Category: Blog

We all know about history and the subjunctive mood, and how the former has no latter. Fine.

However, we’d be well-advised not to think that, because things happen, they’re bound to happen. Different scenarios are often possible – and always enjoyable – to imagine.

The Second World War, for example, could have easily taken a different course.

It would have required just a few events going the other way. Such as Britain seeking peace with Germany in early July, 1940, just after the Nazis overran France but before they started those air raids on British cities.

Should that have happened, the Duke of Windsor would have again become Edward VIII, and Britain would probably still have her Empire, albeit in a truncated shape. The Nazis, on the other hand, would have attacked the Soviet Union without having to use a great chunk of their armed forces to cover their rear.

Considering how thoroughly they routed the Red Army in 1941 even with that handicap, it’s not hard to imagine Stalin suing for peace in the autumn of that year. Hitler, on the other hand, would have had no reason to press his advantage all the way to Moscow: he could have contented himself with downgrading Stalin’s military capability to a level where it would present no threat.

The Third Reich could then establish its eastern border along the Dnieper, guaranteeing a steady supply of natural resources and more Lebensraum than Germany would ever need. The war would have ended in December, 1941, and by now Europe would have had 78 years of peace.

What would have happened during this time? Hitler would have been ousted in the 1960s, when he became too old and feeble to micromanage all of Europe. Shortly thereafter he would have died under suspicious circumstances: totalitarian dictators seldom die under any other.

Economically, the Third Reich would have begun to suffer by then. Although the grinder of the Holocaust would have run out of material long ago, the memory of it would have been too vivid for the rapidly globalising economy, led by the US, Britain and Japan, to be overly hospitable to Germany.

Hitler’s successors would have then declared that the Third Reich was thenceforth a democracy. In fact, it wasn’t even the Third Reich any longer. It was now a German Federation, with all its constituent republics, from the Ukraine and Poland in the east to France and Iberia in the west, exercising almost as much autonomy as the US states.

The National Socialist Workers’ Party would have been renamed the International Socialist Businessmen’s Party, with its livery changed accordingly.

Germany would still enjoy some control, but she’d certainly loosen the reins. The Gauleiters, who until then would have possessed dictatorial powers in the constituent republics of the German Federation, would remain in place in an overseeing capacity only.

To reflect that, they’d now be called not Gauleiters, but Commissioners. They’d only interfere if a constituent republic refused to adhere to the strict fiscal discipline demanded by the German economy and national character, or else if the nationalist sentiments in places like Hungary became too strong.

Germany would have issued an apology to all her European satraps, now called partners, for the worst excesses of Nazism. To prove that such crimes could never be committed again, Germany would adopt a pan-German constitution demanding that both the metropolis and its partners held regular elections, with the small proviso that every party involved had to accept Germany’s leadership (Führung) and renounce secession.

Between 1965, the year of Hitler’s death, and 1992, the German Federation would have been accepted as an equal partner in the family of nations. It would feature prominently at all summit meetings of world leaders, those whose countries were as democratic as Germany would now have been seen to become.

Tight control over her European partners would no longer have been necessary, and the German government, working hand in hand with its biggest and most willing partner, France, would have decided to recall its Commissioners from the outer reaches of the Federation.

They’d all be put together at a single location in a major European city – say, for the sake of argument, Brussels. The Commission thus formed would still exercise control, but it would now be subtler and less hands-on.

At that point, to reflect the seemingly greater autonomy of the partner nations, the German government would have felt that the reichsmark, the single currency of the Federation, would have to change its name for something less overtly German. It would henceforth have been called the euromark, or the euro for short.

The Federation itself would have outlived its purpose. After all, a federation implies the existence of a metropolis at its core. Germany would have naturally acted in that capacity, but it was felt that the old name might stoke up local patriotism.

The name would have been thus changed for the European Union of Equal Partners, or the EU, as it would have become commonly known.

In line with that development, the Commission would have decreed that the medieval expression ‘all roads lead to Rome’ would henceforth read ‘all roads lead to Brussels’.

You see how interesting the ‘What if…’ version of history could be? Fantasy can sometimes elucidate reality – to a point where we’d no longer know where one ends and the other begins.

This isn’t a coup of parliament against the government. It’s not even one of parliament against the people.

No, for the first time in British history, the coup over the past two days was staged by the apparat against the government, against the people – and against the greatest constitution the world has ever known.

The people’s will has been defied, the government has been rendered impotent, and the apparat has ridden roughshod over party loyalties for the sake of preserving and increasing its own power. All in the name of democracy of course, the upholding of popular sovereignty.

Brexit is now unlikely to happen, while the most subversive opposition in British history, that led by unapologetic Trotskyists Corbyn and McDonnell, is likely to snatch power. It’s already calling the shots even without an electoral mandate.

One can hear corks popping in Brussels even as we speak. And the eurocrats have every reason to be jubilant.

Just imagine you’re an EU leader, and you’ve devoted your whole life to the creation, preservation and expansion of a giant supranational state. What’s your greatest fear?

It has to be that, rather than adding more new members, that contrivance will start shedding those it already has. All it takes is one significant member leaving and actually doing well out of it.

Such a result would fling the floodgates open, and before long the EU will be reduced to a united Franco-German state. Allemance? Francmany? Germance? Call it what you like, it would still spell a disaster, a collapse of your lifelong dream.

