government, ends up belying its etymology, withdrawing power from the people and passing it on to professional demagogues who manipulate the electorate using increasingly sophisticated means at their disposal.

Issues put to a vote are thus decided not by their intrinsic merit but by the agitprop weight brought to bear on one end or the other.

It follows that any In-Out referendum will be decided not by a contest between truth and falsehood but by the decibel level of the propaganda pro or con. 

In practical terms this means that Her Majesty’s government, especially if it’s supported by Her Majesty’s opposition, is the odds-on favourite to get the result it wants: its agitprop resources can’t be matched by any rivals.

So let’s assume for the sake of argument, and it’s an unsafe assumption, that the Tories will either form the next government on their own or at least play a decisive role in it.

Since all other parties except Ukip are fanatic European federalists, the Out vote could only result from the Tories aggressively campaigning for it. Supported by our most popular newspapers, they could realistically expect to counteract the vast resources of the EU propaganda machine.

How likely is it that the Tories will commit to such a campaign? Well, about as likely as the MPs on both front benches sporting T-shirts saying This Is What a Spiv Looks Like.

Dave made this abundantly clear yesterday, when asked in the Commons six times whether he’d ever campaign to get the country out of the EU.

Each time his reply branded him not only as the fanatic of European federalism he is, but also as the unprincipled spiv he pretends not to be: “I want Britain,” he said, “ to stay in a reformed EU.”

This after both the de jure head of the EU Jean-Claude Juncker and its de facto head Angela Merkel declared publicly, unequivocally and, for once, truthfully that no meaningful reform was going to happen.

Had Dave wished to follow Angela’s lead and be truthful this once, he would have simply replied no, he’d never campaign for the Out vote. As it was, he couched the answer in his usual waffle without changing its meaning.

Therefore we can confidently assume that if the Tories somehow cling on to power next May, and if Dave keeps his promise to hold the referendum in 2017, he’ll campaign to stay in.

No doubt the EU will throw the bone of one or two meaningless concessions his way to help Dave propagate his lie about ‘a reformed EU’. The two spivocracies, national and supranational, will fling the sluice gates open and flood the British with an outpouring of scaremongering lies – just like they did in 1975.

The result will also be the same: the Out vote will lose, at which point the unwritten EU law will come into play.

If a national referendum yields a result that’s not to the EU’s liking, the people will be told to vote again and continue to do so until they get it right. However, a pro-EU vote is irreversible, chiselled in indestructible stone.

Hence an In-Out referendum will spell relinquishing Britain’s sovereignty irretrievably and eternally, which is hardly the result desired by those who are pushing for it.

The only way for the country to get out is for the next election to produce a government in which Ukip will play a serious role. This can only be a Tory-Ukip coalition in which Ukip could mobilise the anti-EU faction within the Conservative Party to force Dave to do what he hates: campaign for the Out vote.

In any other scenario Britain is almost guaranteed to become and remain but a gau in an EU dominated by Germany. I just hope we’ll still be allowed to wear poppies on 11 November.

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

Now that the celebrated group is no longer performing, trust the Ministry of Defence to step into the breach.  

What prompted its officials to seek an alternative career in stand-up comedy is the clever plan to train 2,000 Libyan soldiers in Cambridgeshire, which produced highly predictable results.

The need to whip the Libyan army into shape arose in the first place thanks to HMG’s inspired policy of unseating Col. Gaddafi’s government, thereby plunging the country into a blood-soaked chaos.

That policy slotted neatly into our overall strategy of radicalising the Middle East to a point where it would implode, conceivably burying millions under the rubble.

The shockwaves of the implosion are already reaching Europe, where Muslim violence, not least towards Jews, is becoming uncontainable.

Displaying the staggering hypocrisy we’ve learned to expect from our leaders, Ed Miliband yesterday shed a tear for British Jews, who feel insecure in the face of rising anti-Semitism.

He forgot to mention that most anti-Semitic violence in Britain, France and elsewhere in Europe is committed by Muslims, either native-born or cordially invited from the Middle East to add the spice of multi-culti variety to our otherwise humdrum life.

The increasingly anti-Israeli policy of our main parties, including Ed’s own, acts as a spur to violence, and a sharp one at that.

