Do Arabs look Ukrainian to you?

Finally, there’s no denying it. Britain has gone bonkers.

Or perhaps our judges misunderstood Trump’s idea of relocating Gaza Palestinians. I’m fairly certain the destinations he had in mind were Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he didn’t mean that two million Palestinians should settle in Britain.

Yet an immigration court made such a development a distinct possibility when granting Palestinian refugees the right to live in Britain. Somehow they were deemed to qualify for a scheme created for Ukrainians fleeing from Russian aggression.

That scheme included provisions for families to be reunited in Britain if they had relations already living here. Now a precedent has been created for Palestinians also to take advantage of that welcoming generosity. This though few of them resemble Ukrainians, even those from the southern parts of that country.

When a family of six from Gaza – a mother, father and four children – applied under that scheme to join a fifth sibling already living in the UK, the Home Office said no. But an immigration judge has ruled that the family’s human rights were thereby violated.

That precedent, according to Home Office lawyers, issued an open invitation to Palestinians and other aliens living in war zones to come to the UK. I’ll spare you a why-oh-why comment on how that ruling may prove disastrous for the country.

All you have to do is look up recent history and find out what happened to Lebanon and Jordan when thousands of eternal Palestinian refugees settled there. Those countries were quickly turned into blood-soaked shambles, and one can confidently predict something like that happening here when Hamas supporters and/or members (aka Palestinian refugees) begin arriving en masse.

Judge Norton-Taylor’s imagination is vivid enough, and he is aware that his ruling runs contrary to “public interest”. But, he explained, since the family faced an “extreme and life-threatening situation”, its human rights took priority over such parochial concerns.

When brought to task, His Honour cited Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that establishes the right to family life. Now, that’s a conclusive argument for leaving that contrivance if I’ve ever heard one.

When Britons overwhelmingly voted for leaving the EU in 2016, they did so to regain the country’s sovereignty. In Britain, this loaded word means not adherence to liberal abstractions but the rule of law laid down by Parliament… Sorry for being so vague. By Parliament I mean the legislative body sitting in Westminster, not the one headquartered in Strasbourg.

Judge Norton-Taylor obviously shares in the universalist outlook typical of the liberal mind. His Honour speaks the language of human rights with enviable fluency, and whenever he is stuck for a word, he can use EU documents for a dictionary.

The very fact that Britain didn’t withdraw from the ECHR at the time of Brexit shows that our liberal elite is hanging on to it as a rope it can use to climb back into the fold. The elite’s minds are poisoned by the toxins of modernity. As a result, they’ll always prefer the abstract to the concrete, the central to the local, the global to the national, ‘our planet’ to our neighbourhood.

As a side effect, they have to worship the sacrosanct principles of egalitarianism, which is why they refuse to see the difference between Ukrainian refugees and Hamas sympathisers (or even members).

Being a solicitous chap by nature, I’ll be happy to explain. There are several points of difference to consider.

First, Ukrainians are our friends who have fallen victim to a barbarian onslaught launched by our avowed enemies. Conversely, Palestinians are our enemies who launched a barbarian onslaught on our avowed friends – and lost.

Treating the two groups with equal consideration is tantamount to treating friends the same way as enemies and enemies the same way as friends. This isn’t equity. It’s amorality.

Second, Ukrainians are Christians and Palestinians are Muslims. Christianity is an essential, even formative, aspect of Western, and therefore British, identity. Islam, on the other hand, is infinitesimally marginal to that identity and, moreover, hostile to it.

With characteristic liberal mendacity, our opinion-formers proudly announce that all religions are equal, and none merits a privileged treatment. Yet Christianity deservedly enjoyed a privileged position for many centuries, whereas no other religion did.

Therefore, equalising them all in status is in effect dragging Christianity down to the level of religions of no consequence in British history. In other words, this is yet another manifestation of the anti-Christian bias that was the natal impulse of modernity.

Just imagine the confusion of children if told they must treat everybody with the same deference and affection as their parents. Before long, they won’t know who their parents are. Liberal egalitarianism creates the same confusion in grown-ups’ minds. They no longer know who their spiritual and historical parents are, nor can they easily distinguish between friend and foe.

On a more mundane social level, the presence of a large Ukrainian diaspora is unlikely to have an adverse effect on British identity, whereas another swarm of Muslim immigrants is guaranteed to do so.

This isn’t conjecture, but an observable fact, for we already have three million Muslims in Britain. Anyone who thinks they’ve improved life in the country and strengthened the long-term prospects of the British ethos should visit Leicester, Leeds or Bradford and admire signs saying that this or that area is governed by sharia.

This isn’t to say that Britain should turn away our friends in danger of extinction. That same religion that’s supposed to be equal with all others mandates against such cruel insularity. We shouldn’t forget that both Britain and the US were complicit in the Holocaust, when the two key members of the anti-Hitler coalition refused to accept Jewish refugees in sufficient numbers.

But, as I never tire of repeating, our civilisation is called Judaeo-Christian, not Universalist-Liberal, nor anything that includes the word ‘Muslim’. It’s that discernment again, being able to discriminate between good and bad, moral and immoral, beneficial and harmful.

I’m taking swipes at the very essence of modernity in full realisation that things are too far gone for opposition even much stronger than mine to change anything fundamentally. But certain things can still be done – and they should be done quickly before ‘liberalism’ advances any further.

Judge Norton-Taylor’s perverse decision must be overturned, and he should submit to a moral and legal MOT to establish his suitability for the bench. And, now we are talking in the automotive idiom, Britain should leave the ECHR in the rearview mirror.

The sovereignty of king in Parliament is the blood and soul of the British body politic, in fact of Britain tout court. And the ECHR, that distillation of liberal universalism, is the deadly contagion.