Suddenly, Britain, one of the three most important members, holds a referendum, and its people vote to leave. But the country’s cross-party apparat doesn’t want to go. It’s prepared to work with you behind the scenes to achieve what you want, not what the British people want.

Using the kind of perfidy that, according to Napoleon, is the defining characteristic of the British, the apparat manages to trick the country into a situation where it won’t under any circumstances leave without a ‘deal’.

Would you be prepared to offer a ‘deal’ that would make Brexit more likely? Of course not. You’d offer something that’s clearly unacceptable, a sort of new version of the French leave: saying good-bye without actually leaving.

In fact, you’ve already offered such a ‘deal’, and it has been thrice voted down by parliament after three years of deliberate procrastination and nauseating double-talk.

Are you now going to offer one that parliament will accept? Not unless you want not only to cut off your nose but also to rip out your heart.

The upshot is that Britain has now effectively declared it won’t leave without a ‘deal’, while you’ve stated in no uncertain terms that no deal is on offer. The only conceivable result is that Britain won’t leave. Sorted. Brexit is dead and buried.

Alas, the dirge we hear isn’t just for Brexit. It’s for the constitution of the United Kingdom. It has been subverted and prostituted, with the probable effect of the Corbyn-McDonnell junta grabbing power.

The consequences of such a development will be infinitely more catastrophic than even staying in the EU. Unlike a no-deal Brexit, where endless arguments about its aftermath are possible, there’s no arguing about the absolute, unshakable certainty of the disaster befalling Britain should those evil ghouls start running our lives.

Freedom will be curtailed in every possible way, private property will be nationalised or otherwise stolen, foreign currency will be restricted, taxes will skyrocket, borrowing will stop being profligate to become suicidal, crime will be not so much fought as encouraged, new waves of alien immigration will flood the country, capitals will flee – closely followed by capitalists, investors, foreign firms and those Britons who cherish their freedom, brains will drain out, economy will collapse…

Britain, in other words, will suffer calamities a parallel for which could be found in post-Exodus Egypt, but nowhere in British history. But the apparat will survive and thrive, which is all that matters to it.

Johnson, his back to the wall, will seek a snap general election, but he’s unlikely to get it. Two-thirds of MPs would have to support the motion, and the government has nowhere near that kind of majority.

Corbyn and McDonnel have been demanding a general election for years, but now they can smell power without having to risk going to the people. So they’ve changed their tune. No general election then, not until Britain has crawled back into the EU, her tail between her legs, and the Tories have lost all credibility.

Labour, the LibDems, Scottish nationalists and Tory turncoats all have their delegates in the apparatchik cabal, and the apparat is in charge now – supported by the civil service, thoroughly politicised by Blair, the most revolting man and the worst constitutional vandal ever to disgrace Downing Street.

Sorry to be sounding so uncharacteristically impassioned, but I can’t stay calmly detached when my home is going to the dogs. Ghastly, ferocious dogs – of the kind I saw running wild in the country of my youth.

Is this really Britain? Could have fooled me.

Everything in life, from governing a big state to running a small household, must have a hierarchical structure. Remove that, and chaos ensues.

Western civilisation was based on the understanding that, in matters secular, all men aren’t created equal. Modernity overturned this understanding by claiming the opposite was “self-evident” (meaning it could be neither proved nor demonstrated).

Since then the West has been trying to shoehorn reality into the confines of this fallacy. And some things have proved elastic enough to withstand such treatment.

For example, Western economy has benefited, on balance, from the democratic ability to spread wealth as widely as possible. Stratification remains, of course, and always will. But the lower strata are doing better than they’ve ever done at any other time or in any other place.

However, even there democracy isn’t an unqualified success. One of its by-products is a vast parasitic underclass born out of the culture of entitlement implicit in egalitarianism. This creates conditions for economic catastrophes, for Western governments have to live way beyond their means to accommodate millions of economic spongers.

Still, perfection is unattainable in this world. Even in today’s promiscuous corporatist economies, anybody who really wants to make a decent living can do so, provided he applies much – possibly all – of himself to that task.

This is manifestly not the case with the finer things in life, those dealing with the spirit rather than the stomach. There, an attempt to remove hierarchical tiers is tantamount to wanton destruction.

For, while the simple task of making a living isn’t beyond most people, the difficult task of acquiring real culture is. That’s why comprehensive education is an oxymoron: the more comprehensive it is, the less it’ll educate.

Some things just aren’t meant for wide consumption. Music, real music that is, is one example: it was created for few by fewer. Once the culture of patronage by the few went the way of most social hierarchies, music had to be financed by box office receipts.

Hence it had to become democratic, with millions of people voting with their cash for the kind of performances they liked. Music thus had to cater to common (in the sense of both general and crude) tastes, which gradually led it from the sublime to the cor-blime.

These days, concert platforms proudly feature fleet-fingered semi-nude girls as full of breast as they are empty of mind, who succeed in lowering the most magnificent creation of man’s spirit to the level of pop excretions.

The same democratic egalitarianism is ruining languages. There too, a little learning is all that’s widely available, for the simple reason that most people aren’t capable of absorbing more than that.

Alexander Pope warned of the concomitant dangers three centuries ago: “A little learning is a dangerous thing;// drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:// there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,// and drinking largely sobers us again.”

Apart from creating a popular expression, Pope communicated the lamentable fact that most people can’t drink deep – shallow draughts of learning are all they can manage.

