Month: July 2022

Boris Johnson was brought down by a cabal of vengeful Remainers, anti-Tory hacks and cabinet backstabbers, all as feeble of mind and character as they are strong on perfidy.

Now his party has embarked on a meandering course at the end of which a generation of Labour governance beckons. Will the real Tory in the lot please stand up?

They all remain seated. The declared candidates for Number 10 don’t even know what conservatism means. They aren’t about statesmanship, ideas and principles. Their whole being is circumscribed by naked powerlust.

Just look at Rishi Sunak. He registered his ready4rishi website in December, which at least shows some aptitude for foresight. And his sleek campaign video hit the waves just hours after Johnson announced his manically upbeat resignation.

Take it from a former adman – that video had to take at least a week to conceive, produce and edit. It was in the can, ready to roll, just as Rishi was honing his knife on a strop.

Now he is making pronouncements that would make a well-read child ashamed of himself. Rishi is talking about the “fairy tales” allegedly peddled by his rivals. They are promising, he says, both low taxes and high public spending.

By contrast, his own take on the economy is “grown-up”. Rishi correctly believes that high spending must be accompanied by high taxation and, credit where it’s due, as Chancellor he practised what he preaches.

He isn’t the only one. The Tories have been in power for 12 years, and what they have to show for this stint is the highest public debt ever and the greatest taxation burden in decades. And now two of the perpetrating chancellors, Sunak and Javid, have the gall to preach sound economics.

No one, including Rishi, is even mooting the possibility of reducing both spending and taxes. All they are saying is that the latter would be destructive without the former – and the blighters are right about that. Yet they all refuse even to consider the possibility of reducing the economy-busting, inflation-boosting, business-stifling public spending.

Now that the unauthorised piss-up and the odd drunken homosexual pass have been removed as targets, the plotters are trying to sort it out among themselves on the battleground of the economy. Yet they haven’t come up with a single realistic proposal on how they are going to reverse Johnson’s disastrous policies.

The reason is simple. They know they would have done exactly the same in his place – and will do exactly the same when the occupy his place. Moreover, they have all been complicit in the protracted suicide pact going by the name of our economic policy.

Will any of those spivs have the courage to announce he’ll abandon the lunatic net-zero emissions policy to which Johnson committed Britain? Will they admit that the underlying theory was hatched by those who hate our civilisation?

Will they paraphrase Churchill to say that “never in the field of human economics has so much been destroyed by so few to impoverish so many on so little scientific evidence”?

Will they abandon the insane and counterproductive drive for ‘renewable’ energy (which will never be able to power a modern economy) and instead demand an increase in oil and gas production? Will they provide incentives for the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas (fracking), whose vast reserves would make Britain independent of foreign sources?

Will they abolish green taxes and regulations? Stop encouraging the electric-car madness? Lower fuel duty from its current rate of 57.95p per litre, plus 20 per cent VAT? That alone would instantly lower the prices at the pump, but they aren’t going to do that, are they?

Yet Johnson’s refusal to cut such consumption taxes was one of the mightiest blows he delivered to the economy. Here’s an opening for you, chaps, wide enough to drive a petrol tanker through. Alas, that foot isn’t coming anywhere near the accelerator pedal.

Yet fuel prices are the principal contributing factor of the runaway inflation rate. Quite apart from its immediately destructive effects on the economy, a two-digit inflation rate creates a devastating shift in personal economic behaviour.

It discourages prudence and thrift, while encouraging profligate spending, gambling investments and indebtedness. With their nest eggs being dismantled twig by twig, people will rush either to spend their money while it can still buy something or to invest it in something that may retain value, usually property.

High public spending financed by burgeoning borrowing and taxation is what drives the inflation upwards. Are any of our aspiring leaders going to reverse this trend? Don’t be silly.

Another blow inflation delivers to the standard of living is the so-called bracket creep. As money loses its real value, its nominal value goes up. Thus more and more people are being pushed into higher tax brackets, which leaves even less money for their families.

Instead of freezing income tax brackets, Johnson, ably assisted by Chancellor Sunak, imposed an extra 2.5 per cent national insurance tax. Ask Rishi if he is going to abandon that piece of economic sabotage, see what he says.

Stimulating business and attracting investment are two ways of treating economic ills. Yet instead of lowering business taxes to make Britain a paradise for investors, Johnson-Sunak hiked them high enough to produce an investment hell. Will Rishi undo this damage? Of course not.

Johnson deserved to be dumped for his wokery, virtue-signalling, socialist policies reminiscent of Roosevelt’s New Deal and economically ruinous politicking. Yet none of the candidates shows the slightest sign of being any different, except in the direction of being even worse.