The parties on either side of the aisle are sending a loud and clear signal by their endorsement of what they call a Palestinian state and what in effect will become a legitimised base for global terrorism.

This can’t help encouraging our resident Muslims in feeling that their hatred of Jews, only slightly more febrile than their hatred of the West, has been justified all along. Their cause has been just, as Western governments are acknowledging.

But God forbid our leaders utter a single word suggesting they realise that the West and Islam are irreconcilable – that even in its present debauched state our civilisation simply can’t accommodate Islam as a dynamic force within our borders.

Yet our electorate has been corrupted to such an extent that, for any ‘statesman’ to be politically successful, he has to be politically correct. Hence the respect, both preached and practised, for any religion or civilisation, provided it isn’t Christian.

Hence also the criminal stupidity of our leaders who destroyed the demonstrably un-Western but still workable power balance in the Middle East to plunge the region into a blood-filled abyss of violence and unrest.

Now that the violence looks as if it’s about to spill over way beyond Iraq, Syria and Libya, our governments are reviewing their options.

One of them is yet another direct military intervention, and we all know how hugely successful this has proved so far.

Another is to intervene by proxy, using Iran (what with the Nato member Turkey refusing to play) to do the fighting for us. Ancient Rome had that kind of arrangement with the Vandals, remember how that turned out?

We may suffer the same way, since the inevitable price for Iran’s involvement will be the opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons, and you aren’t getting three guesses to figure out how they’ll be used.

The third option is related to the second: arming and training those local groups we perceive as our friends. ‘Perceive’ is the operative word: there are no groups in the Islamic world that are genuinely friendly to the West.

Some, however, are ready to fake amiability for tactical reasons, something we accept as the real thing. Both sides are perfectly aware of the ad hoc nature of any such alliance, invariably underpinned as it always is by background hostility.

They pretend to be our friends, we pretend to believe them. However, the two sides still diverge in one important area. They have a long-term strategy, we can’t think beyond the next election.

That’s why we refuse to recall that every time we trained and armed Muslim soldiers in the past they eventually turned their weapons against us. Who do you think armed the Taliban? Al-Qaeda? Saddam? Gaddafi? Isis?

Training thousands of Libyan soldiers at our Cambridgeshire base is a sign that we’re as ever prepared to equip our future enemies while pretending they’re our present friends.

We simply refuse to admit that our quarrel isn’t with this or that Islamic faction but with Islam as such. Well, if we still haven’t realised that there’s a clash of civilisations under way, we ought to be thankful to the Libyan soldiers for clarifying the point.

Since arriving in June they’ve succeeded in turning their corner of sleepy Cambridgeshire into a scaled-down version of Tripoli’s outskirts.

The Libyans went on an alcohol-fuelled rampage and there I was, thinking Muslims were supposed to be teetotal. A few of them spent £1,000 on booze in a single visit to a supermarket, an amount that buys a lot of mayhem.

Two of the soldiers have now been charged with raping a man, who presumably was wearing a provocative business suit. Not to discriminate, three others are being held on remand for several counts of sexual assault against women.

These peccadilloes were augmented by attendant charges of theft and threatening behaviour towards a police officer, which is legalese for head-butting. (Since no one has suggested that ‘Glasgow kiss’ be renamed ‘Tripoli kiss’, I’m hereby putting this initiative forth as my own.)

Anyway, this is where our MoD officials unveiled their comedy routine, and I thank them for making my morning so much more upbeat for it.

In a nutshell, the training programme, originally supposed to last until the end of the month, is being terminated effective immediately, and no future training will be done in Britain, what with the UK’s surfeit of tasty men and women roaming the countryside freely.

Instead of describing this simple development in this kind of language or, as would be my preference, more colloquially, the MoD spokesman delivered his first knee-slapping line:

“We have agreed with the Libyan government that it is best for all involved to bring forward the training completion date”. (“We can’t have too many raping and thieving Muzzie soldiers about…”)

Encouraged by the outburst of laughter, he continued in the same vein: “There have been disciplinary issues.”

