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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.  

Prof. MacIntyre, who died in May at the venerable age of 96, wrote After Virtue, generally regarded as one of the seminal works of modern moral philosophy in the English language.

The book came out in 1981, and I’ve since made a dozen attempts to read it cover to cover, the latest one a few days ago. Each of those attempts has failed, miserably.

Several times, including the other day, I managed to get far enough into the book to get its main Thomist premise, doff my imaginary hat in respect and nod my very real head in general agreement. Yet I’ve never got any further, which failing I put down to my two allergies: one to Marxism, the other to bad writing.

I’ve been known to swallow books on Thomist (and other Christian) philosophy before my first coffee of the day, and few of them go down as easily as my morning coffee. That’s par for the course: such books demand an effort from the reader because they delve into highly complex issues.

One must concentrate hard to follow the thread of involved thought, and I’m always prepared to do so. For example, quite apart from the primary sources, I’ve read just about every line by R.G. Collingwood, whose philosophy of history, or rather philosophical history, MacIntyre often cites as one of his inspirations.

But I’m not prepared to do the Herculean labour of wading through the Augean stables of involute, impenetrable style. Happy as I am to do my best trying to understand the author’s thought, I refuse to spend my time trying to understand the author’s language.

I believe that a writer who doesn’t write lucid prose disrespects his art and his readers, and I for one refuse to be thus disrespected. Call it a personal idiosyncrasy, call it pedantry, call it anything you want, but the effort of deciphering MacIntyre’s endless paragraphs full of modifiers with uncertain antecedents is beyond me.

And if that doesn’t defeat me, his approving references to Marx’s criticism of free markets finishes the job. If Aquinas tried to reconcile Aristotle with Christianity, MacIntyre tried to reconcile Thomism with some aspects of Marxism. The first attempt was more successful than the second.

This vindicates yet again my innermost belief that there is no such thing as an ex-Marxist. MacIntyre remained a member of the Communist Party until age 27 and a residual Marxist thereafter, for all his criticism of some of Marx’s postulates. When a grown man accepts any part of Marxist cannibalism, he has a character flaw he never loses. Intellectual acuity can make up for some of it, but not for all of it.

This is a purely empirical observation I’ve never been tempted to reassess. My aversion to Marxism, on the other hand, isn’t merely empirical and rational. It’s visceral. When my eyes fall on Marxist bilge, my knee jerks almost all the way to my chin (or would do if a regrettably large stomach didn’t get in the way).

For all that, many bits of After Virtue I have struggled my way through appeal to me unreservedly. I share MacIntyre’s disdain for the Enlightenment, with its thinkers’ attempts to concoct an anthropocentric moral philosophy independent of Christian teleology.

Following Aquinas, MacIntyre traces the development of that teleology from Aristotle, showing how it produces a coherent, rational philosophy of morality and politics. He argues that the denial of that philosophy leads inexorably to the irrational nihilism of Nietzsche, Sartre or, in later times, Foucault and Derrida.

MacIntyre laudably translates his neo-Thomistic moral philosophy into modern political realities. He contrasts favourably Aristotle’s “goods of excellence” with the modern pursuit of “external goods”, such as money, status and power. MacIntyre strongly opposes Weber’s materialist, Protestant utilitarianism, and I applaud such thoughts whenever I can extricate them from his prose.

He is correct in arguing that commitment to free markets über alles will eventually replace traditional localism with rampant centralism, destroying local communities with their old-fashioned virtues. Where I think MacIntyre goes wrong is in co-opting Marx to his cause.

Marx criticised free markets (‘capitalism’ was the term he used) not because they threatened local communities but because they threatened the power of Marxist cannibals. If MacIntyre’s thought hadn’t been tainted by vestiges of his Marxism, he would have instead followed more closely the nuanced dialectic of many serious theologians who talked about riches.

Including St Thomas Aquinas: “The perfection of the Christian life does not consist essentially in voluntary poverty, though that is a tool of perfection in life. There is not necessarily greater perfection where there is greater poverty; and indeed the highest perfection is sometimes wedded to great wealth…”.