Yet democracy promotes a sense of not only economic but also cultural entitlement. The assumption is that, since we’re all created equal, we’re also created equally cultured.

Before that fallacy took hold, language had been as stratified as the social hierarchy. There existed broad swathes of lexicon that were the exclusive domain of seriously educated people. The rest had no access to such vocabulary and thus were in no position to mangle it.

The democratic presupposition put paid to such exclusivity. A little knowledge is now universally available, and people do avail themselves of it. The results can be comic.

Now, I’ve never met an educated person who’d mock an uneducated one for using plain words of one or two syllables. On the contrary, such a chap is often praised for expressing himself clearly and unpretentiously.

However, neither have I ever met an educated person able to suppress a sardonic smile when an ignoramus misuses a long word or a foreign expression.

Actually, the French are even likelier than we are to provide such entertainment. They still teach things like philosophy and Latin at school, which exacerbates the natural French tendency to intellectual posturing.

Thus you can hear French football commentators (football commentators, for heaven’s sake!) utter astounding sentences, such as: “He’s a superlative player a priori, but in extremis he may be grosso modo careless in front of the goal.”

What’s wrong with, say, “He’s a good player, but he misses many sitters under pressure”? If you have to ask, you aren’t French.

Our commentators misuse words too, but at least they shun Latin solecisms – not because they know that a priori means ‘based on a self-evident postulate’, not ‘at first glance’, but because their comprehensive education kept such phrases off-limits. Nor do they share their French counterparts’ compulsion to sound like homespun philosophers.

Nevertheless, we too have to smile at numerous attempts by democratically egalitarian people to sound sophisticated. Thus, every time I hear someone say “it reaches a crescendo”, I have the same involuntary reaction as Himmler is, wrongly, believed to have had when hearing the word ‘culture’.

‘Crescendo’, lads, is a way of reaching a point, not the point reached, but that knowledge has fallen through the cracks in our comprehensive education.

And it’s not just long words but also foreign phrases that are bent out of shape by untutored hands. For example, describing a highly exclusive party in an interview, Helen Mirren once said that “all the hoi polloi were there.”

It would be unnecessarily pedantic to point out that, because ‘hoi polloi’ means ‘the many’ in Greek, preceding it with the definite article is like saying ‘the the many’. But, God bless her, our celebrated actress actually thinks the expression means ‘high society’, which is, well, funny.

For fear of boring you, I’ll spare you a long list of foreign-sounding words and phrases that are routinely disfigured in the public domain where they don’t belong. Suffice it to say that democracy won’t be kept within the confines of politics.

It sends shock waves throughout society, and in some areas they have the same effect as Hurricane Dorian has had on the Bahamas.

At least, that’s what the French government would like us to believe.

To be fair, the diplomatic briefing of French officials doesn’t say that much in so many words. But what it does say makes this inference inescapable. At least I couldn’t escape it.

The briefing note says: “There is unease regarding Cummings’s Maoism and what economic transformation in the UK could mean for long-term geopolitical relations.”

See what I mean? If Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s closest adviser, is a Maoist, then Boris himself is like Mao, at least typologically.

Now, though Mr Johnson does boast a rather eclectic ethnic mix, I’m unaware of any Chinese inputs. Hence, the French government must feel he’s like Mao not in what he is, but in what he does.

During his time at the helm, the Great Helmsman murdered over 60 million people and enslaved the rest. Of course, much as he’d want to, Britain’s comparatively puny population would make it hard for Mr Johnson to match those numbers, not without expanding his murderous instincts internationally.

But, as I never tire to point out, numbers shouldn’t affect the principle. Perhaps Mr Johnson is planning to match Mao’s scoresheet in proportionate rather than absolute numbers.

One way or the other, the French government seems to be convinced he’s out to go on a murderous rampage, execute or imprison most university graduates, invade an equivalent of Tibet and call for an all-out nuclear war.

No? Then what makes Johnson Mao, or Cummings Maoist? The same note explains it perfectly, if in slightly cryptic language. They aren’t like Mao in those insignificant details. It’s just that they, like the Chinese butcher, pursue an evil end, in this case Brexit.

One can understand their concern: anything less than a disaster for a post-Brexit Britain spells a disaster for a post-Brexit EU. Just imagine what will happen if, after a few months of transitional hiccups, Britain starts outperforming the eurozone economically.

What message will that send to other members, especially those called neither Germany nor France? Right. A couple of years of Britain’s post-exit prosperity, and the EU will almost certainly be reduced just to those two nations.

Both Messrs Johnson and Cummings are trying to comply with the will of the British people, which is why they are accused of raping democracy and acting in the style of Hitler, Mao and presumably Genghis Khan.

Moreover, the Johnson cabinet is actively preparing for Brexit by seeking beneficial trade treaties with non-EU countries, especially the United States. According to the French government, this is “humiliating” for Britain. As opposed, one assumes, to being governed by Germany in all but name. Now, that’s what the French call dignified.

The French must realise that, unlike their country, Britain has no recent experience of being run by Germany, and nor does one detect any urgent desire at the grassroots to acquire such experience. Neither does Britain, unlike France, have much experience of Maoist parties influencing government – a situation that made that Maoist analogy roll so easily off those French bureaucrats’ tongues.

What I find particularly endearing is that the French and the Germans have the gall to accuse Mr Johnson’s government of being insufficiently democratic and constitutional. That’s like an arsonist complaining about a shortage of fire extinguishers.

They’ve created a portmanteau superstate accountable to itself only and run by unelected officials, with a rubberstamping parliament in tow. In view of that, their touching display of affection for democracy doesn’t even make it to hypocritical. Schizophrenic, is more like it.

Ignorance also comes into it, on a rather embarrassing scale.

Thus Christoph Gusy, German authority of constitutional history, has evidently set out to prove that he really ought to look for a different line of work. Speaking of Johnson’s prorogation of parliament, Prof. Gusy proudly declared that such a thing would be “unthinkable” in Germany.     

“Apparently in the UK the constitution is still in a monarchical tradition,” Gusy said, thereby proving his impressive academic credentials. It must have escaped his attention that the UK is indeed a monarchy, which goes some way towards explaining its monarchical traditions.

However, Johnson’s move has nothing to do with that aspect of our constitution and everything to do with other aspects, those that have made it possible for several of our prime ministers to seek royal assent to prorogue parliament for a short time.

“What Johnson is doing now is exactly what was abolished in Germany a hundred years ago,” continued Gusy. In other words, he’s holding the Weimar Republic up as a shining political star for Britain to follow.

He’s right about his facts though. This sort of thing was indeed impossible in Germany 100 years ago. What, however, was possible, was the sort of thing that happened in Germany 86 years ago, when the unmatched Weimar constitution delivered power to Hitler – legally, constitutionally and democratically.

Then, 80 years ago, another thing became possible: Germany’s previous attempt to unite Europe under its own aegis. Really, the French and German eurocrats deserve one another. Neither seem to realise that, in their panic over Brexit, they sound like blithering idiots.

The good news is that Oliver Kamm no longer writes about English usage. The bad news is that he now writes about other things.

That’s a sign of a true polymath: he could write rubbish on every subject. Such as, this time around, the NHS.

“Private healthcare is no match for our fair and efficient NHS,” says his article, and anyone wishing to preserve his sanity would be well-advised not to read any further. I put mine on the line because the subject is close to my heart (and most other organs in my body).

As someone with ample experience on the receiving end of both private medicine and the NHS, I can testify that Kamm simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then again, this has never prevented him from making weighty pronouncements.

For a self-proclaimed expert in matters linguistic, he doesn’t even use words properly. ‘Fair’ doesn’t actually mean the same for all. It means everyone getting what he deserves, and I don’t think, to cite a personal example, I deserved not to have my gangrenous gall bladder diagnosed for three days in an NHS hospital.

Nor did I deserve being treated like livestock thrown together in a barn, which is the nearest analogy to my ward of some 30 people, men and women together. Even overcrowded Soviet hospitals didn’t go unisex.

And my beloved mother-in-law didn’t deserve dying of MRSA, generously presented by one of our “fair and efficient” NHS hospitals. In the old days, before our medical care became “fair and efficient”, hospital-acquired infections were unheard of, mainly because matrons enforced the strictest standards of hygiene. These have fallen by the wayside.

As with any socialist enterprise, those who do the actual work play second fiddle to the administrators. A friend of mine, an NHS doctor, told me a few years ago that his hospital had cut the number of beds for lack of funds. At the same time, the hospital hired a director of diversity for £90,000 a year plus benefits.

Doctors and nurses get the impression they are extraneous to the true business of the NHS: increasing state control. That’s why they leave in droves: by current calculations, the NHS is short of about 100,000 frontline staff.

The deficit is being made up by importing thousands of foreign medics, many of whom are grossly underqualified and can’t even speak English properly. One such nurse once brought me a highly toxic mouthwash and told me to swallow it. Had I followed her advice, you’d be spared my vituperative prose now.

Third-world standards are even more noticeable in primary care. Good GPs are running away from the NHS at an Olympic speed: last year almost 600 fled, and this kind of drain has been going on for years.

The reason is simple: doctors want to do medicine, rather than admin. Yet the NHS, like all socialist concerns, is obsessed with bureaucratic wheel-spinning. As a result, the head of my local practice, the best GP I’ve ever known, left in disgust – more than half of his time was taken up by filling idiotic forms.

Because of its socialist genesis, the NHS hospitably throws its doors open to all and sundry from all over the world. That’s why the number of appointments goes up just as the number of GPs goes down.

Hence, even though the remaining doctors kill themselves working impossible hours and spending no more than 10 minutes per patient, we have to wait for appointments longer than in any other civilised country. Between January and March this year, 12.3 million appointments were completed 15 or more days after they had been booked.

To the likes of Kamm, ‘fair’ is a synonym for ‘socialist’, so no surprises there. But how does he justify the claim to efficiency, something that private care, with its short waiting times for both appointments and procedures, allegedly can’t match?

Simple. He bases it on cost-per-patient figures, which in Britain are “around the median” for the developed countries. Comparing the two systems I happen to know well from personal experience, he cites a cost of £2,989 in Britain and £3,737 in France.

Well, at least the French get more for their money. Generally, one can see a GP the same day or the next one at the latest. And in both my hospital stays in France I found myself in either private or semi-private rooms – and my neighbours in the semi-private ones were men, not women.

Another semantic nuance that seems to escape Kamm is that ‘efficient’ doesn’t mean ‘cheap’. In this context, it means either providing more service for the same amount or at least the same service for less.

Neither of these conditions pertains in the NHS, which is why, by Kamm’s own mournful admission, “no other country has adopted the British model of healthcare”. And there I was, thinking the NHS is the envy of the world.