I suppose homosexual rape, sexual assault on women, theft and head-butting a cop could be described that way for comic effect, but, playing it straight, I’d have settled for ‘crimes’ instead.

And then came the kicker, having punters rolling in the aisles: “As part of our support for the Libyan government, we will review how best to train Libyan security forces – including whether training further tranches of recruits in the UK is the best way forward.” (“…and neither do we want them to darken our doorstep ever again.”)

To add a few delicious touches to the stand-up gig, several Libyan soldiers, presumably not the defendants, have requested political asylum in Britain. And their government has so far failed to pay for the programme, while not offering much hope it’ll do so in the future.

Oh well, we’ve made our bed of nails, so we must lie in it – and it’s no laughing matter.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

How do you say ‘I’d rather not indulge in hypothetical speculations’ in Russian?

Let’s ask that celebrated translator Col. Putin, who is past master at finding idiomatic equivalents to the desiccated, denatured vocabulary of diplomatic discourse.

At a press conference in elegant Milan, the colonel was asked the other day what would happen to the Russian economy if oil prices continued to slide.

The phrase I used above was the reply Putin wished to deliver, but how colourful is that? How naked-to-the-waste muscular? How vox populi?

Above all, how close would such effete wording be to the hearts of the Russians who, like our own Peter Hitchens, have an almost erotic craving for a strong leader, a man’s man whose language must reflect martial arts, a nude torso in front of which a rifle is gripped, a career in history’s most murderous organisation?

Not at all close, is the answer to that. That’s why the ultimate man’s man won’t talk sissy. None of those indulgings in hypothetical speculations or speculatings in hypothetical indulgences or hypothesisings in indulgent rathers.

A real man must speak in a real man’s language, which in Putin’s case means that of the ‘common Leningrad street thug’ he self-admittedly and proudly was in his formative years.

That’s why he smiled scabrously and uttered the phrase my mother first scolded me for using when I was five years old: “If Grandma had balls she’d be not a Grandma but a Grandpa.”

Actually he made a concession to decorum by replacing the word ‘balls’ in this common Russian saying with ‘external sex organs’, but the job was done. ‘Balls’ was what the Russians heard, and this mellifluous word was music to their ears.

They had their confirmation: Putin is a real muzhik, a man’s man. He won’t let the country down.

This is yet another valuable entry in the thesaurus of Putin’s vulgarities, filling up rapidly with sinewy phrases, many uttered in press conferences.

Thus, when a journalist once asked a question implicitly critical of the atrocities the Russians were then committing in Chechnya, the colonel put him in his place with some élan:

“If you want to become an Islamic radical for real, to the point of getting circumcised, I invite you to Moscow… I’ll tell them to do the surgery so that nothing will grow back.”

And what about those Chechens who had the temerity to resist? “We’ll pursue terrorists everywhere… If we catch’em in the toilet, we’ll whack’em in the shithouse.”

On the dangers of procrastination: “If we chew on our own snot for years, we won’t change anything.”

On the papers publishing something the colonel didn’t like: “They dug bogies out of their noses and smeared them all over the papers.”

On Israel’s president Moshe Katsav who was later sentenced to seven years in prison: “He raped ten women! I never expected that from him! He surprised us all! We all envy him!”

“Like priest, like parish”, says another Russian proverb. It’s in no way surprising that Putin’s henchmen fall over themselves trying to emulate, or possibly even outdo, their leader in using the language of the gutter.

For example, Prime Minister Medvedev and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Russian LibDems, have regaled YouTube viewers with long clips that succeeded in the unlikely feat of making even me wince.

The former was giving unsolicited advice to President Mubarak of Egypt on how to deal with Islamic rebels, which advice heavily centred on using a length of steel pipe to “f*** them up the a***”.

The latter also relied on sexual imagery in his criticism of America’s then State Secretary Condoleezza Rice, whose global aggressiveness, according to Zhirinovsky, was a function of a sluggish sex life. To remedy that deficiency he invited Miss Rice to visit Spetsnaz barracks where she would be “f***ed until the soldiers’ sperm would be coming out of her ears”.