Note the qualifiers: “essentially”, “not necessarily”, “sometimes”. St Thomas wasn’t issuing a licence to Weberian acquisitiveness. He wasn’t giving the same “enrichissez-vous” advice the French statesman François Guizot (d. 1874) offered those who objected to property limitations on franchise.

Aquinas was expressing the fundamental Christian view on pursuing wealth: Go on then, if you absolutely must. But do remember what comes first. Jesus, after all, only said man shall not live by bread alone, not that man shall live by no bread at all. But he also said that his kingdom was not of this world, leaving his listeners in no doubt that it was higher than this world.

Addressing seven centuries after Aquinas a world that no longer could be presumed to put God first, Pope John Paul II said essentially the same thing as did Jesus and then Aquinas: “It is necessary to create lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments.”

The language is modern; the message is two thousand years old. It’s based on the Christian balance between the two planes, physical and metaphysical, reflecting the two natures of Christ: God and man. The Pope’s reference to the unity of truth, beauty and goodness, by the way, comes straight out of Aristotle’s teachings on the ‘transcendentals’.

Every Christian thinker must be wary of the excesses of dog-eat-dog free markets, but not of free markets in se. The alternative to them is Marxist tyranny, with books such as After Virtue thrown into the bonfire of goodness.

I’ll probably give After Virtue another go, but not soon. It’ll take me a while to catch my breath. Going back to Etienne Gilson’s books will help, by reminding me how lucidly Thomist philosophy can be enunciated. I can almost follow his French better than MacIntyre’s English.

Donald Trump likes Britain, or at least so he says. Or is that what he says?

With the Donald, one can never be sure. When in my youth I taught English as a second language, I used to mark students down for phrasing as imprecisely as Trump does.

And I used to fail them for not knowing the difference among various names for Britain. The other day, Trump tried to make light of his ignorance, but that only made it even more evident.

“You have many different names you go by,” he said. “England, if you want to cut off a couple of areas. And you go UK, and you have Britain and you have Great Britain. You got more names than any other country in history, I think.”

This was supposed to be a joke, but I’d be prepared to wager a small sum that he really doesn’t know the difference. Actually, his own country goes by quite a few names too: America, the United States, the States, Uncle Sam, Texas…

Oops, sorry, Texas is only one political and administrative unit within the USA. But then England is also part of a greater political and administrative union, aka kingdom, that of herself, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That’s what the United Kingdom means.

Great Britain, on the other hand, is a geographical concept, not a political one. It denotes the biggest island of the British Isles, one that contains England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, which has part of another island all to herself.

Britain is used colloquially as a synonym of either Great Britain or the United Kingdom, and it also used to refer to the British Empire, now defunct. (It’s largely defunct due to the maniacal wartime efforts of FDR’s America, but this is a separate subject.)

Trump isn’t the first man using humour, such as it is, to conceal his ignorance, and he won’t be the last. But, if you happen to meet him, ask him to define all those terms he used – I bet he won’t be able to.

One thing I can say for Trump is that his feelings about the EU and Britain’s place in it are irreproachable. He backed the Leave campaign during the 2016 referendum, correctly saying that we’d be “better off without the EU”.

When asked whether Britain had made the most of Brexit, he said, again correctly, that she hadn’t. Or, to quote verbatim, “No, I think it has been on the sloppy side…”.

That’s putting it mildly. ‘Subversive’ is the adjective coming to mind more readily, but one can understand Trump’s attempt to phrase diplomatically in the runup to his state visit to, well, whatever the country is called.

However, he then tagged on a tail end to that sentence: “… but I think it is getting straightened out.” That’s another manifestation of bone-crushing ignorance.

Rather than “getting straightened out”, Brexit is being steadily and deliberately undermined by our Labour government and its accomplices in the Tory and LibDem parties.

The Labour hierarchy is totally, and the Tory one mostly, made up of virulent Remainers, who have come back as re-joiners. Their collective efforts still make hundreds of EU laws valid in Britain, and the ‘cooperation’ (meaning the unconstitutional efforts to reverse the result of the 2016 referendum) between the EU and Britain is proceeding apace.  

The principal champion of this underhanded campaign is our PM, Sir Keir Starmer. Who, according to Trump, is “straightening Brexit out” so successfully that he deserves the highest praise.

“I really like the Prime Minister a lot, even though he’s a liberal,” said Trump. That makes one of you, Donald.

I can’t imagine anyone liking Starmer, not even his wife or next of kin. What’s there to like? Intellectual vacuity and moral decrepitude? Wholehearted attempts to destroy the country’s economy? Not so much his failure to curtail illegal immigration as his success in encouraging it? His genuflection before every heinous Marxist cause?

I shan’t hold against Trump his misuse of the word ‘liberal’, that being an established usage in his country and, increasingly and regrettably, ours. However, that term now stands for the exact opposite of its real meaning, which used to be advocacy of individual liberty and next to no state interference with quotidian life.

In America, liberalism means, not to cut too fine a point, socialism: stultifying and tyrannical wokery, replacement of individual responsibility with collective security, as much government control and as little personal liberty as is achievable this side of concentration camps.

In Britain, it means more of all the same things, plus the crusade to abolish our national sovereignty and kowtow to rather revolting apparatchiks across the Channel. So none of those things get in the way of Donald’s affection for Keir?

Apparently not, and Trump explained why: “He did a good trade deal with us, which a lot of other countries didn’t do.” Oh well, how else can the president of a great country judge foreign leaders? Especially a president who projects on global affairs solely his experience of shady property deals in places like Atlantic City?

Never mind Starmer being the worst PM in (rather long) living memory, beating to that distinction even the disastrous Gordon Brown. All that matters to Trump is a deal, and I’m glad he failed in his frantic efforts to develop property in Russia. Had he succeeded in that undertaking, he’d like Putin even more than he does now, even though Putin is a war-mongering fascist.

When asked what he thought of the country with multiple names, Trump was enthusiastic, expressing that emotion in his inimitable way. Britain, he said, is a “great place – you know I own property there.” What better reason does one need?

Actually, I own property there too, but that fact plays next to no role in my liking Britain. If I were asked the same question, that fact wouldn’t come up before a hundred others, those involving the country’s history, philosophy, literature, unique contributions to political science, physical beauty, national character, language – and yes, as an afterthought, I do own a tiny piece of it.

According to Trump, he has good reasons for visiting Britain: “I want to have a good time and respect King Charles because he’s a great gentleman.” So he is, but wanting to respect King Charles suggests that Trump doesn’t respect him yet.

If he meant he wanted to pay respects to His Majesty, why didn’t he say so? You know why. The president speaks the way he thinks: imprecisely, chaotically, inconsistently and invariably spurning Mark Twain’s advice to “use the right word, not its second cousin thrice removed”.

That respect Trump feels or aspires to feel doesn’t prevent him from making threats against the sovereignty of Canada, which is part of the British Commonwealth headed by King Charles. I’d rather he respected His Majesty less and international law more.

In conclusion, Trump pulled out of his pocket that old chestnut about the two countries having a “special relationship”, adding that he was confident the UK would fight alongside the US in a war.

That’s probably true, but I’m not sure Britain can expect reciprocal loyalty on the part of the US, for as long as it’s led by Trump. I’ll spare you a compendium of his pronouncements about NATO being obsolete and Article 5 of its Charter strictly optional, but that list would include several pages of entries.

Then again, this week Trump has done another about-face, saying he is now committed to NATO and armament supplies to the Ukraine, provided someone else pays for them. Don’t you wish the most important Western country were led by someone who says what he means, means what he says, does what he promises and has discernible convictions?

A foolish consistency might have been the hobgoblin of little minds to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but not all consistency is foolish. And not all consistent minds are small.

One can’t expect sports in general or tennis in particular to display greater integrity than, say, politics. Whenever aggressive, highly motivated people compete for great prizes, human nature is put to a test it doesn’t always pass.

And prizes at this year’s Wimbledon were the greatest ever: £3 million for the winner, £1.5 million for the finalist – and that’s equally for both the men and the women (we’ll talk about that travesty later). Triple that for additional endorsement income, and one can see how certain corners may be cut.

However, never in the tournament’s history has that scissor job been as blatant as in 2025. Both the men’s and women’s singles champions have served drug bans within the past 12 months, both amounting to a slap on the wrist.

Yannick Sinner twice tested positive for an illegal steroid, and Iga Swiatek’s boost came from a banned heart medication. Both of them received token suspensions, three months for Sinner, one month for Swiatek. The authorities made sure neither player would miss any Grand Slam events.

Sinner actually claimed that the drug entered his system while a physiotherapist, a perfectly legal user of the substance, was giving him a massage. Of course, happens all the time. I’ll try that line if I’m ever stopped for DUI.

Another player tested positive for cocaine a few years ago and got away with a derisory punishment by claiming he had merely kissed a girl who had just snorted a line at a party.

Yet another one was eventually exonerated by explaining that the drugs in her body had come from eating steroid-laden beef. My advice would be to desist from scoffing a whole cow in one sitting, the kind of gluttony that indeed can deliver a noticeable dose of illegal substances.

Really, chaps, let’s heed Ben Franklin’s adage of honesty being the best policy. Tennis authorities should abandon silly subterfuge and make any kind of chemical stimulation legal. That way athletes could openly endorse big pharmaceutical companies, pouring even more money into the sport.

In addition to the plethora of other logos players display on their kit, they could then sport those of Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca and others. When making his emetic “I’d like to thank” speech, a player could add to the list his pharma sponsor, “without whose R&D department I woulda never went on to win”.

Speaking of emetic endorsements, few can compete with Bjorn Borg’s. Interviewed by The Times, the ex-champion uttered some sweet nothings about tennis before getting to the heart of the matter:

“I wear a Rolex Day-Date watch. My Day-Date came out in 1956 – the year I was born. When I look at it, I think back to the successes I had on the tennis court. It’s the perfect fit.”

As a former adman, I admire the way Bjorn stayed on brief: the Rolex campaign has always directly linked tennis success with the watches. It leaves the viewer in little doubt that, had Bjorn worn, say, an Omega or Patek Phillippe, he would never have won five Wimbledon titles.

The interview was illustrated with a large photograph of Borg, the promoted item prominently, nay brazenly, displayed on his wrist. I don’t mean this as a criticism: Bjorn’s high-earning days are 40 years behind him, and he has to scratch a living wherever he can find it.

What I do object to strenuously is one of the sweet nothings he did say about his sport: “I love to watch women play. I think they should be paid the same as men and they are [in grand slams]. If you look at men’s and women’s tennis today, they are equal.”

Liar, liar, your shorts are on fire. I’d happily accept the first sentence, but only if the word “play” were excised. As to the other two sentences, they are ridiculous, coming from a man who knows everything there is to know about the game.

The issue of equal pay regularly comes up during every major tournament (including, I’m sorry to say, in this space). Pundits who take issue with this outrage usually point out that men play best of five sets matches, and the women best out of three.

This means that men get paid much less per hour on court. One pundit, for example, calculated that at a recent Australian Open, the winning woman got paid £54,000 per hour more than her male counterpart.

But that, to me, isn’t the whole story. The real problem is that the women are simply not as good, mutatis mutandis. It’s not their fault that they are physiologically weaker and slower than the men, meaning they can’t hit as hard or run as fast. Yet there’s no physiological reason for them not to develop the same technical competence.

That they woefully fail to do, which any viewer of this year’s Wimbledon final will confirm. Amanda Anisimova, the losing finalist (and recipient of the £1.5 million runner-up cheque) has a glaring technical problem with her forehand.

This explains why she lost her final 6-0, 6-0 in 57 minutes, the first time that feat had been achieved in 114 years. Now, it’s not only the prize funds but also the ticket prices that are the same for the men and the women. This year, the cheapest ticket for either final was £240 and the most expensive one £315.