At least Johnson managed to get us out of that corrupt and ineffectual Leviathan, the EU, something most of his rivals fought. Thanks to that he was able to respond to the two great blights of his tenure, Covid and Putin, better than any of his European counterparts.

Putin and his gang wildly celebrating Johnson’s resignation is testimony to at least one good thing he did in government. He is our enemy’s enemy, which should give Johnson a sporting chance of being our friend.

Dubious achievements falling short of ideal responses, some would say. True. But at least they were indeed achievements.

What did Cameron achieve? Legalised homomarriage? And what about that darling bud of May? What did she ever do, other than trying to sabotage the greatest vote in British history?

One doesn’t have to be a soothsayer to predict that the Rishi, Sajid, Jeremy, Liz circus won’t yield a leader any better than Johnson. Even worse, is the safe way to bet.

Yesterday I wrote about the intimate links between Austrian politicians and Putin. Austria being a long way away, a reader asked me to name some similarly connected figure closer to home.

Generally, following Burke’s prescription, I try to respond to my readers’ interests, not necessarily their wishes. This time, however, destiny intervened.

An announcement was made that Prince and Princess Michael of Kent (whom Princess Anne once called ‘Princess Pushy’, and the name stuck) are withdrawing from their official royal duties. The news left me cold since it’s only their unofficial dealings that interest me.

And these enable me to make a start on the aforementioned request. But first I must declare a personal interest. In 2012 I wrote the article below in The Daily Mail, which put an end to my involvement with the paper. The Palace complained, and little insignificant I was out on my ear – especially since I already was on notice for getting on the wrong side of PinkNews.

Here’s that article, with a few current comments attached.

In Russian business a killing doesn’t just mean making a lot of money. It’s a way of settling disagreements, enforcing contracts, collecting debts or just gaining a competitive advantage.

I don’t know which of those motives inspired the murder of the Moscow furniture tycoon Mikhail Kravchenko, and frankly I don’t care. Life has always been cheap in Russia, and it’s now even cheaper than it was, say, 50 years ago. People these days can be murdered for most trivial reasons, making it hard to second-guess the real one.

I only wish that members of our royal family didn’t get embroiled, however tangentially, in the murky world of Russian gangland. That’s precisely what the Russian business world is – and what it can only be in a country that has little tradition of legality. Without a just, independent and enforceable legal system, free enterprise is gangsterism. To this rule there are no exceptions.

That doesn’t mean that every rich man in Russia is a crime lord. Some are, some aren’t. But even those who aren’t have to play the game whose rules are set by the Mafia, operating under the aegis of that ultimate protection racket, the country’s government.

I don’t know much about the late Mr Kravchenko. If newspaper accounts are to be believed, he built his chain of furniture stores on the Ikea model. No direct Mafia links have been mentioned, but every Russian millionaire is tainted, if only by association. A pub landlord who pays protection money to the local hoodlum is unwittingly tarred by the same brush.

That’s why those British figures who stand for something other than just themselves should steer clear of any personal association with so-called Russian businessmen. One realises that this would be too much to expect from the likes of Lord Mandelson, whose financial shenanigans even within Britain have twice got him sacked from the government, and who is now friends with the Russian aluminium king Deripaska. But one is entitled to expect probity from members of the reigning dynasty that’s supposed to embody the historical sagacity and virtue of its realm.

Yet Prince and Princess Michael insist on hobnobbing with various Russians whose power and wealth by definition have a dubious provenance. Speculation has been rife that the Princess’s relationship with Kravchenko went beyond the ‘close friendship’ to which she owns up. I really don’t care one way or the other – though most men would be upset if their wives were photographed holding hands with a younger man in Venice. Venice isn’t Milan; one doesn’t go there on business. But let the gossip columns ponder this. For me a ‘close friendship’ is bad enough.

It may be entirely coincidental that Princess Michael’s ‘close friend’ got riddled with bullets during the same week in which it was revealed that Prince Michael had accepted a gift of £320,000 from Boris Berezovsky. Then again, it may not be.

Berezovsky, Putin’s friend and patron in the past, is now his worst enemy. This means that Boris can’t show his face anywhere near Russia and has to live in England with a platoon of bodyguards in close attendance. Occasionally peeking out from his assorted fortresses, he’s still meddling in Russian politics, usually by financing Putin’s opponents.

Berezovsky has claimed that his gift to Prince Michael was just a friendly gesture, offering help to a man in need. The extent of the grace-and-favour royal’s deprivation is neither immediately obvious nor particularly important. What is significant is that, even if the Russian exile had been driven by uncharacteristically noble impulses, the Prince acted imprudently by accepting money whose origin is in some eyes questionable. And Putin isn’t above sending a not-so-subtle message to the princely family: stay away or else.

Nor is it out of the question that this KGB colonel may see the Prince as a potential rival. The monarchist sentiment is strong in Russia, and it’s getting stronger. And Prince Michael has often been rumoured as a possible tsar, what with the immediate Romanov dynasty having been wiped out in 1918.

In all fairness, it has to be said that the Prince does little to dispel such rumours. He doesn’t mind, for example, emphasising his already remarkable resemblance to his second cousin twice removed, Tsar Nicholas II. To that end His Royal Highness has grown a beard styled à la Nicholas and has taken the trouble of learning Russian to a reasonable standard. His consultancy has had business dealings with Russia for many years, and the Prince has been awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship, a decoration for particularly friendly foreigners.

Being friendly to Russia is one thing; being friendly to her ruling regime is quite another. Apart from its transparent criminality, this regime is fickle in its affections. That it awards a medal to the husband today doesn’t at all preclude the possibility that it might ‘whack’ (to use Putin’s favourite word) the wife’s ‘close friend’ tomorrow.

I’m not speculating whether it did or didn’t. All I’m saying is that it’s best not to come in close contact with dirt, for some of it may rub off on one. It’s best to exercise prudence – unless of course the Prince and Princess wish to strike yet another blow for republicanism in Britain.

Since that article was written for a reputable publication, it was couched in polite terms. I could have gone further then, and I can certainly do so now. After all, the intervening 10 years have added corrective touches to the old story.

For one thing, the security precautions Berezovsky took at the time of writing didn’t work. A few months later he was found garrotted in his bathroom. The official judgement was suicide, which was later changed to an open verdict. That open verdict is an open secret to anyone who knows anything about Putin’s MO: Berezovsky was ‘whacked’.

That didn’t prevent Prince Michael from flogging access to Putin and his entourage for large sums of money, reputed to be £10,000 a day. You must understand that such access is a precious commodity that the paranoid and hypochondriac chieftain doesn’t grant lightly. And he certainly wouldn’t accept mediation from just anybody.

There had to be a quid pro quo there somewhere, and it went beyond the piles of quid both Vlad and HRH could make as a result of such representation. Would it be too much of a stretch to suggest that Prince Michael not only gained but also offered access, making it easier for Putin’s emissaries to infiltrate the British establishment?

The Prince has long-standing links with Russia, and until recently he served as the patron of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, a transparent KGB front. And he still remains an ambassador and shareholder of RemitRadar, a money-transfer firm run by former KGB officer Sergei Markov (“There’s no such thing as ex-KGB. This is for life,” Putin once said.)

Just last year Prince Michael was caught on camera peddling access to Putin. His prospective clients were two undercover reporters posing as Korean gold traders. The Prince assured them that his Russian links would “bring them some benefit”, while his associate told them to keep the transaction hush-hush.

For decades now, the royal couple have relied on Russia for a great part of their income. And by all accounts, Princess Pushy was also attached to Russia emotionally, not just commercially.

I hope that one day all Russian links of the British social and political elite will be properly investigated. I doubt it though: people don’t like to ask questions when they know in advance they’ll hate the answers.

If you ever wonder how thoroughly Western countries are infiltrated by Russian agents (of influence or otherwise), look no further than Austria.

Last week, Karin Kneissl, the country’s Foreign Minister between 2017 and 2019, emigrated from her native land, citing “death threats”.

To this extremely casual observer of Austrian affairs, it was fear for her freedom, not her life, that must have driven her out. For Kneissl’s links with Russia were intimate enough to be described as borderline treasonous.

Putin has been putting his KGB training to good use by systematically infiltrating European politics and recruiting European politicians. Since Germany is the biggest country on that targeted continent, it’s mostly German Putinistas who make the news.

If fact, the process of KGB seduction is called ‘Schroederization’, in honour of Gerhardt Schroeder, the former Chancellor who, when still in office, allowed the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and in general promoted Russian interests wherever he could. After he lost his post, Schroeder made millions as chairman of the Russian oil giant Rosneft.

His successor Angela Merkel was nicknamed ‘Putin’s best woman’, and she did all she could to merit that soubriquet. I’m sure that only Russia’s current attack on the Ukraine has prevented Frau Merkel from collecting her reward of a corporate post matching Schroeder’s.

That Ostpolitik policy of craven appeasement was covered with the fig leaf of a lame excuse called Wandel durch Handel, change through trade. The assumption peddled to the credulous public was that Putin will change his ways under the avalanche of euros pouring into his coffers.

However, predictably, for all the Handel going on, the only Wandel Putin was showing was for the worse. Expecting a KGB regime to act differently was a symptom of, kindly speaking, naivety, and I’d rather not ponder other possibilities.   

For all that, Germany wasn’t the most infiltrated country in Europe. In fact, compared to Austria, Germany comes across as practically a staunch bulwark of anti-Putin resistance. Like their German colleagues, Austrian politicians displayed an enviable cross-party consensus in falling over themselves to kiss the nether regions of Putin’s anatomy.

The Social Democrats led the way, proffering their protruded lips while holding out their hands for the stream of Russian gold. Former Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer (2007-8) ended up on the board of the Dialogue of Civilisations Institute, a Kremlin front led by the KGB general Vladimir Yakunin.

Another former SD Chancellor, Christian Kern, served on the supervisory board of Russian Railways. He campaigned against US sanctions aimed at stopping Nord Stream 2.

As a manifestation of that cross-party consensus, Hans Joerg Schelling, former Conservative Finance Minister, is under contract to Nord Stream 2. And Christian Democrat Wolfgang Schüssel, another former Chancellor, sat on the board of Lukoil, Rosneft’s competitor.

Then the turn came of the Freedom Party, Austria’s answer to France’s National Rally. That party was in the ruling coalition until 2019, when its leader, Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was caught in a sting operation. He was filmed offering to swap government contracts for political support to men posing as Russian oligarchs.

A scandal broke out, and Chancellor Kurz had to end his coalition with the Freedom Party. That also ended the political career of Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl. But, as the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens.

Kneissl was a close friend of Putin’s fascism for years. For example, she visited the Crimea after the occupation, and campaigned vigorously against the post-annexation sanctions. And her personal relationship with Putin made Angie Merkel look positively standoffish.

In fact, Putin was the guest of honour at Kneissl’s 2018 wedding, and let me tell you: not every foreign minister is granted such an honour. Accompanied by the Cossack band he brought with him, Vlad danced with the blushing bride and kissed her hand. In response, Kneissl curtseyed, a gesture normally reserved for royalty.

Her rewards for loyalty were indeed royal. Having lost her government post, Kneissl joined the Rosneft board, which meant instant millions denominated in whatever currency you care to name. She also became a regular columnist at RT, Russia’s close equivalent of Der Stürmer or, to be marginally kinder, of the Völkischer Beobachter.

The aforementioned politicians immediately resigned their lucrative Russian posts after 24 February, when Russia launched her bandit raid on the Ukraine. Putin’s previous escapades of that kind, notably in Georgia, 2008, and the same Ukraine, 2014, hadn’t produced the same effect, but now their hunger for Putin’s rouble had to be put on hold.

Kneissl, however, held out for months and only reluctantly resigned from the Rosneft board in May. And now she is on the run, pursued by death threats or, more likely, the looming prospect of prosecution.

If I were her, I’d inquire if Xi has any openings for European collaborators. The lady is on a roll, and that’s like riding a tiger. The most dangerous thing you can do is to stop.

“To lose one Gazprom tycoon this year is unfortunate. To lose five is sheer carelessness” – this is what Wilde might have said had he not died in 1900.

More to the point is what his instructors must have taught about coincidences at Putin’s KGB spying school. When they number more than two, those gurus doubtless said, they aren’t coincidences.

My question, informed by neither analytical intelligence techniques nor by Wilde’s wit, is one I always ask under such circumstances: What are the odds?

In January, Leonid Shulman, the head of Gazprom’s transport service, was discovered dead at his mansion near St Petersburg. Verdict: suicide.

A month later, another Gazprom official, Alexander Tyulakov, was found hanged. Verdict: suicide.

In April, Vladislav Avayev, a former Gazprombank vice-president, his wife and 13-year-old daughter were found dead of gunshot wounds in their palatial Moscow apartment. Verdict: murder-suicide.

In that same cruel month, Sergey Protosenya, a top manager of an energy company linked with Gazprom, his wife and 18-year-old daughter were found dead of the same cause at their Spanish villa. Verdict: murder-suicide.

And the other day, Yuri Voronov, head of a Gazprom-related transportation company, was found floating dead in his swimming pool, with the gun that had killed him left at the scene nearby. Verdict: suicide.

Far be it from me to suspect foul play within the ranks of Russia’s gas monopoly, nominally headed by Putin’s Petersburg friend Alexei Miller, but part-owned by Vlad himself. It’s just that everything I’ve ever heard or read about statistics inclines me towards scepticism.

Since I don’t think suicide is a viral disease capable of causing epidemics, I’m stuck for a credible explanation. Then again, the history of communist and post-communist countries does add many new twists to epidemiology.

For example, just one month in 1984 saw an outbreak of cardiovascular deaths among Eastern European defence officials.

On 2 December, Army General Hoffmann, East Germany’s Defence Minister died of cardiac arrest. On 15 December, Army General Oláh, Hungary’s Defence Minister, died of cardiac arrest. On 16 December, Army General Dzúr, Czechoslovakia’s Defence Minister, died of cardiac arrest. On 20 December, Marshal Ustinov, Soviet Defence Minister, died of cardiac arrest.

All told, one either has to revise one’s understanding of medicine and, for that matter, statistics, or perhaps reassess one’s grasp of evil regimes. Our governments in the West may be variously incompetent, woke, self-destructive and even unjust. But they are qualitatively different from evil regimes, such as the one in Russia.

That’s partly why Western governments are always tardy in mustering a forceful response when such regimes act up. We simply refuse to accept that they come not just from a different culture, but from an alien moral universe largely inhabited, and exclusively run, by evil humanoids.

Now those creatures, in the deceptively human physique of the Kremlin spokesman Peskov and Foreign Ministry spokesman Zakharova, are in the grip of indecent joy over Boris Johnson’s resignation.

He is supposed to have been “hit by a boomerang launched by himself”, thereby providing a cautionary tale: “do not seek to destroy Russia”. This obscene glee is reason enough to mourn Johnson’s departure.

And do I detect a hint that the Russians played a part in whipping up anti-Johnson hysteria? I wouldn’t put it past them.

The resignation of two cabinet members, Chancellor Sunak and Health Secretary Javid, has thrown Boris Johnson’s tenure into a tailspin that he’ll find hard to reverse.

Now, typically I refrain from delving too deeply into the political rough-and-tumble of Britain. Since I’m not particularly interested in political mechanics and machinations myself, I don’t see how I can keep my readers, especially non-Britons, from stifling yawns.

However, the political problem Britain is facing is neither strictly political nor indigenously British. It’s existential and international or, if you will, civilisational.

We can argue about the pros and cons of our democracy run riot till the MPs come home from their summer recess, but one thing is indisputable. This system consistently fails to elevate to government those fit to govern, which is after all a principal desideratum of any political method. And practice shows that, whenever any system fails to deliver on its remit for decades, the problem lies with the system, not just its specific operators.

As I look at the line-up of Western leaders this century, I genuinely fear for our collective survival. Seldom does one see such a complement of fools and knaves in any important jobs, never mind those that affect the whole world.

Not a single one displays the traits of character, morality and intellect that ought to be essential job requirements for a career in government. Against that background, I can’t for the life of me see how Johnson deserves to be ousted and, say, Biden, Scholz and Macron don’t.

Getting back to our green and pleasant land, nor do I see a Tory leader promising to be any better than Johnson. As for Labour politicians, not a single one is within a million miles of being able to run anything bigger than a local communist cell… sorry, I mean a union branch.

That Johnson doesn’t seem to know the difference between truth and falsehood, wielding either or both as the situation demands, is obvious. That he is obsessed with power for its own sake can’t be gainsaid either, and neither can the palpable contempt he feels for his own regulations.

These are the first and usually last points brought up by his critics, frothing at the mouth on Sky News this morning. Alastair Campbell, Svengali to Tony Blair, was especially foamy.

He was on the air for about five minutes, during which time he managed to scream “liar, cheat, charlatan, criminal” half a dozen times. Johnson, he shouted with that stern self-righteous expression of his, is “the worst prime minister we’ve ever had”.

I’d say Johnson is better, or rather marginally less awful, than any post-Thatcher PM, emphatically including Campbell’s former charge. No PM in British history wreaked as much constitutional sabotage as Blair did, with Campbell providing the inspiration and the spin.

Then Michael Heseltine came on and croaked many words along the same lines, adding a few inanities of his own. The greatest crime Johnson committed, said that Remainer-in-Chief, was pushing Brexit through.

Really? And there I was, thinking that, by doing so, Johnson merely acted on the will of the British people, expressed in the biggest number of votes ever cast for anything.

We are all committed democrats, aren’t we? Especially those who, like Heseltine, devoted their whole lives to democratic politics? It sounds suspiciously as if those chaps like democracy only when it yields the result they want.

Johnson did push Brexit through, even though the political establishment fought tooth and nail to ignore the greatest vote in British history. By doing so, he rode roughshod over saboteurs of British sovereignty and therefore constitution, those who were willing to turn Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth into Liz Windsor, citizen of the EU.

Johnson also unrolled the Covid vaccination programme faster and more effectively than any other European leader. I know that many people regard the relevant science as dubious, but they weren’t in a position to make life or death decisions, as Johnson was. Agree or disagree, but he did well in showing due respect for a pandemic that killed 4.5 million worldwide.

He also put Britain in the vanguard of the civilised countries trying to stop Russian fascism in its tracks. People say that Johnson came out as a champion of the Ukraine’s independence for selfish reasons, to divert public attention from domestic problems. That very well may be, but it’s not as if Messrs Biden, Macron, Scholz and Draghi had no domestic problems they’d wish to divert public attention from.

All the crimes Johnson is charged with in the court of his political opponents are trivial. At worst, they fall into the category of misdemeanours for which a gentle rap on the knuckles would be sufficient punishment.

He flouted his own regulations by having a garden shindig at Number 10 – naughty. But he who is without sin, and all that. Did you follow every Covid regulation without fail? Did anyone you know? I didn’t, and I don’t expect a politician to be any more law-abiding, or for that matter moral, than I am.

Then he didn’t immediately sack that walking aptronym, Deputy Whip Pincher, when it came to light that the chap tended to, well, pinch other men when in his cups. When confronted, Johnson told a transparent lie about not having heard any of the previous accusations of Pincher’s tactile tendencies.

Bring out that ruler, time for another rap on the knuckles. Of course, it’s not nice for politicians to lie. But show me one who says he never does, and I’ll show you a liar. A modern politician who doesn’t lie violates the sacred, if unspoken, oath of his profession.

Every few years they are supposed to go before the public, having first spent millions on trying to gauge the public’s wishes. Then, focus group reports in front of their eyes, they systematically promise to fulfil every one of those wishes, knowing in advance they have neither the means nor indeed the intention of doing so.

They thus prostitute the essence of their profession, while sticking by its overwhelmingly dominant techniques. Compared to that, what’s a little lie about another politician’s wandering hands? Kindergarten stuff, really.

Lest you may think I’m arguing that Johnson is fit to be prime minister, I am not. Of course, he isn’t. Johnson isn’t a bad politician, he is just a typical one.

Actually, he is wittier, better educated and better spoken than most. Someone like Biden or Trump can’t even speak English properly, while Johnson effortlessly swaps Gallic puns with Manny Macron. He can even whip out a Greek quotation when pressed.

All those qualities make him an ideal companion at a dinner party, provided he can keep his hands off the behinds of other men’s wives. Alas, such accomplishments are irrelevant to his profession, and some will even argue they are injurious to it.

Few great statesmen from Washington to de Gaulle to Thatcher were widely celebrated for their effortless charm. They brought to bear on their mission other qualities, those demonstrably lacking in Johnson.

One such is having principles. Johnson doesn’t seem to believe in anything but Johnson. He is certainly not a Tory in anything other than his dress sense and speech.

He is an opportunist who will do or say anything that’ll keep him in power a while longer. Looking at his record on the economy, there is no denying his tenure has been plagued by bad luck, in the shape of Covid and Putin (my French friends maliciously pronounce the word virus as vie-russe, thereby merging the two plagues together).

Yet it’s as clear that Johnson’s policies have made the situation much worse. Having sensed that going against the woke grain would be detrimental to his political career, he has committed the country to every knavish trick of modernity.

Trillions are in the process of being wasted on the diktats of the green ideology, with Johnson making frankly idiotic and unrealistic commitments, such as having no fossil-engine cars by 2030. Abandoning such anti-scientific neo-Luddite programmes would go a long way towards easing the country’s economic plight.

Johnson’s commitment to promiscuous social spending financed by the highest taxation for decades is rapidly turning what could have been a mild downturn into a looming catastrophe. High public spending is a principal driver of high inflation, which economic maxim Johnson is helpfully vindicating.

Interestingly, his critics don’t take Johnson to account on such suicidal economic irresponsibility because he is practising exactly what they themselves preach. Nor is he criticised for his commitment to every woke diktat, from multi-culti to numerically virtuous representation of women in government and corporations to homomarriage to the transsex perversions.

This gets me back to the question in the headline above. Who should take Johnson’s place, provided the place becomes vacant thanks to the combined efforts of our ‘liberal’ media and his political competitors? Who would have done better in his place, or can be confidently expected to do better if finding himself at Number 10?

Sunak? Javid? Gove? Raab? Mordaunt, she of the thunder thighs fame? Or – and I hope you’ve already had your lunch – Starmer? Sturgeon perhaps? Possibly Blair, should he make a comeback, as is widely mooted?

You begin to see my point. The problem is with the horse, not the jockey. Unless we rethink all modern political assumptions, we’ll be forever stuck with self-serving nonentities, of whom Johnson is far from the worst.

In most countries, history is to some extent politicised, that is revised to reflect modern political sensibilities. Some of that is unavoidable, I suppose, but pushing that tendency to an extreme will replace history with politics altogether.

Russian historiography, especially but far from exclusively over the past 100 years, is a typical example of facts replaced with politically motivated mythology. Putin is a prime exponent of this, justifying his beastliness with historical references that can only charitably be described as inaccurate.

This brings me to Alexander Nevsky (d. 1263), honoured in Russia as one of its greatest heroes and canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1547. In a 2008 poll, Nevsky was named the greatest Russian ever, narrowly beating Stalin to that honour. Yet that tells you more about Russians in general than specifically about Nevsky.

Alexander, Grand Prince of Kiev, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Prince of Novgorod, acquired his sobriquet by defeating a mighty Swedish army in the 1240 Battle of the Neva. Two years later he defeated the Livonian knights in a battle fought on the ice of Lake Peipus, thus again saving Holy Russia from Western infidels.

The latter exploit was immortalised by Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 film, commissioned by Stalin. Hence the first icon, or rather iconic image on the left: Nikolai Cherkassky in the eponymous role, his chiselled Nordic features doubtless reflecting Stalin’s self-image he liked to cherish in his heart (though not in front of a mirror).

Eisenstein’s brilliant camerawork, accompanied by Shostakovich’s rousing score, showed Nevsky leading his host into battle. At the critical moment, the ice cracked and hundreds of those Teutonic knights drowned.

Such was the climax of history as politics. History as fact is rather different.

Alexander’s first epic victory was won against a mounted convoy accompanying a caravan of goods for sale. Hence the engagement was merely a skirmish, which Alexander indeed won. However, the provenance of his adversaries is uncertain.

One known fact is that their leader was named Spiridon, a name of Slavic origin. Another fact was that Alexander’s second-in-command was named Drochila, meaning ‘wanker’. A possible name for an epic hero, I suppose, but not the most obvious one.

The contemporaneous chronicles don’t mention the event at all, a gap that Swedish documents never filled. Russian chronicles waited for at least another century for the triumph to make an appearance, but even then it only rated the briefest of mentions.

The Battle on the Ice wasn’t much of a battle either, and by all reliable accounts it wasn’t fought on ice. What is a documented fact is that only 20 knights were killed there, which again qualifies the encounter as a skirmish, not a great battle.

While playing fast and loose with facts, Russian historians, ably assisted by Eisenstein, were accurate in their depiction of Nevsky as an implacable enemy of the West. Russian princes had by then resisted any penetration by Catholicism for at least three centuries, and portraying Alexander in that light was true to life.

He was much more relaxed about cooperating with the Mongols who had invaded Rus’ (Russia qua Russia didn’t exist then) three years before Alexander’s jolly men raided that Slavo-Swedish caravan. In fact, perhaps ‘relaxed’ was too mild a word.

It was with gusto that Alexander collaborated with the Mongol invaders under Khan Batu. He collected tributes for the Mongols from other Rus’ princes, putting his foot down when they wouldn’t pay. Novgorod, a Hanseatic and hence pro-Western principality, was particularly reluctant to cough up.

Alexander attacked on behalf of his Mongol masters and drowned the city in blood. The chronicles of the time record noses and ears cut off, eyes gouged out, and heads rolling. The Mongols had every reason to be happy with their boy.

So happy, in fact, that Alexander officially fraternised with Batu’s son Sartaq (an Arian Christian, by the way). Legally, therefore, he became the Khan’s foster son, a member of his family.

After perestroika arrived, historical revisionism in Russia was for a while privatised, with many amateur historians coming up with wild theories that had nothing to do with reality. Their books were a jolly good read, but one was ill-advised to rely on them for knowledge.

According to one such theory, Alexander wasn’t a Rus’ prince of Scandinavian descent, but actually himself a Mongol. Moreover, he was Batu’s actual, rather than just legal, son. I once read a whole book about that, in the same spirit in which one reads science fiction or comic novels.

And then, in 2005, I attended the greatest exhibition of Russian icons I’ve ever seen, at the Petit Palais in Paris. Some 500 pieces were on show, including the one on the left.

This 17^th century icon shows Alexander Nevsky as, not to cut too fine a point, a Mongol. His facial features are definitely Mongoloid, and he is wearing the dress of a Mongol khan.

What does one make of this? You tell me. The best I can do is have a guess, or rather a few of them.

One would be that the crazy theory wasn’t as crazy as all that, and Alexander was indeed Batu’s son. As far as wild guesses go, this one is as good as any, but there’s a slight hitch. Not a single document supports this possibility.

In fact, Alexander’s genealogy isn’t disputed anywhere. He was a son of the Vladimir Grand Prince Yaroslav, grandson of Vsevolod the Big Nest (so nicknamed because he had 14 children) and great-grandson of Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow.

There isn’t a Mongol in that family tree, whose roots can be traced back to Sweden. Then why depict Alexander as a Mongol chieftain?

That could have been a piece of satire, a sort of posthumous rebuke for Alexander’s role as an early prototype of Quisling with an extra violent dimension. The message could have been that, while technically of Rus’ origin, Alexander was a Mongol at heart.

Yet this message is defeated by its medium. An icon is a vehicle for veneration, not criticism. By the time that icon was painted, Alexander had been canonised for about 100 years. Thus the icon depicted St Alexander Nevsky, not the savage debt collector in the service of Khan Batu.

Why then? I don’t know, and none of my guesses sounds convincing. In fact, I’m writing this piece in the hope that an expert will read it and poopoo my ignorance. As a supposedly educated man, he’d say, you should know that… Alas, I can’t complete this sentence.

Eliot got it wrong when he gave that honour to April in The Waste Land. Well, not wrong exactly, but right only on his own metaphorical terms.

However, if we segue from Eliot’s sublime poetic imagery to the nuts and bolts of modern political history, then July has to take pride of place in any cruelty contest. For the fourth and fourteenth of that month mark the two cataclysmic events, each driving nails into the coffin of our civilisation.

The fourteenth is Bastille Day in France, celebrating the day when a mob stormed that symbol of oppression in 1789. In Robbie Burns’s poem The Tree of Liberty, the eponymous tree “… stands where ance the Bastille stood,/ A prison built by kings, man,/ When Superstition’s hellish brood/ Kept France in leading strings, man.”

The mob heroically stormed the undefended prison, to find that “Superstition’s hellish brood” kept “in leading strings” not all of France, but just seven inmates. Rather tame, as far as oppression goes, but it was the absence of thought and overabundance of emotion that mattered.

(Scotland’s national poet was definitely national, but not much of a poet. Italy had Dante, England had Shakespeare, France had Racine, Germany had Goethe, Russia had Pushkin – and Scotland had a spinner of bawdy doggerel.)

Since that day, France has been straining every sinew trying to live down the awful consequences of the French Revolution, with variable success. But the earlier July event, one that happened 246 years ago today, has had a different effect on the perpetrators.

Rather than trying to mitigate the negative effects of their own revolution, Americans have since been trying to do their utmost to exacerbate them. One such was the typical neophyte zeal they display when protesting their patriotism.

Patriotism is a kind of love, and real love is a quiet emotion. If a man walks around screaming at all and sundry how much he loves his wife, he’s probably stupid or even insane. In the very least, he is a vulgarian who might have learned his manners at a correctional facility for young delinquents.

Moreover, sane, intelligent and well-mannered people will instantly think that the chap doth protest too much. He sounds as if he were out to convince not so much others but above all himself of the feeling he tries to manufacture but doesn’t really have.

The same goes for patriotism. Loving one’s country is both natural and commendable, but shouting that love from the rooftops is neither.

When I lived in America, I tried to sequester myself on the Fourth of July. Even before I knew better, I winced at the sight of multitudes obediently putting their hands over their hearts on cue. The gesture is clearly Masonic and heathen, like much of American livery – from the cyclopes pyramid on the dollar bills to the pagan temples in Washington’s Tidal Basin.

Even more cringe-making was the ubiquitous phrase “God bless America”, which is the de rigueur ending to every soliloquy delivered by every politician, even a rank atheist.

To be fair, the popular sacralisation of America didn’t start with the Revolution. When the first settlers arrived on the Mayflower, their leader John Winthrope immediately likened the new land to the city on a hill mentioned by St Matthew.

That was understandable then. The settlers were threatened by feral animals, scalping Indians, inclement weather, uncertain food supply, the foreboding mass of a huge, unpredictable continent. They had to believe God was with them because no one else was.

But now that the West has gone atheist, this “God bless America” business is naff. It would be fine as a line in the national anthem, but not as part of a spiel used by a politician to trick votes out of the electorate. In that context, the line ill-serves both America and God.

I can’t for the life of me imagine any British politicians, including jingoistic ones, ending a speech with “God bless Great Britain”. I attended a few gatherings of UKIP, a party for which patriotism was its whole programme, and I’m friends with one of the party’s former chairmen. But never once did I hear any UKIPers, including those I knew to be extremely pious, shout the patriotic beatitude – the laws of good taste haven’t quite yet been repealed here.

Anyway, how is America blessed more than any other residually civilised country? It has much natural beauty, but then so does every country I know. And if we accept that God also blesses people aesthetically, by inviting them to emulate His creative powers, then American cities don’t show many signs of such a blessing, especially when compared with, say, