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Donald Trump is an uncouth, overbearing, narcissistic, tasteless, ill-bred, megalomaniac, loud-mouthed, ignorant, rude and uncivilised bully.

All these traits figure high on the list of things I detest the most in people, and Trump doesn’t seem to have any decent human traits to counterbalance those I’ve mentioned.

Hence the temptation is strong to argue with him even when he says and does all the right things. That temptation must be resisted, however.

By all means, let’s agree with Buffon that “the style is the man himself” (le style c’est l’homme même) and conclude that Trump’s style paints his character a solid black. But a truism remains true no matter how it’s uttered or how obvious it is.

When words escape a speaker’s mouth, they leave behind his personality and begin to fly solo. At that point, one must look at them on their own terms and stop considering their source, hard as it may be in Trump’s case.

When Trump doesn’t talk gibberish, which he does most of the time, he speaks in truisms, ideas that are true but self-evident, unoriginal and hardly in need of saying. Or so one would think.

However, when he talks to European leaders, Trump’s banalities acquire the power of earth-shattering revelations. For little they say and nothing they do suggests they are familiar with basic ideas one can overhear in pubs, when the punters are still on their third pint.

Trump clearly despises most European politicians, and I include British ones in that category. This upsets me – not because he is wrong to feel that way, but because he is right. I know exactly what Pushkin meant when he wrote to his friend Vyazemsky: “Of course, I despise my country head to toe – but I am offended when a foreigner shares this feeling.”

Look, for example, at the political lecture Trump gave Starmer. It wasn’t even a teacher talking to a student – it was a grown-up explaining to a slow child that sticking fingers into an electric socket isn’t a good idea.

Assuming that Starmer’s main rival at the next general election will be Nigel Farage, Trump charted a route to Starmer’s victory:

“Generally speaking, the one who cuts taxes the most, the one who gives you the lowest energy prices, the best kind of energy, the one that keeps you out of wars… a few basics… And in your case a big immigration component… I think the one that’s toughest and most competent on immigration is going to win the election, but then you add… low taxes, and you add the economy.”

Then Trump gave Starmer the benefit of his opinion of London’s mayor, affectionately known as Sadist Khan. Sir Sadiq, said Trump, is a “nasty man” who has done a “terrible job”. I agree with that characterisation wholeheartedly, but Sir Keir didn’t. “Actually, he is a friend of mine,” he muttered.

Undeterred, Trump repeated what he had just said, perhaps implying that Starmer ought to choose his friends more wisely. Bad manners, yes. But also true.

Although Trump isn’t widely known for his diplomatic skills and chivalry, he then issued a fulsome compliment to Sir Keir and, bizarrely, to his wife, Lady Starmer. The latter left me perplexed because I know nothing about Lady Starmer. The former left me wondering if Trump was perhaps talking about a different Sir Keir Starmer.

The one I know fails miserably on every count mentioned by Trump. Britain is slumping under the burden of the highest taxation in modern history. Her government’s fanatical pursuit of net zero is beggaring the country even further. And in the first six months of this year, 20,000 people crossed the Channel illegally, 50 per cent more than during the same period last year.

Surely Trump must be aware of all this. And still he complimented Sir Keir on “getting tough on immigration” and in general doing a sterling job. “[Sir Keir] did a great thing with the economy,” explained Trump, “because a lot of money is going to come in because of the [US trade] deal that was made.”

That I’ll have to see to believe. The deals Trump strikes with other countries manifestly lack an altruistic aspect. In this case, the deal Britain got is good only comparatively.

Our exports to the US will be hit with a 10 per cent tariff across the board, and it’s still possible that the exports of steel, aluminium and pharmaceuticals will suffer a greater levy. But it is indeed better than the agreement Trump reached with the EU, personified by Ursula von der Leyen.

If at the start of the year the average US tariffs on EU exports were five percent, under the new deal they’ll triple to 15 per cent (with steel, aluminium and pharmaceuticals again up in the air). When Trump declared trade war on the world, he threatened 30 per cent, but even 15 will be crippling for many European industries, such as the German motor trade.

Incomprehensibly, the deal isn’t reciprocal: American exports to the EU will face no tariffs at all. If Ursula gets to keep her job after signing her name to this daylight robbery, I’ll be surprised.

In addition, the EU has also undertaken to spend $600 billion in America, including the purchase of armaments for the Ukraine. And, to complete the humiliation, the EU agreed to buy $750 billion-worth of US liquefied natural gas over the next three years.

Trump is openly and justifiably contemptuous of what he calls ‘windmills’, a word I myself use occasionally. One of the truisms I mentioned earlier is that it’s impossible to run a modern industry without fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Wind, water and sun did a marvellous job keeping medieval Europe afloat, but energy needs have grown since then, and windmills can’t satisfy them.

Yet, as I’ve said a thousand times in this space if I’ve said it once, ideology triumphs over reason. Socialists – which all European leaders are – hate fossil fuels because they fired up capitalism, and they hate nuclear energy because the Soviets told them to do so when they wanted the West to be dependent on Arab oil.

Hence they are shutting down nuclear reactors, either completely, as in Germany, or partially, as in France, and they are disfiguring European skylines with those prohibitively expensive monstrosities. Domestic production of fossil fuels is being phased out, with only Norway so far standing firm in her commitment to the principal source of her wealth.

And now they are going to buy almost a trillion’s worth of American LNG, paying through the nose and thinking through the, well, you know. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

On his own terms, Trump’s foray into Europe has been a success. He bullied the EU into signing up to the kind of terms it usually takes a military victory to impose. He overshadowed all European politicians, including Starmer, whom Trump also humiliated with his uncivil didacticism. And he still had time to get a few rounds of golf in.

Yet international relations aren’t all based on tangible, material gains. There are many imponderables involved, the prime of which is trust. That’s what Trump has destroyed, for the duration of his presidency certainly, for a long time thereafter possibly.

These are fraught times, and America needs not only trade partners she can bully, but also allies she can count on.

Riding roughshod over Europe and blackmailing her with the threat of a ruinous trade war may get considerable short-term benefits.

But it’s hardly conducive to fostering respect, friendship and trust, the three commodities that are more indispensable during conflicts than a positive balance sheet. I just hope this statement won’t be put to a test, not soon at any rate.

If you want to understand today’s socialist governments, including our own, study your Marx.

For people can change their opinions, their tastes and even their convictions, but one thing they can’t change is their DNA. And Marxism is encoded into the chromosomes of all socialists, including those who oxymoronically call themselves ‘democratic’.

Once you’ve realised this, you’ll have no trouble identifying the word that grates on socialists’ ears more than any other. That word is ‘private’.

You know, as in private healthcare, private income, private pensions, private enterprise – private anything, except private parts to which socialists pay rather morbid obeisance. That exception is courtesy of Freud, that part of the unholy trinity they worship, which also includes Darwin and Marx.

The other day Boris Johnson wrote an apologetic column about his having gone private to take care of a kidney stone. He probably doesn’t think it’s apologetic. After all, he makes an argument for private medicine, and he rebukes Starmer for hating it.

But Johnson’s argument is wholly based on the need to help the NHS out by relieving the pressures rendering it less marvellous than everyone knows it is. He doesn’t for a second question the wisdom and morality of creating a rapacious, egalitarian Leviathan raised to a socialist cult by decades of rampant propaganda.

In fact, his article makes all the appropriate sacrifices to that cult: “our beloved NHS”, “We love the NHS, and we want to protect it”, “We must fund it properly and cherish it properly”.

Now, the NHS is a method of financing medicine, that’s all. It’s not, as so many Britons believe, either a deity or even free medical care.

‘Free’, to a semantic rigourist, used to mean something one didn’t have to pay for. But someone does have to pay for all those CT scans and ECGs. Such things are expensive; and the more inefficiently provided, the dearer they get.

If patients don’t pay for them directly or through insurance policies, the payment comes from the state, which can only make money the old-fashioned way: from taxes. ‘Free’ thus means that the transfer of money from patient to hospital is mediated by the state acting as a general contractor with megalomania.

We may argue the pros and cons of this method, but any such argument should properly revolve around a dispassionate analysis of costs and benefits, as compared to other methods. What’s there to “love”, “cherish” and “protect”, other than Boris’s chances of a political comeback? Such emotive words seem out of place, but not to modern glossocrats.