“There is a good economic case for the NHS,” he claims, which is tantamount to saying that Britons aren’t overcharged for the privilege of dying of MRSA in unisex hospital wards, having the lowest cancer-survival rates in Europe and having to wait weeks for a GP appointment.

Even if we accept his figures, which I for one find hard to do, I’d say the NHS (the world’s biggest employer, by the way) is too dear at the price. The only case that can be made for it is ideological – and in that area Kamm is a past master. Whatever his subject.   

Our papers and TV screens are filled to the gunwales with tripartite Remainers riling against no-deal Brexit and promising to stop it by hook or by crook (mostly the latter).

This is an emetic lie. It’s not no-deal Brexit but Brexit that they want to stop. And they think, perhaps correctly, that they can pull the wool over people’s eyes.

Besides delivering fiery speeches and comparing Mr Johnson to some of the least savoury historical personages, they’ve instigated a petition against the prorogation of parliament that has already attracted more than a million signatories, each doubtless a constitutional scholar.

All this in the name of democracy of course, that bull’s head perched on the totem pole around which the masses are supposed to perform their song and dance routine. Scream democracy loudly enough, and everybody will jump up and salute, or else go down on his knees in a paroxysm of religious frenzy.

Applying reason, or for that matter morality, to modern politics is a thankless task. However, I’m willing to give it a try, for old times’ sake.

Democracy was served in 2016, when a comfortable majority of Britons voted to leave the EU, and when parliament subsequently activated Article 50. That means trying to keep Britain in the EU is tantamount to contempt for democracy, not totemistic worship of it.

When Remainers insist they affirm democracy by subverting it, they find themselves on shaky ground both morally and intellectually. However, if they were honest, they could make a valid argument. I’d still disagree with it, but I wouldn’t be able to deny its validity.

There exist various versions of democracy, they could say. The kind that delivered the Leave vote is called plebiscitary, wherein people bypass the institutions of the state and make decisions directly.

They could argue that plebiscitary democracy is at odds with the spirit, if not necessarily the letter, of the British constitution. That spirit, as postulated by perhaps our greatest constitutional mind, Edmund Burke, calls for MPs to act as representatives of people’s interests, not delegates for their wishes.

This is how Burke put it (concision wasn’t one of his many admirable qualities): “To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience, – these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.”

To fast-forward the language a couple of centuries, Remainer MPs could take their cue from Burke and say something along these lines: “Yes, the people have expressed their wish to leave the EU. However, our remit is to act not according to the people’s wishes, but according to their interests. And in our view, acting on the people’s wishes in this case would be against their interests.”

Then they’d have my respect and attention: the position sounds solid. I’d object that they get the people’s interests wrong, and I’d argue why.

But at least an honest, reasoned argument would be possible. As it is, their references to democracy of people’s will as the ultimate political virtue sound as mendacious as they are intellectually feeble.

Mr Johnson’s decision to put parliament on hold for the subversive annoyance it has become communicates in no uncertain terms that no serious argument on this issue is taking place, nor can ever do so.

What is indeed taking place is a group of parliamentary saboteurs trying to derail democracy in the name of democracy – while accusing their opponents of doing just that. They are like a thief who runs away from a pursuing crowd and screams “Stop thief!” louder than anyone else.

Those MPs do nothing to dispel the suspicion that all they really want is to paint their careers on a broader canvas than that afforded by our narrow island. Bono publico be damned; it’s their own bono that occupies what passes for their minds.

Mr Johnson’s action is brave, intelligent and moral, and I thought I’d never use these adjectives when talking about a modern politician. It’s brave because he puts his political career on the line. It’s intelligent because he realises the option he took was the only one on offer. It’s moral because he has kept his promise.

Mr Johnson promised to deliver Brexit, and, uncharacteristically for today’s politicos, he seems dead-set on doing just that. He’d rather part from the EU amicably, but if he can’t, he’ll part from it anyhow.

The EU has made it clear that it won’t accept any ‘deal’ that would mean Britain leaving de facto, not just de jure. Parliament has made it even clearer that, if such a ‘deal’ came before it for a fourth time, it would vote it down – just like it did on the three previous occasions.

Thus the choice before Mr Johnson is stark: no deal or no Brexit. However, parliament has made it clear it wouldn’t allow the no-deal option, effectively keeping Britain in the EU against the express will of the people – by which our MPs claim they swear.

Hence Mr Johnson has done the only thing he could do within the guidelines of our law and constitution – he has prorogued parliament for a period he hopes will be long enough to defang parliament’s jaws.

Well-done, Mr Prime Minister. Godspeed.

Always, if one believes that, since it’s God who gives man life, only God can take it away.

However, one has to accept that such throwbacks are in the minority. Not as small a minority as those who believe that children are brought by storks, but a minority nonetheless.

Since we live in an aggressively secular – and therefore not particularly bright – world, references to God, history, cultural or any other tradition can’t swing an argument any longer. Such things are met with derision, accompanied, if one is lucky, with a chanted mantra of modern articles of faith.

Darwin created life, and the Enlightenment liberated man from the shackles of any religious, intellectual, moral or spiritual authority. Because man evolved from the ape, he’s wholly in charge of his own destiny – and who but a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary could possibly find anything wrong with this logic?

Granted, a man doesn’t choose when to be born. His Mum and Dad make that decision (you can only say ‘mother and father’ at the risk of branding yourself as unfeeling). And if Mum decides she doesn’t want to be a Mum just yet, she can abort the person in the making, nothing wrong with that.

But the moment an unaborted person crawls out of his Mum’s womb, he becomes his own master. He can think or do anything he likes, provided he stays within the law. And if he’s unhappy with the way life is treating him, he can decide to end it.

He may do so by his own hand, that’s his right. No one but an antediluvian fanatic finds anything wrong with suicide. But if an unhappy man lacks either the courage to kill himself or the mental faculties to make that decision, then that’s what we have doctors for, isn’t it?

A kind medic will step in and fulfil his Hypocritical… sorry, I mean Hippocratic, oath by relieving society of the burden of caring for a crumblie.

It’s called euthanasia, which is the ultimate assertion of human rights and such commendable things as kindness, empathy and concern for the common good, of which the state is the distillation and epitome.

Hence anyone who regards euthanasia per se as murder is a troglodyte who doesn’t belong in our progressive world. This much is clear.

But what if someone first decides to be euthanised, but then changes his mind just as the lethal injection is about to go in? If you’re a believer in human autonomy, then you’ll probably think that the execution needs to be aborted, as it were.

But if you were a Dutch believer in human autonomy, you’d feel differently. You’d feel that the decision to be euthanised is like dropping a ballot paper into a box: the vote’s in, there’s no changing one’s mind. Job done.

If that shilly-shallying weakling has second thoughts at the last moment, that’s just too bad. The doctor is within his rights to have him pinned down kicking and screaming, and then to stick the needle in anyway.

This isn’t a hypothetical situation. A Dutch doctor is going on trial in The Hague for doing just that.

A woman of 74 suffering from Alzheimer’s decided to be euthanised. The doctor put a sleeping pill into her coffee, and the woman dropped off.

But when she woke up, she decided she didn’t want to die after all and began to kick and scream. But she was overpowered and killed anyway.

“The woman was in a state of confusion and the doctor did not see any point in consulting her,” explained Holland’s public broadcasting station. Absolutely. Who did the old biddy think she was, changing her mind like that? She couldn’t possibly have been thinking clearly.

However, a doctor acting quite as decisively as that turned out to be too much even for the progressive Dutch. Holland was the first country to legalise euthanasia in 2000, but some annoying restraints were still attached to the execution.

As the public prosecutor explained, “’The doctor is facing a charge of carrying out euthanasia without following the strict guidelines set down for such a process.”

So the doctor is being tried for being slapdash in following bureaucratic procedure, not for murder. You could see me wiping my brow: my faith in the Dutch has been restored.

For a second there I thought they had reverted to the old morality, wherein something like euthanasia was regarded as monstrous regardless of how meticulously the relevant guidelines were followed. But no, the goose-stepping march of progress has merely stumbled, not stopped.

Give them another few years, and restrictions on euthanasia will disappear one by one. As it is, the doctor involved will probably suffer no consequences other than perhaps some professional ones.

It ought to be clear that, once euthanasia has become legal, sooner or later it’ll become compulsory. Such a development follows inexorably from the new morality based on the new view of man, his origin and his life.

The prosecuted doctor simply moved down that road too fast for the state’s liking. Before long, the state will be flashing an avuncular smile: “Now you can. Euthanise away, and may Darwin be with you.”

The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism falls on 23 August. On that day 80 years ago, the two satanic regimes formed an aggressive alliance (appropriately called the Non-Aggression Pact), plunging the world into the most devastating war in history.

However, Putin’s Russia refuses to acknowledge this day because it puts Stalinism and Nazism under the same rubric. That simply won’t do.

The linchpin of Putin’s official policy is to restore Stalin’s empire, a task logically calling for at least some exoneration of Stalin and his glorious achievements, including the Pact. This is under way all over Russia, from schools to newspapers, from churches to city councils.

Stalin is portrayed as a great, if occasionally harsh, manager, who made Russia greater than ever. Statues to the butcher are mushrooming in Russian cities, and he is even worshipped as a saint in some churches.

Above all, Stalin is hailed as a great leader who led the country to victory in ‘the Great Patriotic War’. No wonder the Remembrance Day sticks in Putin’s craw: the underlying message is that Stalin won the war he himself had started.

What amazes me is that many good Westerners, who live outside the reach of Putin’s Goebbelses, seem to be unaware of this fact. A French friend of mine referred to it as a ‘theory’ the other day.

In a way, such ignorance is understandable because for the first 50 years after the war the Soviets mendaciously denied the existence of the Pact’s secret protocol, dividing Europe between the two predators.

Only in 1989, when the KGB assumed power in Russia and intensified the disinformation op called glasnost and perestroika, did Gorbachev agree to pull the text of the protocol out of the Special Folder (the highest degree of classification in the USSR).

The Folder contains 100,000 documents, of which only a handful have been made public so far. I doubt the rest will ever be declassified, especially those that deal with Stalin’s plans to conquer the world.

The plans have been established beyond doubt anyway by Russian and Western historians, such as Suvorov, Mel’tyukhov, Solonin, Joachim Hoffmann et al., who have analysed thousands of documents in Soviet and German archives.

The only thing they still argue about is the exact date on which Stalin planned to push the button and carry out his plans. Some calculate that Hitler’s preemptive strike beat Stalin to the punch by only a day, some insist on a fortnight or even a month.

Anyway, until the Special Folder is flung open, we’ll never know. However, solid evidence shows that the Soviet juggernaut would have rolled no later than August, 1941.

The evidence I have in mind deals not with strategic plans, logistics, troop deployments or military hardware, although such data aren’t in short supply either. No, the evidence I refer to is – vocal.

For, though tanks, planes and cannon are essential to warfare, they don’t fight wars. People do so and, in modern times, it’s not just the people in uniform. The whole population is involved, and populations need to be rallied.

That’s why every Soviet belligerent act was accompanied by the din of massive propaganda in every available medium. Stalin recognised the importance of rousing songs in particular, and he personally commissioned them.

Those who know how such things were done in the USSR will confirm that a stock of relevant songs had to be prepared way in advance of any military action. For it took months to release any song, never mind a propaganda one.

Most of the time was taken up by the song working its way through multiple stages of approval, from the Composers’ Union to the Writers’ Union to the Ministry of Culture to the Censorship Bureau to the Ideology Department of the Central Committee to, invariably, the Leader himself.

However, the canonical song The Sacred War appeared on 24 June, 1941 – just two days after Germany attacked the Soviet Union. That means the song had been signed off in advance – because Stalin had planned the war in advance, assuming it would start on his terms, rather than Hitler’s.

The Soviet archives contain over 70 such pre-prepared songs, most of them produced after the Pact, in 1939-1940. Some of them were used, some weren’t because the requisite conditions had failed to materialise.

The one that was used featured the refrain “Admit us Suomi, you beauty, into the necklace of your limpid lakes”. The song was widely performed during the Winter War of 1939-1940, when the Soviets attacked tiny and indeed beautiful Finland, promised to them by the Pact.

Apart from waxing poetic about Finland’s limpid lakes, the song also explains that “Your motherland has been taken away from you more than once; we’ve come to give it back to you; we’ve come to assist your reprisals, your repayment with interest for your humiliation…” [Hereinafter I’m translating the words only, not the rhyme and meter.]

The Finns refused the kind offer of help with ‘reprisals’ and heroically fought the Soviets to a draw, losing only small parts of their territory and suffering about eight times fewer casualties than the Soviets.

However, after that, Stalin’s Nazi allies moved a small contingent of troops into Finland, hinting to Stalin that Finland was their friend. Hence Stalin removed the song from circulation, attaching to the text a resolution, saying “until August, 1941”.

The same resolution stopped many other songs as well. One of them suggests that even the French may feel that Hitler’s preemptive strike against Stalin saved them from a gruesome fate. The song highlights the revolutionary red flag, first used during the Paris Commune of 1871:

“We’ve brought you, French people// The red flag raised by the Communards// Now your Paris, reclaimed from Hitler// Again lives under the red banner.// The flag has returned to its birthplace.// All enemies of peace and freedom// Are again listening in cowardly panic// To the steely steps of the Communards.”

Or, to be exact, of the Red Army, that proven enforcer of peace and freedom. Alas, this song too had to be shelved “until August, 1941”, and in fact didn’t get to be performed at all – because of Hitler’s sport-spoiling thrust, Stalin had to content himself with only the low-rent part of Europe.

Yet it would be demeaning to Putin’s role model to deny his ability to think globally, not just continentally. Hence another song Stalin regretfully postponed “until August, 1941”:

“And we’ll reach the Ganges yet,// And we’ll die in battles yet,// So that my motherland will shine// From Japan to England!”

The author of the song, Pavel Kogan, was killed in 1942, trying to make his prophetic words come true – and not realising that his geographic aspirations presaged Messrs Gorbachev, Putin and Macron.

They, to be fair, talked about Europe thus demarcated, not Russia. But of those three, only Manny seems to be unaware that, in this context, the two terms are bound to be synonymous.

Wouldn’t you like to know what kind of songs are being stocked up in Putin’s Russia now, on this anniversary of the Pact? On balance, I’d rather not hear them performed.

My congratulations to the Irish EU commissioner Phil Hogan and, by association, to the organisation he so loyally serves.

EU bureaucrats aren’t widely known for their verbal creativity, but Mr Hogan has done much to improve their reputation. In a flash of brilliance, he created a kit phrase that can be used to denigrate any man, woman or child in His creation.

Every advertising hack knows the value of prefab headlines able to fit any product. Two in particular have served many a copywriter with distinction.

One is perfect for promoting any product you can think of: “Not all [INSERT PLURAL OF PRODUCT CATEGORY] are created equal.” Now try to think of a product for which this universal headline wouldn’t work. You can’t, can you? There you go then.

The other headline is more useful for corporate advertising, although at a pinch it could do service elsewhere as well: “What we are not makes us what we are.” Trust me, it works like a charm whoever the ‘we’ happens to be, especially if followed by the tagline “Our people are our best resource.”

I don’t know the names of the geniuses who first came up with these trail-blazing discoveries. I do know Mr Hogan’s name, and he has claimed pride of place next to those anonymous innovators.

Expressing his disapproval of Boris Johnson’s intention to leave the EU, possibly even without permission, Mr Hogan declared that Mr Johnson was no Churchill. As he uttered the phrase, he might not have been aware of its universal potential, not just in relation to Mr Johnson.

For the list of famous people Mr Johnson is not could easily fill the 32 volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica. For example, he isn’t Julius Caesar, Henry VIII (although there some similarities are discernible), Charles Dickens, Lucian or even Sigmund Freud, Elizabeth II, Friedrich Handel, Mother Theresa – well, you get the gist.

This remind me of the story about a man approaching the manager of Barnum & Bailey with a proposal for an act.

“While I stand on a tightrope with my right foot, I spin 12 hoops on my left leg, juggle 12 balls with my left hand, and play a Bach violin partita with my right hand.”

Both impressed and incredulous, the manager asked his artistic director to go and have a look at that improbable act. The latter returned half an hour later, looking disappointed.

“So how is it?” asked the manager. “Well,” replied the artistic director, “Menuhin he ain’t.”

Mr Hogan must be familiar with this story, for he managed to extract the kernel of its logic and apply it to our prime minister. Churchill he ain’t, and that’s God’s own truth.

Had Mr Hogan stopped at that, he would have earned my endless gratitude for charting a useful shortcut to invective (not that I often find myself stuck for an insult). But unfortunately he proceeded to uncork another put-down, which made me think – turning the tables on Mr Hogan – that he’s no Churchill either, at least not in the area of coining epigrammatic lines.

He contemptuously dismissed Mr Johnson as an “unelected prime minister”, thereby displaying the veneration for elective democracy for which the European Commission is so justly famous.

Reading up on Mr Hogan, I’ve discovered that he was appointed to his first term as EU commissioner and now nominated for a second. The word elected was never mentioned, but it must have been only by oversight.

One could argue that Mr Johnson, though indeed by-passing a general election for a while, at least ascended to his post by an ancient constitutional process.

In that sense, he followed the same path as Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister and leader of Mr Hogan’s Fine Gael party, who also was selected by an internal party election two years ago and hasn’t faced a general election since then.

While similar to each other in that respect, both gentlemen are different from Mr Hogan and his EU colleagues in that the latter aren’t held back by the millstone of electoral accountability around their necks.

That, of course, imposes on them the extra responsibility of having to cope with unlimited freedom of action. This justifies their being paid considerably more than either Mr Johnson or Mr Varadkar, and that’s before their generous benefits and pensions are taken into account.

All things considered, aren’t you impressed with Mr Hogan’s adding a new twist to the saying about a kettle and a teapot? I know I am. I’m only sorry that his employment prospects might disappear should the EU collapse after a few other members follow Britain’s suit.

That is, if we do leave – and I’ll have to see it to believe it.

According to unconfirmed reports, President Trump has tendered an offer to buy the Roman Catholic confession and its headquarters in the Vatican city-state.

The offer, which is seen as a friendly takeover, is believed to involve an unspecified cash amount and also share options.

As part of the deal, Donald Trump Sr, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump and Jared Kushner will be raised to the college of cardinals, Ivanka Trump will take the veil and be appointed Mother Super-Superior, Pope Francis will join the US administration as Honorary Vice President, while all cardinals, depending on their seniority, will acquire the titles of honorary senators or congressmen.

The rumour mill is abuzz with the news. Apparently, President Trump has struck a deal with Disney, Europe, to redevelop the Vatican site into a theme park provisionally called In God We Trust. The name reflects both the religious and commercial aspects of the facility, emphasising its dual nature.

The site currently occupied by the Vatican Museum will be converted to a casino, with optional prayers offered before every roll of dice or spin of the roulette wheel.

US marines will replace the Swiss guards as the sentinels-cashiers at the Vatican gates, with the price of entry structured to offer sizeable discounts to Roman Catholics. The theme park’s flag will incorporate an amalgamated motif by following the general design of the US flag, but with crosses replacing the stars.

When pressed for confirmation, President Trump declined comment. Instead he posted this tweet: “Where I comes from, the school of hard knockers, no real estate deal is off the table. If a company’s strapped for cash, and I don’t give two flying bucks what kind of company it is, it’s ripe for plucking. God may be real, but the Vatican is real estate. Money talks, bullshit walks.”

The reports appeared after the Danish PM Mette Frederiksen described Trump’s offer to buy Greenland as “absurd”. “I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously,” she added with a humourless smile.

Actually it was, and Mr Trump reacted to Miss Frederiksen’s statement with indignation. “The United States,” he fumed, “is me, and I’m the United States. And you don’t talk to the United States that way.”

“Essentially it’s a large real estate deal, like most things in life. And Denmark is trading at a loss there coz they’re losing almost $700m a year carrying Greenland.

“I tell that Danish broad, listen, I’ll give you the same deal I’d give my own mother. And what does the broad do? She mocks me. Well, I kid you never, nobody mocks the United States and gets away with it.”

However, no plans to occupy Greenland by force seem to be mooted. “That Danish broad,” tweeted the president, “can keep her Greenland and shove it where the sun don’t shine. Well, actually God already done that.”

Depending on the progress of the Vatican takeover, Mr Trump is planning to move on to other ventures. He is reported to be interested in buying Reunion Island from France, Sicily from Italy and Tasmania from Australia. “When I’m hot, I’m real hot,” commented the president.

Some of the acquisitions will be funded by the sale of Alaska back to Russia, with the details being currently thrashed out by e-mails between Donald Trump and “my friend Vlad”.

All in all, a breath – nay a hurricane – of fresh air is blowing through world politics, which are finally being put on a firm commercial footing. In a move long overdue, political chatterboxes have been replaced in the White House by a man of vast business experience.

Such background equips a statesman with the ability to reduce all convoluted complexities of politics to the crystal clarity of a real estate transaction. We all stand to benefit.