That is if they were bought at the box office, which many weren’t. I don’t know how much the touts were charging, but I’d guess at least double the list price. Borg is fortunate that he didn’t have to pay for his ticket, but those poor souls who did probably couldn’t help figuring out how much that sorry spectacle cost them per minute.

There exists a cabal among commentators, all of whom have to know better, to talk up the women’s game, trying to justify the gross iniquity of equal pay for unequal work. In this case, the chorus sings the same line in unison: poor Amanda was overcome with nerves, which is why she couldn’t hit a forehand over the net and between the white lines.

Of course, she was nervous – everyone appearing on Centre Court is, especially if such appearances aren’t customary for the player. That’s why every male professional spends thousands of hours grooving his strokes to the point where they become automatic and more or less immune to pressure.

‘More or less’ are the operative words. A nervous newcomer to Centre Court is bound to miss a fair share of the kind of shots he’d normally make with his eyes closed. And many a match has been lost because of the pressure of the occasion.

But not love and love, with every other forehand either hitting the net or flying into another county. When that happens, it testifies to an insufficient commitment to the game, to not enough hours spent on the practice court.

More generally, it testifies to the overall lower level of the women’s game, which makes their equal pay just an extension of politicised wokery. But you’ll never read or see a commentator say that in commercial media. Nerves yes, technical incompetence – absolutely not, not if they want to see the inside of a TV studio ever again.

Anywhere you look, tennis displays the same festering ulcers as the rest of society. It would be silly to expect anything else. But I’m sorry to see the likes of Bjorn Borg prostituting themselves so openly. There was never anything wrong with his forehand.

George W. Bush once hilariously said that the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur. That wasn’t meant as a joke, but it worked as one famously, while also providing a strong argument for IQ testing of all presidential candidates.

It’s true that businessmen aren’t held in as high esteem in France as they are in the US or even Britain. But they do exist, and the one I know personally shows how much any country needs such people.

I mean the kind of people whom Labour is busily trying to drive out of Britain, and good riddance to bad rubbish. So enterprising chaps, tens of thousands of them, up sticks and go, taking with them their capital, the jobs and tax revenue they create and, above all, their talent for improving the local communities.

Our neighbour in France, Michel Guyot, is living proof of what can happen to a place when entrepreneurs move in, not out. In 1977, Michel and his brother Jacques, both penniless, made a bold move.

For a token price of one franc they bought the Château de Saint-Fargeau, a 17^th-century Renaissance castle down the road from us. Built for the Grande Mademoiselle, a cousin of Louis XIV, the château wasn’t exactly derelict when the brothers bought it, but as near as damn. The deal was that they would restore it to its past glory, a project bound to take years and millions.

The local councils chipped in, but most funds came from the brothers’ tireless fund-raising. Little by little, they restored the château, displaying not only business and administrative acumen but also good taste.

As parts of the castle came back to life, the Guyots opened them to the public. Tourists began to flock in – this though the nearest train station is 15 miles away, and the nearest airport 100.

By 2000, when we moved into the area, the money brought by tourists had begun to trickle down, with Saint-Fargeau showing signs of a recent makeover. By then Jacques had gone on to develop other ancient properties, but Michel remained hands-on.

At about that time, he found a way not only to keep the restoration money coming in, but also to turn the château into a national attraction. Putting his fecund imagination to work, Michel started two projects that showed he could think on a grand scale.

He created in the château grounds a son et lumière (‘sound and light’) show, reenacting the 1,000-year history of Saint-Fargeau, through Joan of Arc, the Revolution and the Second World War.

Referred to as le spectacle, the production is indeed spectacular. It involves over 700 actors, 50 horses, batteries of cannon and even Sherman tanks. Lit up by searchlights, the show lasts two hours, during which the spectators watch jousts, cavalry attacks, infantry battles, tank raids and victory celebrations. The end of the show is announced by a midnight cannonade reverberating for miles.

The spectacle is advertised all over France, including Paris, and people respond with alacrity. Rivulets of tourists turn into a mighty stream, and the local hotels, cafés and restaurants flourish. Saint-Fargeau itself, public buildings and private residences alike, has lost much of its slightly dilapidated look.

The village has perked up noticeably but, amazingly, without letting mass tourism turn it into a vulgar mini-Disneyland. The place wears better clothes now, but they aren’t gaudy, and the old dignity hasn’t been compromised by the new-found wealth.

It’s not just the château and its spectacle either. For some 25 years ago, Michel embarked on another project, another testimony to his restless intelligence.

He bought an abandoned quarry a few miles from Saint-Fargeau and hired a team of 50 builders and artisans to perform an extraordinary feat: to build a medieval castle using the same techniques and materials as in the Middle Ages. The wood, stone, earth, sand and clay needed for the construction of the Guédelon castle all come from the same quarry or thereabouts.

If the spectacle is held only from mid-July to late August, Guédelon attracts thousands of visitors throughout the year. They come in droves to watch period-costumed artisans at work: quarrymen, stonemasons, woodcutters, carpenters, blacksmiths, tile makers, basket makers, rope makers, carters with their horses – they all ply their trades in an impressive show of archaic craftsmanship.

A gimmick? Of course it is. But it’s done tastefully, with a minimum of kitsch. Both Guédelon and the spectacle are also instructive, especially for children, who always make up a good part of the visitors.

And speaking of instructiveness, Michel Guyot has also created a model farm down the road from the château, and it too has been drawing in large groups of visitors, mostly children. They learn that bacon doesn’t start out in rashers, nor bread in loaves.

Since I’m no longer a child, my knowledge of the farm is strictly hearsay, for I’ve never bothered to visit it in 25 years. But rows of cars, coaches and school buses always parked outside, especially in summer, testify to the project’s success.

I’ve seen similar undertakings elsewhere turning the surrounding area into a contiguous theme park. But I can testify that Saint-Fargeau and other villages around us haven’t paid for their new wealth with their soul. I don’t know whether this is due to the soul’s resilience or to Michel’s taste, but one way or the other the new money hasn’t destroyed the old charm.

Ever since Russia’s full-scale assault on the Ukraine in 2022, the portal of the Château de Saint-Fargeau has been adorned with the Ukrainian flag. This shows where Michel Guyot’s heart is – always in the right place.

According to Manny Macron the British people have been “sold a lie” that leaving the EU would “make it possible to fight more effectively against illegal immigration”.

Manny would have none of that: “Our increasing problems require cooperation, a European approach” rather than what “populists often sold”.

To paraphrase a lawyer joke, “How do you know that Macron is lying?” “His lips are moving.” Manny can’t open his mouth without uttering either a witting lie or an unwitting falsehood. That undoubtedly makes him an expert on the subject of lying, but even experts can get things wrong.

It’s impossible to decode the denotation of Manny’s remarks without first understanding their connotation. So let’s try to do just that.

To the fire-eating European federalists, especially those of the French or German persuasion, the EU is the same thing as the NHS is to the British. It’s the object of their secular worship and heartfelt love. That produces the kind of faith that can be shaken by neither logical arguments nor empirical evidence.

Hence they regard Brexit as a combination of iconoclasm, treason and apostasy. The British people declared their unwillingness to worship that idol, branding themselves as infidels. And infidels must be punished.

But Manny is right: Brexit was indeed tightly wrapped in a tissue of lies.

However, these were told by the likes of him, ideologues who tried to misrepresent Brexit as something it never was because they hated everything Brexit is. I thus place Manny into the same group with our own Remainers, those who now densely populate the Labour front benches (and the Tory ones too, if somewhat less densely).

Most Britons didn’t vote for Brexit because some dastardly liars had told them that leaving the EU would solve every little problem the country has, including that of illegal immigration. They cast their vote for Leave because they wanted to be governed by their own parliament, not by a motley crew of unaccountable Continental apparatchiks.

Populism had nothing to do with it, unless the word is misused to designate anything socialists like Manny dislike. Quite the opposite: the true message of Brexit presupposed an audience well-versed in Britain’s political and constitutional history.

Such an audience is rather small, given the conditions of our comprehensive education. However, Leave campaigners – and all political campaigners have to be populists by definition – managed to boil the message down to a simple binary question: Do you want to be governed by the parliament you elect or by some foreign body no one elects?

Considering that the sovereignty of parliament is the quintessence of the British constitution, and has been for centuries, that concept has penetrated the nation’s DNA. That’s why more Britons voted for Brexit than have ever voted for anything else.

Those who really got the message knew that Brexit made it possible for the nation to solve many hitherto unsolvable problems, such as border control. Since the EU travesty of free movement of people no longer held sway, our government acquired the means to stop illegal immigration once and for all, and to control the legal kind as it saw fit.

Yet no magic wand came with Brexit. That horrendous problem wasn’t going to solve itself – it still required a good government to do so.

However, every government we’ve had since 2016 fell into the range between pathetically useless and downright destructive. They had the means to stop what resembles occupation more than immigration, but they either didn’t want to achieve that end or were too incompetent to do so.

Modern European federalism is a socialist dream come true, and the principal desideratum of socialism is to obliterate every vestige of Western, which is to say anti-socialist, tradition. Mass immigration of cultural aliens serves this purpose nicely.

Blair’s éminence grise, Peter Mandelson, once spelled that out with most refreshing cynicism. We welcome mass immigration, legal or otherwise, he said, because thereby we import Labour voters.

That’s no doubt true. Because immigrants need, or least want, handouts, they are likely to vote for the parties that dangle the larger ones before their eyes. This means socialist parties, in Britain usually Labour.

We are now governed not by any old socialists but by card-carrying Marxists. They are running the country into the ground, and they are doing that not just because they are incompetent. Destroying or at least debauching every British institution and tradition is something their ideology demands. Any weapon useful to that end is welcome, and an influx of alien swarms is one such.

If in 2019 1,843 people made the cross-Channel boat trip, that number has gone up to 44,000 since Labour won their landslide. This represents a gross violation not only of Britain’s territorial integrity, but also of EU law.

It no longer applies in Britain, or rather shouldn’t, but it certainly hasn’t lost its validity in France. And EU law says that immigrants from troubled lands must be accepted by the first safe country they reach.

If that country happens to be France, then it’s the French who must mollycoddle those beauties by giving them room (ideally in three-star hotels) and board. Unless, of course, they can argue that France is much less safe than Britain, which they can’t, not in good faith at any rate.

Hence, by building those internment camps all along the Channel, the French violate their own law – after all, those detainees are bound to want to leave the camps for the sunnier economic climes across the water.

At fault here isn’t Brexit but the socialist governments of France and Britain whose ideological interests converge. Otherwise, HMG wouldn’t need France’s help to stop those boats.

After all, the Royal Navy managed to deter a Nazi invasion of the British Isles. Our navy is but a shadow of its former self, but then rubber dinghies make up a less formidable force than German battleships and U-boats.

As Nigel Farage correctly pointed out the other day, those illegal sailors are committing a crime against the very nation the Royal Navy is supposed to protect. The solution seems simple enough: a patrol vessel should intercept a dinghy and order it to turn around.

If it refuses to do so, the patrol vessel should fire a warning shot and, if the message still doesn’t get home, sink the dinghy. Something tells me that those aspiring migrants would quickly decide that France is safe enough after all.

If this measure strikes you as too radical, then at least the government should announce that no one entering the country illegally would receive any social support whatsoever. No room, no board, no medical care (except in emergencies). No family reunification either: if a family of migrants wish to reunite, let them do so in France or, better still, in their own country.

The pathetic palliatives mooted by the two socialist nonentities, Starmer and Macron, aren’t going to work – largely because neither man wants them to work. Such is the truth of the matter, and everything else is a lie. You know, the sort of thing Manny accuses the ‘populists’ of bandying about.