Lest I be accused of digging up ancient stuff, here, for the delectation of the Russophones among you, is a clip barely a fortnight old: http://www.compromat.ru/page_35033.htm

It shows Vitaly Mutko, Putin’s Minister for Sport and Tourism, wishing the denizens of Cheboksary a happy National Sports Day. The words the Minister chose to convey his warm feelings came from the depth of his mysterious Russian soul: “I congratulate you all from the bottom of my f***ing heart!” (I’m open to other versions of the translation, never an easy task when it comes to Russian idioms.)

All these clips show that Messrs Medvedev, Zhirinovsky and Mutko were visibly inebriated when expressing themselves with so much poignant lucidity. Putin, on the other hand, is always sober when speaking ex cathedra.

But their drunkenness can’t be used as a mitigating circumstance any more than Putin’s sobriety can serve as an aggravating one. In all three cases, and many others one could cite, Russian politicians know exactly what they are saying, and why.

Their flock have been thoroughly brutalised by relentless propaganda based on fascist values and images. Julius Streicher didn’t pull his punches when addressing the readers of Der Stürmer, and neither do members of Russia’s kleptofascist government when addressing their captive audience.

The Russians do so for the same reason the Germans did: the public must be imbued with the cult of muscular strength and crude testosterone-spewing aggressiveness. Using robust, vulgar language is part and parcel of this on-going effort.

Conventions of civilised speech have to be cast aside when what is planned is an assault on that very civilisation. Hence I wouldn’t dismiss the verbal savagery of Russian leaders lightly.

They are clearly house-training the populace to be real men towering above effete etiquettes and other paraphernalia of good behaviour. The words they use are neatly harmonised with the roar of drum and bugles in the background.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

 

 

 

 

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail the other day, saying “Good piece by Edward Lucas in today’s Daily Mail: Putin’s Russia and the New Cold War.”

Since this particular friend hardly ever gets things wrong, I read the article and sure enough – it was good.

Mr Lucas in general is one of the few mainstream journalists who have a secure grasp on Russia, which is as commendable in someone without native knowledge of the place as it is rare.

Peter Hitchens, for example, has no native – and not much of any other – knowledge of Russia either, but he does have a strong ideological bias. This is often deadly and, when combined with both ignorance and arrogance, invariably so.

Thus his ex-Trotskyist loins ache for a strong leader like Putin, someone he wishes we had. Now a desire for a powerful man at the helm usually arises in a weak society. Mr Hitchens correctly diagnoses ours as such, but the treatment he’d dearly love to administer is worse than the disease.

A version of Putin’s kleptofascist regime can’t cure any of our ills. Thinking it can is both immoral and stupid; not knowing Putin’s regime is kleptofascist is ignorant.

Mr Lucas harbours no such illusions. He knows the true worth of Putin’s Russia and he correctly identifies it as a great threat to the West, greater even than the Soviet Union was.

Actually anyone who just follows the news, without refracting it through nostalgic ex-Trotskyist longings, shouldn’t need expert opinion to reach the same conclusion. Facts alone should do the job.

Russia is clearly reviving Leninist-Stalinist ambitions of gaining control over as much of the world as feasible, definitely including Europe.

Unlike Lenin and Stalin, however, Putin can add hydrocarbon blackmail to the levers operated by Lenin and Stalin: military conquest and relentless propaganda.

This isn’t to say that Putin ignores either military or propaganda offensives. Far from it.

Like Hitler in his heyday, Putin is probing the West to see how much he can get away with. Like Hitler, he is getting the answer he needs: as much as he wants.

The West has swallowed the unlawful annexation of the Crimea with nary a whimper. Ditto, the effective dismemberment of the Ukraine, with an eventual Anschluss no doubt in the works. Ditto, the non-stop violations by Russian nuclear bombers of the airspace over the three Baltic republics and several Western European countries.

From Turkey to Finland, Nato interceptors are being scrambled almost every day to escort Putin’s death machines a safe distance away. One wonders if the Nato fighter planes carry live ammunition. If they do, five gets you ten they’re under orders not to use it even as warning shots.

We have ample historical evidence to support the commonsensical view that cowardly passivity on the part of the West doesn’t so much deter fascist aggressors as embolden them. But the West traditionally has learning difficulties when it comes to the lessons of history.

Mr Lucas knows all this, and he communicates it in a lucid and forthright manner, as his regular readers have been accustomed to expect.

But one short paragraph in his narrative partly undid the good work done by all the other paragraphs. In it Mr Lucas describes his sense of unbridled joy at the sight of the Berlin Wall coming down.

Finally, he felt, democracy had triumphed in Russia and everywhere. History had ended, although, being a more intelligent man than Francis Fukuyama, he didn’t express himself so crudely.

“How high the hopes were then,” concludes Mr Lucas. “And how empty they seem a quarter of a century on.”

Now I differ from Peter Hitchens not only in my understanding of Russia, but also in my reluctance he doesn’t share of saying I told you so (as, for example, in today’s Mail: “As usual, I first wrote about this subject long before it was fashionable to do so.”).

So suffice it to say that those who really do know and understand Russia had no such ‘high hopes’ even then – especially if they applied proper criteria to rating foreign countries.

Too many Western commentators don’t ask themselves the question “Is the country good?” Instead they ask “Is it democratic?”, implicitly equating democracy with virtue.

Since by now democracy has been reduced to its empty shell even in its native habitat, such commentators, especially if they espouse neoconservative views, tend to apply purely formal criteria even to the question they do ask. As long as the citizens of the country under the spotlight go to voting booths at regular intervals, the commentators are satisfied.

This creates a mighty potential for wicked sham democracies to trick the West into a wrong understanding, and therefore a wrong policy based on such understanding (to cite a recent example, witness the Arab Spring, which may yet turn into a nuclear winter).

Hence, rather than realising instantly that the USSR’s evil energy was vindicating the First Law of Thermodynamics by merely transforming into a different but equally evil kind, they tossed their hats in the air and hailed the advent of goodness.

Virtue had prevailed, history had ended, no further debate was either needed or possible. Well, even assuming that history can ever end this side of the Second Coming, it always restarts – as it did after Hegel first made this feeble claim following the Battle of Jena.

Simply put, the West allowed itself to be duped by cynical villains who knew that its adulation of democracy was but half a step removed from wishful thinking. They were right: after the ‘collapse of the Soviet Union’, the West, especially its European vanguard, hastily disarmed, hoping to get fat on the peace dividend.

Now all but strident ideologues with multiple chips on their shoulders realise that Soviet Russia never changed in its evil essence. It has merely been rebuilt (which is what ‘perestroika’ means), and so has the threat it presents to the civilised world.

Similarly, the penny dropped on 1 September, 1939, or, for some, a week earlier when the Soviet-Nazi pact was signed, pushing the button for the carnage. By then it was too late as, one fears, it may be now.

 

Next week my new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick will be available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.html or, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

Do you feel offended by this statement? If so, I beg your forgiveness, even though I was simply stating a fact. So please don’t call the police to have me arrested for ‘racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.’

I’m not being crazy – our world is, and I know you’ve heard me say so before. Well, you’ll hear me say it many times again.

For Paul Griffith, 75, was arrested by armed police on that very charge for uttering the phrase in the title.

Going through airport security at Stansted, Mr Griffith was asked to remove his shoes. He complied, but in the process uttered the offensive, nay criminal, sentence above.

The security chap (whose religion isn’t specified in the news reports) felt mortally and racially offended, which I hope you weren’t when I said the same thing.

The uncharacteristically lackadaisical policemen turned up armed to the teeth, but allowed the pensioner to go on his trip. When he returned, they were lying in wait.

Mr Griffith was kept in airport detention for six hours, had his fingerprints and an oral DNA swab taken and was told to report to his local police station.

When he did so the next day, he was told that he had been charged with an offence under the Crime and Disorder Act. To be fair, Mr Griffith was then magnanimously offered to accept a caution, which is to say a criminal record.

When the wrongdoer refused, claiming he had done nothing wrong, the charge was made official and Mr Griffith was given a court date for a trial.

I’m with him on this one: he did nothing wrong. Mr Griffith simply denied any adherence to Islam, and his statement was factually correct.

Then of course he was charged not with lying but with a racial offence. Since we’ve already agreed that the phrase ‘I’m not a Muslim’ is semantically inoffensive, it must have been deemed criminal contextually.

In that context the phrase ‘I’m not a Muslim’ really meant something more than just a statement of religious disassociation.

In effect Mr Griffith was saying that, since he manifestly wasn’t a Muslim, he was statistically unlikely either to hijack or to blow up his flight to Malaga.

Implicitly he was thereby suggesting that this statistical probability was somewhat higher for Muslim passengers, as opposed to, say, Buddhist ones.

Otherwise he would have said, ‘I’m not a Buddhist’ or, for that matter, ‘…Taoist’, ‘…Zoroastrian’ or ‘…Presbyterian’.

Now if that’s what he really meant, as seems likely, then his contextual statement seems as factually correct as the textual one.

To verify this, I opened an appropriate Google page and scanned the headlines of the articles cited. Here they are, in the right order with none left out:

“Muslim Terrorist Who Detonated Bomb on Pan Am Flight 830 Freed from Prison”

“Canada: Muslim arrested after flight escorted back to Toronto – said on plane, ‘I just want to bomb Canada’.”

“Three British Muslims have been convicted of planning a series of co-ordinates suicide bomb attacks on transatlantic airliners, which could have killed up to 10,000 people.”

“British Muslims ‘planned to kill thousands by bringing down SEVEN transatlantic airliners in one go with liquid bombs’.”

“Three guilty of airline bomb plot: Tanvir Hussain, Abdulla Ahmed ali and Assad Sarwar”

“F-16 jets escort Toronto-Panama plane after Mohammadan ali Shahi bomb threat”

Then of course, bygones be bygones and all that, but it’s hard to forget it was Muslims who flew airliners into those tall New York  buildings, killing 3,000.

And – you’ll never know how it pains me to say this – it was Muslims who on 7 July, 2005 conducted a series of coordinated bombings on London public transport, killing 52 and crippling God knows how many more.

Muslims. Not Buddhists, Taoists, Zoroastrians – nor even Presbyterians, Lutherans or Ultramontane Catholics.

Hence Mr Griffith made a statement correct in every possibly way, explicit or implicit. Neither did it contain any rude words, threats or a general assessment of the Muslims’ moral character. It was purely factual, if ill-advised.

Yet he barely escaped a criminal sentence, possibly even a custodial one. In fact, the case didn’t get as far as the trial. Twenty-four hours before the gavel was to fall, the CPO dropped all charges, if with clearly perceptible regret.

Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor Frank Ferguson said: “In order to successfully prosecute a charge of racially or religiously aggravated disorderly conduct, we first have to show that the language used was threatening or abusive and in these particular circumstances we could not show that to the high criminal standard required.”

Don’t worry, Frank, you’ll get your man next time or, if not him specifically, someone like him.

After all, most mental disorders, including the one our society is suffering from, are degenerative, meaning they get worse with the passage of time.

Even a paltry 10 years ago an airport security man wouldn’t have called the cops under similar circumstances, nor would the cops have arrested the transgressor.

Ten years from now, and I’m being optimistic, a man like Mr Griffiths will be sent down, to spend a few years in the company of murderers.

Meanwhile, this lunacy has done little to endear the authorities, or indeed Muslims, to the rest of us. Quite the opposite, I dare say – but please don’t report me to the police.

 

 

 

 

 

“The abolition of God necessarily leads to the abolition of man,” wrote C.S. Lewis, ever the prophet.

True enough, half a century or so later we’ve developed a knack for talking about people not as individuals but as groups.

By doing so, we’ve jumped backwards, leapfrogging two millennia of our civilisation and landing smack in the middle of the pre-Christian Greco-Roman antiquity.

Rather than rejoicing in the Christian notion of the sovereign individual, we wallow in the defacing collectivism of modernity – and love it.

Group identity has replaced individual dignity, and any personal affront is instantly taken as an assault on the group with which the target identifies, especially if the group enjoys a minority status in public perception.

Hence women, who, in defiance of maths, are supposed to be a minority, and an oppressed one at that, routinely demand – and are given – certain privileges not on merit but simply on the strength of their being women.

Having ridden their sex to a particular job, such women then erect around themselves a protective wall to ward off any insinuations about their incompetence. Like Nato’s charter stipulating that an attack on one member is an attack on all, they accuse the insinuator of misogyny, not a legitimate gripe against a certain woman but hatred of women as such.

In that spirit, since I’m about to point out the cosmic incompetence of two of our female ministers, I hasten to offer this disclaimer: neither women nor men in general are fit to govern. However, some men are, and so are some women.

It’s just that neither Nicky Morgan nor Helen Grant is, and they both happen to have ministerial portfolios, for Equality (along with Education) and Sport respectively.

Helen is grievously hurt by the observation that some professional women athletes get paid less than their male counterparts.

As if setting out to vindicate my belief that the world has gone mad, she’s particularly upset about the gross discrimination suffered by female footballers. These ball-kickers, she claims, should be paid as much as the men.

This raises many questions, not least those about Miss Grant’s professional competence.

For example, which male footballers should be used as the standard to follow? We have in England four professional leagues: the Premiership, the Championship, the First and the Second Divisions.

The average salary in the Premiership is roughly eight times higher than in the Championship. In the Championship Division it’s three times higher than in the First, which in turn towers over the Second by a factor of two.

The same goes for those teams’ managers. Those working in the top flight typically get about £3,000,000 a year, as opposed to something like £50,000 in the Second division.

Presumably Miss Grant sets her sight stratospherically high, seeing in her myopic mind’s eye female strikers earning as much as Rooney or Costa. This brings to mind a purely commercial question.

Apart from the generosity of billionaire owners, football revenues come from ticket sales, TV income, kit sales and endorsements. Comparing, say, the FA Cup Final with a similar women’s competition, which do you think will be more commercially virile?

Don’t answer that. Instead answer another question: how can someone capable of uttering such stupid, ideologically driven statements be trusted with running the country? On second thoughts, don’t bother with that one either: there is no good answer.

Front-bencher Nicky Morgan was one of 161 MPs who opposed the legalisation of homomarriage in 2013, thereby defying her party leader Dave.

However, she has since changed her mind. If the vote were held today, Miss Morgan says, she “probably would” vote in favour. She now welcomes “anybody who enters into a commitment”.

Since she didn’t qualify the statement in any way, one could infer that she’d welcome marital commitment between mother and son or brother and sister. But let’s not indulge in such reductio ad absurdum.

Instead let’s wonder what has happened in the intervening year to make Miss Morgan change her mind.

Actually, there was no change. What passes for Miss Morgan’s heart was even then firmly on the side of Dave and all those who helped him push that subversive bill through Parliament.

However, she went against her deeply held convictions because her constituents were asking her to oppose the bill “by ten to one”. This is how Miss Morgan explains the decision-making process in a style that’s rather lamentable in someone who holds the Education portfolio to augment the Equality one:

“We are all, as Members of Parliament, here to represent, to listen, to hear, to change minds but I have a lot of constituents who asked me to vote in a particular way and I listened to them and it was an issue of conscience too.”

Leaving aside the disputable claim to possessing a conscience, one has to say that, for an Education Minister or simply a halfway educated person, Miss Morgan has little idea about her parliamentary responsibilities or indeed our constitution.

On the off chance that she’s one of the few politicians who ever read books, perhaps one could recommend she acquaint herself with the writings of Edmund Burke, who knew a thing or two about constitutional matters.

An MP, wrote Burke, should be the people’s representative, not their delegate. As such, his vote should reflect not his constituents’ wishes but their interests – whatever he judges those to be.

The underlying assumption was that voters sent to Parliament those they trusted to represent their interests, even if these diverged from their wishes. In his turn, an MP felt free to vote according to his conscience, a freedom that had been vouchsafed to him by the electorate.

Hence, if Miss Morgan’s conscience called for a vote in favour of that perverse legislation, she presumably felt that the law would be in the interests of the community she represented.

Hence, by acting on the voters’ wishes rather than their interests, she effectively betrayed their trust – not to mention the constitution of this country.

Sorry about indulging in such subtleties. They have no place in a nation governed by a parliament stuffed to the gunwales with self-serving, intellectually inadequate, morally corrupt nonentities.

 

Both male and female.