They love, cherish and protect the triumph of public over private or, in other words, the steadily accelerating transfer of power from the individual to the state. This is the essence of socialism and more or less its sum total, as bequeathed by Marx and his subsequent accomplices.

All the bien pensant phraseology that essence hides behind can be safely disregarded. It’s just camouflage designed to conceal the true nature of socialism.

If you can’t accept this as gospel truth, and there’s no reason you should, then accept it as a working hypothesis. I maintain that this understanding of socialism is the only one that explains the entirety of empirical evidence before our very eyes. And if you end up agreeing with that, then the hypothesis becomes a fact – or is there something I misunderstand about the scientific method?

Consider the visceral hatred socialists feel for private pensions. An article in today’s Mail bemoans that “Britain is facing a pension poverty ‘time bomb’ after Rachel Reeves’ punishing tax grab helped plunge retirement savings by 20 per cent in six months”.

The authors make all the good points about this tendency leading over time to a vast increase in the number of people dependent on the state for their livelihood and therefore ending up impoverished. The point the authors don’t make is that such is exactly the desired effect.

I never tire of saying that the more the state does for you, the more it can do to you. Hence, the more dependents the state acquires, the further it advances its core desideratum: increasing its own power over the individual.

It would be a mistake to think that Rachel in Accounts can’t do the sums as well as the authors of the article. Of course, she can – as can any owner of a calculator.

It’s just that she and the authors embark on their intellectual journeys from different starting points. And Rachel’s path leads her to seeing that destination as desirable. There is that dread word, ‘private’, stamped into the dirt again.

That’s why, when the supposedly ‘more conservative’ Labour government of Blair and Brown took over, the first thing they did was launch a five-billion raid on private pension funds. Since then, Labour and Tory governments have been competing with one another as to who can rob private pensions better. Labour still holds a narrow lead, but it’s only a matter of degree, not substance.

Or take inherited private income, something socialists describe as ‘unearned’. That was Marx’s bugbear, and so it remains for his descendants. Yet no such income is ever unearned — it can always be traced back to someone who indeed earned it.

And that successful individual paid taxes on that income, contrary to what many socialists claim. In fact, the top one per cent of UK earners provide 29 per cent of all tax revenues, and the top 10 per cent twice as much. (These proportions are much higher in the US.)

However, the state insists on taxing inheritance again, which any sensible person would see as terribly unfair. The British government imposes a 40 per cent tax on any estate above the tax-free threshold of £325,000.

So let’s say a middle-class Londoner lived and died in a house he bought in 1975 for £20,000. That sum came out of his taxed earnings, and he continued to pay property levies on the house, and also probably interest on the mortgage, his whole life.

He then bequeathed the house to his children, but after several property booms, the same dwelling now costs £1.325 million (both amounts are close to available statistics). This means the man’s heirs must pay £400,000 in inheritance tax on the house alone, not including any other assets passed on.

Do socialists realise this is unfair? They probably would if they thought in such terms. But they don’t, and the only thing fairness means to them is anything that increases their power. That’s why they’d rather the heirs went broke than gained a measure of financial independence.

The same goes for the socialists’ treatment of private enterprise, which they detest with wholehearted passion. That’s why they nationalise whatever they can and try to suffocate everything else with taxes, both overt and hidden.

The present Labour government is no exception. It took over on 5 July 2024, and in the first nine months of its tenure, a staggering 203,000 UK businesses went under. And some 16,500 millionaires fled the country, taking with them the tax revenue they generated and the jobs they created.

At the same time, the government is strangling farms with death sentences, jeopardising the country’s self-sufficiency in food production. Again, there is no rational explanation for this self-harm, but there is an irrational one: Marx’s hatred of farmers, that most individualist of breeds.

Only urban socialism, wrote Marx, could rescue “a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life”. The Bolsheviks tried to put this dictum into practice, but succeeded only in murdering millions of peasants and permanently starving the country. Our Labour Marxists haven’t done anything quite so drastic yet, but the mindset is the same.

We are living through the worst period for British enterprise, both urban and rural, in decades, but the data only go to 29 March. If the same trend continues, and there’s no reason to think it won’t, before long the government won’t have to bother nationalising the economy. There won’t be much left to nationalise.

Those kinder than me ascribe all such outrages to the unintended consequences of socialist policies, but they are wrong. The consequences are very much intended, if only intuitively. What’s bad for the people is good for the socialist state, and the good of the state means greater power in the hands of its administrators. QED.

All this proves my hypothesis, at least to my own satisfaction. Things like incompetence and stupidity don’t begin to explain socialist depredations. No one is as stupid and as incompetent. But some people are as fanatical, as self-serving, as rotten and as, well, socialist.

P.S. In the same article I mentioned, Boris Johnson writes: “Given my circumstances, anyone in the NHS would have been given exactly the same treatment, and with no undue delay.”

He should read the piece I wrote in 2012 about my experience in similar circumstances: http://www.alexanderboot.com/how-the-nhs-tried-to-kill-me/

Manny Macron has pulled off the improbable feat of recognising something that doesn’t exist, namely the Palestinian state.

Established nations do sometimes take a while to recognise new-fangled states, especially unsavoury ones. Thus, though the Soviet Union was formed in 1922, it took the US 11 years to recognise it. And the People’s Republic of China, formed in 1949, had to wait 30 years for the same honour.

In both cases, diplomatic recognition amounted to acknowledging the status quo. Exactly what status quo is Manny recognising with Palestine? This is how he announced it, on X, where else:

“Given its historic commitment to a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the state of Palestine. The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza and to bring relief to the civilian population. Peace is possible.”

Peace is indeed possible, it always is. But it takes a blithering idiot to think that recognising something that doesn’t exist, nor can be realistically hoped ever to exist, is a way of achieving that objective.

But do let’s decorticate Manny’s statement. The first sentence isn’t worded precisely, although it’s clear enough that Manny thinks “a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East” is a jolly good idea, and one to which ‘it’ is committed. But the way he expressed himself, it’s not obvious whether it’s France or “the state of Palestine” that’s thus committed.

Even Manny can’t possibly mean the latter: in a recent poll some 95 per cent of Palestinians expressed quite a different commitment, to wiping the state of Israel off the map. And 65 per cent said they had no interest in a two-state solution whatsoever.

Thus one has to hope Manny meant France, not Palestinians. It’s France, as personified by Manny, that is committed to “a just and sustainable peace” – and hopes that recognising the non-existent state is a way of achieving it.

Since neither side directly involved agrees, that hope seems forlorn. The situation appears to be quite different from what Manny fancies.

The two sides converge in not wanting to create a Palestinian state. Other than that, their interests diverge: Palestinians want to kill every Jew in Israel, for starters. And Israeli Jews would rather not be killed by Hamas.

Sorry, did I say Hamas, not Palestinians? A forgivable slip though, considering that, politically speaking, Palestinians and Hamas are synonymous. The only election ever held in the West Bank and Gaza, in 2006, delivered a Hamas landslide. Since then, no need for another election has arisen.

Hamas is a terrorist organisation, as even Manny must have heard. And the purpose of terrorism, as Lenin kindly explained, is to terrorise. In today’s context, it means that any Hamas state that, hypothetically, could be carved out of Israel’s territory would concentrate all its energies on massacring Israelis in the style of 7 October.

At the time, incidentally, more than two-thirds of Palestinians supported Hamas’s bestial brutality, although that proportion has somewhat gone down since, after Israel didactically demonstrated that actions have consequences.

Manny’s idea is somewhat lacking in novelty appeal. For on 29 November, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed its Resolution 181, recommending the creation of two independent Arab and Jewish states.

Jewish organisations happily accepted the Resolution, but Palestinian Arabs boycotted it. On 15 May, 1948, Arab states invaded Palestine to nip the nascent Jewish state in the bud. The Arabs lost that war, as they have lost every other war they’ve started since.

The situation hasn’t changed one iota. They still don’t want two states. They want one: Hamasia, “from the river to the sea”, with what used to be the State of Israel turned into a mass grave of seven million Jews, going Hitler one million better.

Not seeing that testifies to a schizophrenic divorce from reality, which psychiatric condition was evinced by a statement from Manny’s Foreign Ministry: “The best contribution that France and the UK can bring is to restart the process by bringing all stakeholders around the table, making commitments to the state of Palestine and the security of Israel.”

The UK appeared in that statement because Manny is trying to twist Starmer’s arm into going along with that schizophrenic notion. The latter finds himself squashed between two jaws of the same vice: France, with her traditional anti-Israeli bias, and Labour’s own backbenchers, anti-Semites almost to a man.

Sir Keir is holding them at bay for the time being, but, if I were a betting man, I’d wager that he won’t last long. Israel, after all, is the bulwark of Western civilisation in the Middle East, and no one can accuse Sir Keir of such a civilisational bias.

His bias is quite different, which Starmer proved with his statement the other day: “We are clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution which guarantees peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”

“Guarantees”, no less. On what basis, historical, current or logical, have these people reached the conclusion that a terrorist organisation granted a statehood would guarantee anything other than mass murder? Ask them, I haven’t a clue. One thing I’m certain it won’t guarantee is peace and security. Or is it two things? Whatever.

Deducing the specific from the general, one wonders how Manny and Keir envisage the practicalities involved in contriving a Hamas state. Have they even considered them?

At present, Israel supplies all of Palestine’s (Hamas’s) electricity and water. Something tells me that, should Hamas exercise its “inalienable right” to statehood, that supply will be cut off. How would the terrorists replace it?

And where would they work (digging tunnels for murderers to creep into Israel doesn’t qualify as work)? At present, about a third of their working-age population are unemployed, and the rest mostly do part-time work in Israel. Which domestic industries would attract their talents? None is discernible at the moment.

What currency would the new state use? Would Hamasians continue to use Israeli shekels, as they do now? And where would their capital be? Ramala? The idea mooted in Hamas circles is that the capital of their nascent state will be in Jerusalem, but I’m sure the Israelis will have something to say about that.

How will the new state handle its imports and exports? The West Bank and Gaza have no access to the sea, and all their trade goes through Israeli ports, just as all their human traffic goes through Israeli airports.

These and a myriad other factors show that no Arab state could possibly be created in that territory without Israel’s wholehearted cooperation. And no such thing is forthcoming without Hamas’s renouncing its intention to obliterate Israel, something they aren’t planning to do.

So what is it that Manny wants to recognise, and coerce Starmer into doing the same? Why is he making those asinine noises?

First, 10 per cent of the French population are Muslim, a proportion giving that alien group a considerable political weight. That can be thrown around both electorally and through direct action, aka terrorism and mass rioting. Most of those people support Hamas and hate Jews in general and Israelis in particular.

The reason Starmer hasn’t yet gone along is that Britain’s Muslim population is six per cent, not ten, although in London that proportion is 15 per cent. That’s not big enough for Starmer to jump the gun, but big enough for him to want to give a sop to our domestic Hamas fans.

The second reason is the uncontrollable knee-jerking urge to signal virtue, meaning in this context commitment to any cause aiming to destroy the very civilisation that Israel represents in the Middle East.

Both France’s president and our PM are leftists, meaning they are as virulent of ideology as they are feeble of mind. Their ideology demands a support for Third World fanatics with their inalienable right to massacre Jews (or anyone else who has the misfortune of displeasing them). Jews, on the other hand, are equated in their minds with capitalists, a link established as a scriptural truth by Marx.

I have an idea. I think Manny should next recognise whatever state inhabitants of other planets might want to establish. You may say that no such state exists, and you’ll be right. But then neither does the state Manny will recognise in September.

France doesn’t deserve that spineless nonentity, but then neither does Britain deserve Starmer.

P.S. Speaking of France, our local supermarket sells just four kinds of cognac but 11 kinds of Japanese malt whisky. And yet in the past 25 years I’ve never seen anyone drink any Japanese whisky, offer it to guests or order it in restaurants. Do you sometimes get the feeling that there’s a parallel reality out there, where people prefer Japanese malts to Scotch – and a Palestinian state exists?

What I like about Owen Matthews’s article is its title: For Ukraine’s Sake, Zelensky Must Now Step Aside. It tells you exactly what the piece is about and even what its conclusion is going to be.

What I don’t like is his feeble attempts to justify the conclusion. His article feigns objectivity while echoing, if not repeating verbatim, Kremlin propaganda.

In the good tradition of this genre, Matthews first acknowledges that:

“Volodymyr Zelensky was once Ukraine’s saviour.

“In the first hours of the Russian invasion, as Putin’s paratroopers advanced on Central Kyiv with specific orders to kill him, Zelensky refused to evacuate. 

“Instead, he rallied his people to a heroic resistance that surprised the world – and Ukrainians themselves. It was thanks to Zelensky’s relentless lobbying and inspiring showmanship that Western nations were cajoled into sending rockets, artillery and tanks where once they had offered helmets and bandages.”

His bona fides thus established, Matthews then delivers a litany of accusations against the heroic Ukrainian president, each of which could have come from a Kremlin briefing. 

“Over the last year Zelensky has used emergency wartime powers to exile, investigate and jail many leading political opponents and critics. Opposition media have been shut down, and thousands of businesses have been seized by Zelensky cronies under the pretext of alleged links to Russia.”

Matthews also helpfully informs us that “Zelensky’s term of office formally expired in May 2024, and he remains in office under wartime emergency powers despite calls for him to create a government of national unity.”

To add some local colour and historical perspective, he then adds a comment from Ukrainian opposition MP Oleksiy Goncharenko: “In May 1940 Winston Churchill invited the leader of the opposition Attlee to be his deputy and united all of parliament in one government. Zelensky has done the opposite, he is holding on to power by all means possible.”

A comparison isn’t an argument, goes the French saying (comparaison n’est pas raison). Even worse, it can backfire on its wielder.

As a foreigner, Mr Goncharenko can be forgiven for being ignorant about British history. As a British historian, Mr Matthews has no such excuse. That’s why he should have explained to his readers, many of whom aren’t better educated than Goncharenko, just how spurious that comparison was.

Churchill didn’t hold a wartime general election to create a coalition government. He invited Labour and Liberal MPs to join it, correctly judging that a desperate war of national survival was a wrong time for parliamentary squabbles.

However, entry into government was only by invitation, which was denied to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), formerly known as the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists.

Moreover, on 23 May 1940, Mosley and 740 other party members (including his wife, one of the Mitford girls) were interned under Defence Regulation 18B. The BUF was then declared unlawful on 10 July 1940. Nevertheless, no one called Churchill a dictator, as many call Zelensky. Sensible people realised some civilised laws had to be suspended for the duration of uncivilised hostilities.

Also interned, in concentration camps on the Isle of Man, were some 30,000 German and Austrian nationals, including Jewish refugees from Nazism. Nazis and Jews often had to share the same quarters, the kind of proximity neither group welcomed.

Few people, those who aren’t cursed with a native knowledge of the Soviet and post-Soviet space, realise the extent to which the Ukraine was – and is – infiltrated by Russian spies, sympathisers and propagandists. Had Churchill faced a problem of similar magnitude, he would have had to imprison three million, not 30,000.

Yet Zelensky has so far sent down only about 2,000 traitors, which is a proper term for anyone calling, and working towards, his country’s defeat in a war. And yes, no elections have been held in the Ukraine for six years, since 2019.

Britain, however, went the Ukraine four better, with no general elections held for ten years, between 1935 and 1945. This, even though the BUF was the only pro-Nazi party Churchill had to contend with.

The Ukraine, by contrast, has 19 (nineteen!) pro-Russian parties. Should they all be invited into a government of national unity, Mr Goncharenko? How long would the Ukraine last as a sovereign state if they were? The poor chap doesn’t seem to know any better, but I’m sure Mr Matthews does. And he still lets Goncharenko get away with that asinine statement, without bothering to refute it.

“Opposition media have been shut down,” writes Matthews with what seems like deadpan objectivity, but what is in fact meant as an implied rebuke. This is another accusation levelled at Zelensky, usually by those who don’t even bother feigning deadpan objectivity.

Long before the Russians coined the term ‘hybrid warfare’, it had been understood that enemy propaganda is as dangerous a weapon as tanks, cannon and planes. Perhaps even more so, because propaganda can undermine public morale and the will to resist.

That’s why mouthpieces of enemy propaganda have always been shut up and shut down at wartime, and Churchill’s Britain, that paragon of wartime inclusivity so dear to Mr Goncharenko, was no exception.

How many BUF publications were there before the war? The answer is three: Action, Fascist Week and The Blackshirt. How many BUF publications were there during the war? The answer is none. They were shut down, which all sensible people welcomed.

Nazi wireless broadcasts, starring such traitors as John Amery and especially William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), did get through the primitive jammers available at the time. But both gentlemen were hanged for their trouble immediately after the war, in recognition of the potentially deadly damage their actions had caused.

Yet Churchill’s government only had to deal with a few newspapers and a wireless channel or two. By contrast, Putin has a vast array of propaganda weapons in his arsenal, not just printed matter, but also TV and, above all, electronic media.

A stream of fascist propaganda ordure has been pumped the Ukraine’s way, with Putin’s bots and human agents working overtime, and Putin’s intelligence officers recruiting and buying wholesale useful idiots in Western media as well. Zelensky himself would be a traitor if he didn’t do all he could to cut off that attack on the morale of his heroic country.

To his credit, he is doing all he can, closing down pro-Putin papers and TV channels, blocking access to pro-Putin websites, prosecuting enemy mouthpieces, imposing personal sanctions on Putin’s propagandists.

No democratic country would do such awful things in peacetime. But any country, no matter how democratic, would do exactly the same if her very survival were threatened by a brutal invasion.

Then there’s the matter of rampant corruption in the Ukraine in general, and the higher echelons of her society in particular. This is a problem in every country warped by decades of communist rule, most glaringly in Russia herself.

Russia is run by a coalition government of sorts too, that of the secret police and organised crime. That awful alliance is beginning to unravel, with the KGB types clamping down on the so-called oligarchs to finance Putin’s criminal war. But under Putin’s stooge, Yanukovych, a carbon copy of the same system was forced on the Ukraine.

Subsequent Ukrainian governments, including Zelensky’s, have been trying to solve that problem, with variable success. The war slowed that effort down: swarms of missiles falling on Ukrainian cities dictate a different set of priorities.

Yet using that situation as a reason for ousting Zelensky seems like a good idea to Matthews, who writes: “Several senior cabinet members have been sacked – but not prosecuted – for massive corruption. And this week, Zelensky’s party ordered the takeover of two key anti-corruption agencies who were investigating hundreds of government officials, parliamentarians and presidential administration insiders.”

I don’t know enough about this development, and neither does Matthews. But logically speaking, Zelensky might have decided, justifiably, that these are the kind of accounts that ought to be settled after the war.

His handling of those agencies might have been a little heavy-handed but, according to Matthews, “It was also a gift not only to Russian propagandists but also to everyone in the West who opposes further military aid for continued resistance.”

He then quotes that crazy MAGA congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn’t need any such gifts: “Zelensky … is a dictator and refuses to make a peace deal and end the war… Throw him out of office!”

This is the sort of thing one expects to hear from patients of a psychiatric clinic. Surely any sane person ought to know by now that Zelensky isn’t a dictator and that he has made several peace overtures to Putin who rejected them out of hand.

Even Matthews know this: “So far, Vladimir Putin shows no sign of being serious about peace. Putin bears a personal hatred for Zelensky, the profound anger of a bully towards someone who has stood up to him.”

But then Matthews uses this truthful statement to justify the conclusion in his title: “That’s well and good in wartime – but not a relationship likely to yield peace. A new Ukrainian president would mark a reset moment – especially if he or she was ready to protect the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, a key demand of the Kremlin’s and, ironically enough, also of the EU.” 

Right, I get it. So Zelensky must quit because Putin hates him. And Churchill should have quit because Hitler hated him – whoever taught Matthews logic ought to be drummed out of the profession.

As for protecting the rights of Russian speakers in the Ukraine, this mendacious reason is always cited by the Kremlin as a casus belli. This is a typical KGB lie, as I know from personal experience. Every day I watch Russian-language videos by Ukrainian commentators, whose rights to broadcast in that language are in no way curtailed.

Yes, Ukrainian is the official language of Zelensky’s sovereign country, and, a native Russian speaker himself, he had to learn the language to enter politics. That’s how it should be in any country, and it’s any country’s business to decide in which language her official affairs are to be transacted.

Owen Matthews ought to be ashamed of himself for repeating Putin’s lies – and using them as the foundation for a rickety structure of pseudo-scholarship. His efforts to sound impartial fail, and a Kremlin apologist emerges from beneath the mask of a sensible commentator.

As he did every morning, Will Shakespeare started his day by checking his e-mails. For once, there was a bit of good news: The Globe’s commissioning producer had finally acknowledged receipt of his play and offered his comments:

Dear Will (if I may),

Sorry it has taken us so long to reply, but you know how things are: one bloody thing on top of another, and before you know it you’re scampering about like a blue-arsed fly. But our artistic director, Dick Burbage, and I have now gone over your Hamlet with a fine-toothed comb, if you follow my meaning.

So here’s the good news: Burb and I agree that, at base, the play has oodles of potential. There’s a discernible story, the characters are strong, and the writing has bags of style, if you follow my meaning.

But Burb thinks and I agree that quite a bit of work is still needed before we can accept it for production. Hope you don’t mind a few friendly suggestions of a little tweak here and there.

The Oedipal relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude was clear enough to Burb and me, but I’m not sure the punters will get it. Hamlet hates his uncle for topping his Dad and marrying his Mum, which, at base, is fair enough. But why doesn’t he hate his Mum too?

I mean, it takes two to marry, doesn’t it? And she must have known her brother-in-law had topped her hubby, but Hamlet still doesn’t seem to mind. I get it: Claudius did what Hamlet himself always wanted to do, top his Dad and shag his Mum. Now Hamlet is jealous of his uncle and hates him for topping his Dad, but he still wants to shag his Mum, if you follow my meaning.

As that old Jewish woman once said, “Oedipus, schmedipus, as long as he loves his Mum”. But punters may not get your subtle message, if you follow my meaning. Perhaps you should make it more evident, like Hamlet French-kissing his Mum or maybe grabbing her tit when she isn’t looking, I don’t know, you’re the writer. But do it that way, and the punters will lap it up.

Then there’s Hamlet and Ophelia. Punters will need to know whether he shagged her or not, not just guess he did. No one likes to see gratuitous sex on stage – more than today’s punters, that is. You don’t have to go as far as what we call full-pen in the biz, but some skin is a must these days, if you follow my meaning.

At base, you’re already halfway there with that scene when Hamlet says to Ophelia, “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” And she’s like, “No, my lord!” And he’s like, “I mean my head upon your lap.” And she’s like, “Ay, my lord.”

At base, the scene is already rocking. Just take their kit off, turn his head a certain way, if you follow my meaning, and Bob Dudley’s your uncle. Punters will lap it up, no pun intended, no dry seat in the audience.

Hamlet is spot on when he says: “I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.” So Hamlet is more virile than Laertes, who must have also shagged his sis. That’s good, but how did Hamlet love Ophelia? In what positions? Don’t leave that to the punters’ imagination; they’ve got none.

Now, you know and I know and Burb knows that Hamlet is AC/DC. Again though, the punters may not get it. You need to grab them by the scruff of the neck and shove their snouts right in it, if you follow my meaning.

At base, you already set the scene up when Hamlet plays with that skull and reminisces about Yorick. Obviously, Yorick was a paedo who used to inappropriately touch Hamlet, and then one thing led to another.

As you make the prince put it, “He hath borne me on his back a thousand times,” nudge-nudge, and “Here hung those lips that I have kissed,” wink-wink. But you could also massage the line – there’s the rub, as you yourself say? Make sure the punters know what you mean, say: “Alas poor Yorick, I blew him, Horatio.” And you can rhyme ‘Horatio’ with the act itself, if you follow my meaning. But I don’t need to tell you, you’re the writer.

Then there’s a problem with Polonius, who is clearly a piss-take on the PM. We lawyered your MS, and the legal eagles agree: run it this way, and we’ll get a lawsuit from hell. You know how the PM is – he’ll sue his own grandmother for overboiling his egg. To be on the safe side, make Polonius a nice, cuddly fellow, and no spying on anybody. There’s no need for Hamlet to top him either.

Burb and I both like it when Polonius says, “brevity is the soul of wit”, and the PM will like it too. But we have a problem with that “neither a borrower nor a lender be”. Do you know how many banks are among our sponsors? Lending and borrowing is how they make their dosh, some of which they give us.

The line is easy to fix, at base. Replace “neither… nor” with “both… and”, and Bob Devereaux’s your uncle. If Polonius wears a T-shirt with the NatWest logo, and those of all our other sponsors, so much the better.

There’s also another problem that Burb spotted: the play isn’t diverse enough. Of course, we could always fix that by having a black actor (or actress) play Hamlet, but there would always be some prat out there, screaming ‘cultural appropriation’. We might do that anyway, but the text needs to change too.

Look at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for example. I know and Burb knows they are supposed to be Danish or something, but the names sound Jewish, if you follow my meaning. We don’t want those Palestianists picketing the opening night, do we? Why don’t you just call those chaps Ahmed and Ibrahim or something? You decide, you’re the writer.

These are the major issues. The rest is just the odd line here or there, but we can always fix that. For example, you can’t say “Frailty, thy name is woman”. We don’t want the MeToo types to picket the opening night, do we? Why not say, “Equal opportunity, thy name is woman”? I know you can make it scan, you’re the writer.

And what’s that about “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”? At base, Bible-thumpers will love this line, but they can’t afford our ticket prices, if you follow my meaning.

Those who can buy them won’t, if you carry on about someone else shaping their ends. So no divinity please, and no sin either (“Be all my sins remembered”). There’s no such thing, Burb and I agree. “Be all my deeds remembered” is so much safer.

At base, a rattling good yarn, Will. Keep up the good work, stroke the text for a while longer, and it may climax into a big hit. Get back to me when you’re ready, and I promise we’ll get back to you in a jiffy.

Will finished reading the e-mail and smiled. His work was cut out for him, but at least there was a chance his play would see the light of day. At base.

First, let’s follow the advice of Greek rhetoricians and agree on the terms. This advice is especially valuable these days, when many people think words mean whatever they want them to mean.

For example, what is a Christian? If you read Tolstoy’s musings on such subjects (or, to save time, my book God and Man According to Tolstoy), he defines a Christian as someone who follows the moral commandments of the Sermon on the Mount.

In other words, a Christian to him is basically just a good person, as the notion is understood in Christian morality. But that understanding is false and logically unsound.

A Buddhist, or Muslim or an atheist can be a wonderful chap, a real prince among men. But he isn’t a Christian, is he? ‘Christian’ isn’t just any old word. It’s a term and, as such, narrowly denotes something specific, leaving no room for multiple meanings.

A Christian is someone who believes in the divinity of Christ as laid down in the Creeds. If he doesn’t, he isn’t a Christian, for all the sterling traits he may possess.

Or take ‘fascist’, which these days is used loosely as a way of demonising one’s political opponents.

However, the dictionary defines fascism as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralised autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterised by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

Hence, if a critic of Margaret Thatcher describes her as an awful woman, that’s a perfectly legitimate opinion, wrong though it is. But if he describes her as a fascist, which many do, he isn’t just someone who is mistaken. He is a rank idiot incapable of using words precisely.

However, let’s not be pedantic about it. Under some circumstances, both ‘Christian’ and ‘fascist’ may be used metaphorically, not literally. Thus, a boy may describe his martinet schoolmaster as a fascist, or himself as a Christian if he helps old people across the street.

Both terms leave room for such latitude, though not as much room as many claim for them nowadays. This isn’t the case with the term ‘Marxism’.

It allows no freedom of interpretation whatsoever. It can only ever be used in its dictionary definition: “the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed by their followers to form the basis of communism.”

Just as the Creeds encompass the whole meaning of Christianity, so does The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels contain the entirety of Marxism. Neither document allows for cherry-picking. A Christian believes every word of the Creeds; a Marxist believes every word of the Manifesto. Everything else, to borrow a phrase from Hillel the Elder, is just commentary.

Since for 70-odd years the most formidable propaganda machine in history was dedicated to spreading Marxism, many feel they know what it’s all about without having to resort to the primary source.

That’s a pity. If more people had actually read The Communist Manifesto, one hopes there would be fewer innocents who echo Marxist propaganda by saying that Marx’s ideals were wonderful but regrettably unachievable; or else that Marx’s theory was perverted by Soviet practice.

In fact, Marx’s ideals are unachievable precisely because they are so monstrous that even the Bolsheviks never quite managed to realise them fully, and not for any lack of trying.

For example, the Manifesto (along with other writings by Marx and Engels), prescribes the nationalisation of all private property without exception. Even Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s fell short of that ideal.

In fact, a good chunk of the Soviet economy was then in private hands (small agricultural holdings, repair shops, construction and other co-ops, some medical care, etc.). And people were allowed to own cottages, clothes on their backs, radio sets, dovecotes, tools – really, compared with Marx, Stalin begins to look like a humanitarian getting in touch with his feminine side.

Marx also insisted that family should be done away with, with women becoming communal property. Again, for all their efforts, Lenin and Stalin never quite managed to achieve this ideal either, much to the regret of those of us who could see an amorous pay-off in such an arrangement.

Then, according to the Manifesto, children were to be taken away from their parents, pooled together and raised by the state as its wards. That too remained a pipedream for the Bolsheviks.

They tried to make it come true by forcing both parents to work, and leaving no place for their children to go but the state-owned crèches, kindergartens and young pioneers’ camps. But that was as far as it went: kindergartens and camps weren’t compulsory, and those fortunate women who could get by without full-time employment were still free to read Pushkin to their children.

Modern slave labour, such an endearing feature of both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, also derives from Marx – and again Lenin, Stalin and Hitler displayed a great deal of weak-kneed liberalism in bringing his ideas to fruition.

Marx, after all, wrote about total militarisation of labour achieved by organising it in “labour armies”, presumably led by Marx as Generalissimo and Engels as Chief of the General Staff. Stalin came closer to this than Hitler, but again fell short.

No more than 10 per cent of Soviet citizens were ever in enforced labour at the same time. The rest could still more or less choose their professions, and for some it was even possible to choose their place of employment.

The only aspect of Bolshevism and Nazism that came close to fulfilling the Marxist dream was what Engels called “specially guarded places” to contain aristocrats, intelligentsia, clergy and other vermin. Such places have since acquired a different name, but in essence they are exactly what Marx and Engels envisaged.

Here Lenin and Stalin did come close to fulfilling Marx’s prescription, but they were again found wanting in spreading concentration camps to a mere half of the world. So where the Bolsheviks and the Nazis perverted Marxism, they generally did so in the direction of softening it.

However, even if neither the Bolsheviks nor the Nazis were faithful to the chapter and verse of the Manifesto, they accurately followed its tonal quality. Every line of that repulsive booklet sputters venomous resentment and hatred, and the two monstrous creeds honoured that fine tradition in spades.

This brings me back to the uncompromising title above. What kind of person would be attracted to Marxism?

If he has no idea of what Marxism is really about, hasn’t read a single line by either Marx or Engels and simply parrots the ambient noises, he is a fool. If he is an intelligent, literate person who has read the Manifesto and even, God forbid, Das Kapital, and still is a Marxist, he is a knave. I can’t think of another possibility.

Marxism is unique among political doctrines in that it can pass neither theoretical nor empirical tests. Everywhere it has been tried, it has caused nothing but misery, in direct proportion to how literally it has been applied. And yet Marxism is arguably the most widespread political doctrine of modernity.

It may be consumed full-strength or diluted, but there isn’t a European government today that doesn’t practise some aspects of Marxism.

Even worse, Marxist terminology has penetrated all languages, and many people who’d detest the Marxist soubriquet being applied to them still happily bandy about terms like ‘capitalism’, ‘class struggle’, ‘base and superstructure’, ‘hegemony’, ‘proletariat’, ‘lumpenproletariat’, ‘surplus value’ and so forth.

Whoever controls the language controls the mind, and Marxism has scored a considerable success in this glossocratic undertaking. The question is why.

Marxism clearly answers post-Enlightenment modernity’s need to find a justification for its visceral (and formative) hatred of Christendom, with its every cultural, political, social and economic tradition. One might think that this battle was won long ago, but iconoclasm always perseveres even after all the icons have been smashed.

If knowledge is the post-rationalisation of something already felt intuitively, then modernity learned from Marx much of what it needed to know. So a warm feeling of gratitude will never leave modern hearts, no matter how many academics decide that their careers can now be advanced by abandoning Marxism, or how many Marxist governments now use ‘ex’ as their first name.

Hence rumours of the demise of Marxism are exaggerated. True, for the time being the world’s first Marxist state has erased the bearded faces from its banners. But Marxism has become so widespread not because its home was in Russia but because it’s in the modern breast. So it’ll persevere for as long as modernity does.

The supply of fools and knaves will never abate – this is one well that’ll never run dry. That’s why from time to time, crypto-Marxists or the unvarnished kind will gain power in a Western country, such as today’s Britain.

That wouldn’t happen if more people learned how to recognise the Marxist wolf hiding underneath the sheep’s clothing of ‘income redistribution’, ‘social justice’, ‘equality of opportunity’, ‘sharing and caring’, ‘fairness’ and so forth.

Then perhaps they’d realise how true the title above is and stop voting in the likes of Keir Starmer or Emmanuel Macron. But I’m not holding my breath: the knaves in academe and the mass media are adept at churning out fools.

On that day this year, China will be celebrating the 80^th anniversary of its Victory Day, which has to be the most risible such event in recent memory. After all, communist China had no part in that victory, for the simple reason that it didn’t even exist.

The Nationalist China that was among the victors in the Second World War is now ensconced on Taiwan. Mainland China is heir to the communist guerrillas who waged war not against Japan, but against the China that was part of the victorious coalition against Japan.

The communists won their civil war in 1949. And in 1971, China’s partners in the wartime coalition betrayed her.

Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy scored the first success in its sustained effort to sell the West’s ally down the Yangtze River. Maoist Albania proposed, and democratic America supported, UN Resolution 2758, moving “to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organisations related to it”.

China’s rightful seat went to the illegitimate monster of Mao’s PRC, but it wouldn’t stay illegitimate for long. On 1 January 1979, the US formally established diplomatic relations with the PRC and recognised it as the sole legitimate government of China.

On 3 September this year, the communists are planning an obscene spectacle to celebrate an event in which they played no part. A massive military parade will be held in Peking’s Tiananmen Square, the site of the 1989 massacre of protesters.

That will be followed by a gala that foreign leaders will attend. And there’s the rub: both Putin and Trump are among the invited guests. Will they turn up?

As applied to Putin, this is a superfluous question: Russia is China’s vassal, dependent on Xi’s munificence for its survival. Putin can no more turn down Xi’s invitation than a lowly employee can refuse to step into his boss’s office as requested.

But will Trump accept the invitation? This is an interesting question and one not without certain piquancy.

A week ago, on 14 July, Trump issued a much-trumpeted 50-day ultimatum to Putin. If no ceasefire is signed before the ultimatum’s expiry, Trump will… do what exactly?

Oh well, he’ll step up armament supplies to the Ukraine and hit Russia with 100 per cent tariffs. While at it, he’ll levy similar secondary tariffs on any country that continues to keep Russia afloat by buying her oil and flouting international sanctions.

Now, Russia’s oil sales last year amounted to $192 billion, most of it, minus small change, to China and India. How likely do you think will Trump be to hit those two countries with exorbitant tariffs?

Remember his earlier threat to impose punitive 145 per cent tariffs on China? Trump had to retreat sharpish, his tail between his legs, after China announced prompt retaliation, and US domestic manufacturers screamed bloody murder because they heavily depend on Chinese imports.

Exactly the same things will happen in September if Trump acts on that threat, which is why he won’t. China knows it, which is why Xi dismisses Trump’s ultimatum for the empty bluff it is.

So does India. Back in February, Trump announced that: “Starting this year, we’ll be increasing military sales to India by many billions of dollars. We’re also paving the way to ultimately provide India with the F-35 stealth fighters.”

Trump is notoriously imprecise with his numerals, but “many billions of dollars” has to be a large amount any way you cut it. So do you think Trump is going to jeopardise this ‘deal’ by punishing India for naughtily buying Putin’s oil? He isn’t, says any sensible assessment of Trump’s character. The Indians are as likely as the Chinese to call his bluff.

As an aside, where are those F-35s going to come from? Just a few days ago, Trump complained that America’s exorbitant supplies to the Ukraine had emptied her own arsenal of essential means of self-defence. Yet now Trump seems to have a loose fleet of F-35s to sell to India at $100 million a pop.

His threat to step up armament supplies to the Ukraine is no more credible. Speaking to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte the other day, Trump said that 17 PATRIOT systems would arrive in the Ukraine “within days”, provided the EU paid for them.

How many days? Five? Ten? A thousand? And what does 17 PATRIOT systems mean? Each PATRIOT battery costs about a billion dollars. Multiply that by 17, and one wonders if that’s what Trump meant. Or did he mean 17 PATRIOT interceptor missiles, at about a million dollars each?

When that magic 17 number was waved in the air, reporters besieged the Pentagon, asking its officials for elucidation. The latter couldn’t oblige though: they themselves didn’t know. It appeared that Trump had mentioned those 17 PATRIOTs on the spur of the moment. It just sounded good.

Assuming that the US doesn’t have 17 spare PATRIOT batteries gathering warehouse dust, the systems will have to be manufactured. That will take Ratheon months, more likely years, making the 1,000-day delivery mentioned above quite plausible.

Actually, Trump’s plan is to use third parties. “They’re coming in from Germany and then replaced by Germany,” he explained. Alas, he had forgotten to inform the German Defence Ministry of that development, whose spokesman said that he “cannot confirm that they [the deliveries] are currently underway.”

And earlier in the week Germany’s Defence Minister Pistorius explained that Germany didn’t have enough to share with the Ukraine unless the US provided more.

“We only have six left in Germany,” he said. “That’s really too few, especially considering the NATO capability goals we have to meet. We definitely can’t give any more.”

At their joint press conference, Chancellor Merz and our own dear Sir Keir confirmed that those deliveries aren’t imminent: “At this very hour, the ministries of defence are discussing the details of how we can ensure the delivery of PATRIOT systems to Ukraine in a short timeframe. This may take weeks. The talks are very specific, the American side is ready to move forward, but we do not yet have a final result.”

Allow me to translate from the political into English. The Ukraine isn’t getting those PATRIOTs before the expiry of Trump’s ‘ultimatum’. And here’s an interesting detail: the ultimatum expires on 2 September, the day before China’s big celebration.

Since we realise that Trump isn’t going to spoil the festivities, what will his tripartite talks be about when, or if, he sits down with Putin and Xi? What kind of ‘deal’ will he try to thrash out?

China is Russia’s ally in the ongoing war, buying Putin’s oil, building drone factories in Siberia, using North Korea as its proxy to send troops to Russia, along with more artillery shells than NATO had given the Ukraine, supplying high-tech components Russia is no more capable of producing herself than the Soviet Union was.

(We used to joke that the hammer and sickle symbolised the level of domestic technology Russia could manufacture without foreign imports).

China’s foreign minister said the other day that his country doesn’t want Russia to lose this war. What he didn’t say was that neither does she want Russia to win it. China has a vested interest in the war continuing for ever, since that way America’s attention is diverted from the Far East. Russia will take that outcome too if she can’t annihilate the Ukraine’s statehood altogether.

What Trump wants, no one knows, including, one suspects, himself. What he doesn’t want is clear enough though: spending money to save Ukrainian lives. There his interests converge with those of some other NATO members, notably France, Italy and Czechia, who have already stated they aren’t going to buy US weapons for the Ukraine.

The fate of the Ukraine is a matter of indifference for Trump – he is only interested in countries he regards as major geopolitical players, meaning Russia and China. His ultimatum is merely a carte blanche for Russia to go on murdering Ukrainians without Trump being bothered about such trivialities for 50 days. Lately he has been talking tough about Putin, but no serious observer can possibly take Trump’s words at face value.

Boris Johnson doesn’t qualify as such, which is why he wrote:

“Over the past few weeks, my optimism has deepened because something has unquestionably changed. There has been a real hardening in his language about Putin, a real sympathy for the plight of the Ukrainians.

“After a bizarre glitch in the Pentagon, when some MAGA official seems unilaterally to have paused the flow of some weapons, the kit is flowing again. The Ukrainians are getting more of the PATRIOT missile defence systems they so badly need, as well as other crucial technology, such as ATACMs.”

This is bilge. The flow of weapons wasn’t paused because some MAGA official took the initiative. No such step would have been possible without a direct order from the White House. And if the Ukrainians are indeed getting those PATRIOTs, it would be kind of Boris to tell us when. No one else seems to know, including Trump.

I’m afraid 3 September, 2025, is the day when the Ukraine will be sold down the Dnieper, just as Trump’s predecessors sold Nationalist China down the Yangtze. And for once I’d be happy to be proved wrong.

The other day I wrote about the ordeal of MasterChef presenter John Torode, sacked by the BBC for having used a racially derogatory term six years ago.

This saga is continuing, and let me tell you: there’s nothing sagacious about it. The worst culprit there isn’t Mr Torode, but whoever shopped him to the management ex post facto.

When I read about it, I thought of Ivan the Terrible whose secret police (oprichnina) encouraged voluntary grasses to report every injudicious word they might overhear. However, and there I think Ivan was on to something, the snitch was the first one to be tortured within an inch of his life, to make sure he hadn’t borne false witness.

As for Mr Torode’s transgression, the social media sources I consulted the other day agreed that the criminal word he used was ‘wog’. I took those sources at their word and said the presenter was lucky he hadn’t used the N-word, in which case he might have been drawn and quartered, rather than merely sacked.

Now it turns out he did use the N-word, which, according to the BBC’s Richard Osman, is “the worst racial slur there is”. ‘The worst’ is a superlative, an absolute in other words, but I think there should be room for some relativism here.

I can, without straining my memory too much, recall at least a dozen pejorative terms for blacks, which is an easy task for someone who has lived in Texas for 10 years. I’m even prepared to bow to Mr Osman’s expertise and agree that the N-word is the worst of them all.

Yet it probably wouldn’t be considered “the worst racial slur there is” by a Jew called ‘kike’ by a Labour MP, a Mexican called ‘wetback’ by a redneck, a Spaniard called ‘dago’ by a Briton overcharged at an Ibiza boozer, or an Italian called ‘wop’ by a jostled tourist in Rome.

What supposedly makes the N-word worse than any racial slurs aimed at any other ethnicities is the consensus within the glossocratic elite. They see it not as merely an insult of a single person, but as an assault on the glossocratic ethos they are enforcing.

Anyone saying that word in any context isn’t just someone who uses a bad word, but an enemy of glossocracy. Off with his head.

When Hermann Göring was told that one of his deputies was a crypto-Jew, he replied: “At my headquarters I decide who is a Jew and who isn’t.” In the same spirit, our glossocrats decide which words should be criminalised, and which obscenities admitted to acceptable use.

According to them, the N-word (or its equivalents) isn’t just “the worst racial slur there is”, but the worst word, full stop.

For example, back in 2012, England footballer John Terry was banned for calling an opponent “a f***ing black c***”. The two outside words of the triad were perfectly acceptable, if still sometimes regarded as rather uncouth. It was the stylistically neutral middle word denoting a colour that proved Terry’s undoing.

We are beginning to edge back towards Mr Torode and the unfair treatment he has suffered. You’ll notice that Terry was censored for using a word I described as “stylistically neutral”. However, it’s not stylistically neutral in all contexts.

When modifying, say, the word ‘tie’, ‘black’ is indeed as stylistically neutral as any term can be. But the way Terry used it, ‘black’ was, and was meant to be, offensive, which was emphasised by the words bookending it.

The context matters, and Ludwig Wittgenstein built a whole philosophical system on this simple proposition. “In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use,” he wrote and, in most cases, one has to agree.

However, while applying contextual interpretation to Terry’s chromatic adjective, our irate glossocrats want to crucify Torode regardless of any context.

Yet, reading new reports, one finds out that Mr Torode allegedly “used the N-word twice” while singing along to Kanye West’s hit Gold Digger at an after-work drinks party.

Suddenly I changed my mind: the punishment meted out to the presenter was just. Listening to Kanye West should be an ipso facto sacking offence.

However, neither the BBC nor any other citadel of modern culture would hold such an innocent pastime against anyone. After all, more people like rap than real music, and that’s all that matters. Vox populi and all that. We are all democrats, aren’t we?

Still, since Mr Torode uttered that offensive word twice while singing along to Gold Digger, any airtight indictment should include evidence of what it was he sang along to.

The refrain of that vocal masterpiece goes like this: “Now, I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger/ But she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas/ Now, I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger/ But she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas.”

Twice, did you say? Well, here it is, the N-word uttered twice in the same refrain. I’d suggest this is exculpatory evidence, and if I had to defend Mr Torode in court, this is what I’d say:

We all agree, m’lud, ladies and gentlemen, that Mr West’s oeuvre is universally popular and widely acclaimed as a work of genius. This status confers on Mr West’s songs a stamp of critical approval and therefore wide acceptance. Singing along to one of them is therefore paying homage to both his artistry and public taste. No one should be punished for doing so, even if the same words would be proscribed if used in a different context.

I’d then quote Wittgenstein and make a sweeping arm gesture to the jury. Open and shut case, ladies and gentlemen.

Except that Torode wasn’t tried in a court of law. He was tried in the court of public opinion, which these days means by the laws of mass woke hysteria nefariously whipped up by the glossocrats the better to impose their tyranny.

They are prepared to crucify (figuratively, for the time being) anyone breaking their unwritten, and until recently non-existent, law. That the unfortunate word was uttered six years ago makes no difference. In Britain, the statute of limitations applies only to minor crimes. Which this one isn’t.

P.S. Speaking of language, answering the accusation that he had once sent to Jeffrey Epstein a scabrous letter illustrated with a lewd image, Donald Trump wrote: “I’ve never wrote that picture.” I wonder if he has ever went to school to learn how to draw in English.

Our governments in general, and Labour in particular, can be expected to break any promise of a half-decent policy. But we can count on them to honour any manifesto pledge guaranteed to push Britain closer to the knacker’s yard.

Hence one could be certain that they’d give the vote to 16-year-olds, just as they promised during their campaign. The policy happily unites the four key aspects of Starmer’s government: power lust, idiocy, subversiveness and cynicism.

Everyone and his brother have written about this awful policy, bemoaning the extra 1.5 million votes Labour may thereby gain, highlighting the immaturity of 16-year-olds that makes them unfit to play an active role in state affairs, castigating the constitutional vandalism involved.

So much for the arguments con, each one irrefutable and self-evident. Just think of yourself at that age and recall whether you were qualified to determine how the country should be governed, and by whom. I certainly wasn’t, and I bet you were no different.

I’ll neither repeat those arguments nor try to add any of my own. That would be like arguing that socialism is immoral and destructive. Every intelligent person knows it already; every stupid person is deaf to rational arguments.

Instead, I’ll concentrate on the arguments in favour of this outrage, those put forth by Labour mandarins and other fruits. Thus Sir Keir Starmer, living proof of democracy’s pitfalls:

“I think it’s really important that 16 and 17-year-olds have the vote, because they are old enough to go out to work, they are old enough to pay taxes, so pay in.

“And I think if you pay in, you should have the opportunity to say what you want your money spent on, which way the Government should go.”

Beautiful. This argument, in these very words, could be heard in Westminster back in the Middle Ages and ever since.

If we put money into the public kitty, we must have a say in how that money is spent. Because of this rationale, guilds and local councils enjoyed considerable power even under the most absolute of English monarchs, such as Henry VIII.

The link between taxation and representation was further strengthened during the American Revolution, with its insistence on none of the former without the latter. Alas, since taxes tripled immediately after the revolution, the newly independent Americans discovered they disliked them even with representation, but that’s another story.

My point is that the reverse slogan, no representation without taxation, is both logical and sound. The link between the two can’t be one-sided – so say basic fairness and political nous.

Sir Keir isn’t bright enough to understand the depth of the hole he dug for himself. By linking taxation and representation, he invited a counterargument, one I made at length in my book The Crisis Behind Our Crisis.

The gist of it was that only taxpayers should have the vote. Consideration also ought to be given to attaching a quotient to each ballot, in proportion to the amount of tax paid. This would restrict equally those who are good at exploiting either welfare provisions or tax havens.

Also, official figures show that 52.6 per cent of UK households receive more in cash benefits than they pay in tax. Developing Sir Keir’s argument to its logical conclusion, all such net recipients should be disfranchised. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?

Taking the argument to the next level, also disfranchised should be anyone deriving more than half of his income from the state, be it in the form of salary, fees or handouts. Such people have a vested interest in the perpetuation of the current government, which can only fortuitously coincide with public interest.

All these proposals flow out of Starmer’s statement as inexorably as wine out of a tipped bottle. (Since I’m in France now, this simile came naturally.)

In essence, rather than rejecting his idea, I’m merely developing it, putting it in a sound multilateral framework. Thus developed, it becomes sensible, making even enfranchised children more palatable if no less insufferable.

But Starmer doesn’t want to develop his subversive idea. As far as he is concerned, it’s fine as it is because it serves the purpose of “modernising our democracy”. Sir Keir wouldn’t know true modernisation if it crept in behind him and bit him on, well, you know.

What he means by the term is demolishing or debauching every tradition that stands in the way of Marxist mayhem. Actually, modernising things can make them not only better but also – more often than not – worse. By way of illustration, I suggest the juxtaposition of, say, Lincoln Cathedral and, say, the Gherkin or the Shard. Not much of improvement is in evidence, is it?

Starmer’s deputy, Angie Rayner, offered her one penny’s worth, which came out as a curate’s egg, good in parts. The good part is her diagnosis of the problem: “For too long public trust in our democracy has been damaged and faith in our institutions has been allowed to decline.”

Hear, hear. Yet I’d also add that this unfortunate state of affairs has been brought about by ideologised nincompoops like Keir and Angie (or their Tory counterparts).

Hence the solution to the problem would be letting them enjoy well-deserved retirement and making sure that people governing us are fit to govern. A generation of sound, prudent, publicly minded governance would repair our democracy and restore faith in our institutions, thereby answering the call of Angie’s heart.

Specifically, not going amiss would be a voting reform limiting franchise only to those who can be expected to cast their vote responsibly and knowledgeably. This would involve some approximation of my sensible proposals, defanging even the bestial nonsense Labour are pushing.

Angie will have none of that: “We are taking action to break down barriers to participation that will ensure more people have the opportunity to engage in UK democracy, supporting our plan for change, and delivering on our manifesto commitment to give 16-year-olds the right to vote.”

Since this proposal is left at that, it doesn’t really link representation with taxation. It’s nothing but a cynical power-grab, designed to perpetuate the rule by exactly the kind of people who are busily turning our democracy into a travesty, our institutions into a laughingstock and Britain into a pauper.

However, I’d like to end on a positive note. In a recent poll, half of the youngsters disagreed with this policy, and only 18 per cent said they’d definitely vote if the elections were held tomorrow.

Labour may well have miscalculated when counting on an electoral boost from their subversive policy. That’s always the saving grace: if this lot were as smart as they are vicious, zealously ideological and self-serving, we’d be in bigger trouble than we are already.

Fortunately, they aren’t. For confirmation, just look at Starmer’s and Rayner’s faces – you won’t find a flicker of intelligence anywhere in sight. They can’t even do subversion properly.

Anyone who has ever watched the BBC cookery show, MasterChef, may feel the series is criminally bad. However, the adverb would be used metaphorically rather than forensically.

In any case, judging by the show’s popularity, few people would share that metaphorical aesthetic judgement. However, they are now told that both presenters, Gregg Wallace and John Torode, are vicious malefactors who aren’t fit to grace the TV screen.

If we ranked all crimes in an ascending order of heinousness, the crimes they committed have been steadily climbing to the top of the list, rising higher than, for example, burglary.

Judging by police records, had Gregg and John knocked off a corner shop or broken into a few cars, they could have got away with it. Such little peccadilloes are usually not even investigated, never mind punished. And they certainly don’t cause an outcry of moral indignation.

Not so with the offences committed by Gregg and John. There, the reaction was swift and decisive.

Gregg was the first to get nabbed. Over 80 allegations were made against him, most relating to inappropriate sexual language and humour.

Just 80? In my advertising days, I probably perpetrated that number of such offences in an average week. This makes me glad my advertising days ended over 20 years ago, when public sensitivity to such delinquency hadn’t yet been honed to razor sharpness. I’d still be doing porridge otherwise.

It’s good to see though that Gregg’s dossier hasn’t yet been forwarded to the Crown Prosecution Service for a possible indictment. Judging by the vector of our judiciary concerns, that outcome will be certain in a few years. So, while Gregg Wallace must resent his summary sacking from the BBC, he ought to count himself lucky that some vestiges of tolerance still survive.

Having taken care of Gregg, the BBC has now come for John. He has been axed from the show too, but he is less of a repeat offender than his partner. In fact, if Wallace was nailed by dozens of allegations, Torode faced only one – but, as far as the Beeb is concerned, his one weighs as heavy as Gregg’s 80 (and counting).

You are bound to gasp with horror, so brace yourself for the shock. John Torode allegedly uttered one racially offensive word on one occasion, when the crew were having a post-filming drink. That was enough for the BBC. Off he goes.

That piqued my curiosity. What was that awful term? Fair cop: the way things are, if it was the dread N-word, the felon should have been tarred and feathered, if perhaps not yet drawn and quartered. So was it?

Since the BBC has declined to elucidate the issue, I had to dip into social media in search of the answer. As far as that source can be trusted, which probably isn’t very far, it turned out that the offensive word had been ‘wog’.

In Britain, ‘wog’ is used colloquially and, yes, pejoratively to describe dark-skinned people, wherever they come from. The common belief that the term stands for ‘Wily Oriental Gentleman’ is just folk etymology in action. In reality, ‘wog’ probably derives from golliwog, the blackface doll from an old children’s book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwog.

The word came into general use some time around the First World War, but after the next big war it occasionally expanded its meaning to include anyone not born in Britain. At that time, an MP accused Winston Churchill of xenophobia, saying that to him “all wogs start at Calais”.

The phase has gained some currency, but it’s always (and the word ‘wog’ usually) used in jest or sometimes even lovingly. At least, that’s what I choose to believe every time Penelope applies the word to me, which is rather often. Then again, I may be deluding myself, and perhaps I ought to report her to the DEI committee. Penelope’s saving grace would be that she has no job to be sacked from. (Although she may get in trouble next time she programmes Debussy’s Children’s Corner, in which one piece is called Golliwog’s Cakewalk.)

John Torode had such a job, and he is planning to sue the BBC for unfair dismissal. He might have a case even in our hypersensitive times, for, to use the word the way Penelope uses it, Torode himself is a wog.

He is an Australian, and in his country ‘wog’ is usually not derogatory. In Australia, it tends to refer to Italians, Greeks and other inhabitants of the Mediterranean region. The term is considered inoffensive, although it may be used pejoratively in some contexts.

Torode’s defence is that he doesn’t remember ever using the word and, if he had indeed used it, he certainly meant no offence. The poor chap is on a losing wicket there.

Racism is a crime that doesn’t have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. A simple, even unwitnessed, allegation usually suffices. And if Torode tries to base his defence on lexical differences between England and Australia, he is on a losing test match, not just a wicket.

The English Common Law relies on precedents and one such scuppers Torode’s lawsuit before it’s even filed. In 2021, the ManU Uruguayan footballer, Edinson Cavani, received a congratulatory note from his countryman.

“Gracias, negro,” he replied, which in River Plate Spanish means something like “Thanks, mate”. When used that way, ‘negro’ or ‘negrito’ has no racial connotations whatsoever, never mind derogatory ones.

Yet that argument cut no ice with football’s morbidly self-righteous authorities. Cavani was fined, banned for many games and forced to issue a grovelling apology. The whole time the poor chap was perplexed, not understanding what he had done wrong.

You’ll easily see that, if wokery rules the roost over usages in a foreign language, it definitely claims dominion over English, whichever one of its variants or dialects is involved. If I were John Torode, I’d save my money on legal fees and look for another job.

The rest of us can lament the country Britain is becoming. If one bad joke or an incautious word uttered in a private conversation can destroy a man’s career, the time won’t be long in coming when the same word would put him in prison.

In fact, that was a prediction I made in my book How the West Was Lost, written some 25 years ago. Quoting from oneself is rather in bad taste, but I hope you’ll forgive this indiscretion:

“Remembering Cassandra’s fate, it is perilous to make predictions. However it is relatively safe to predict that, over the next ten years, more and more people in Western Europe and North America will be sent to prison not for something they have done, but for something they have said. That stands to reason: a dictator whose power is based on the bullet is most scared of bullets; a glossocrat whose power is based on words is most scared of words. At the same time, real crime is going to increase, all to the accompaniment of governmental bleating about giant advances in law enforcement.”

We are getting there, wouldn’t you say? John Torode would certainly agree.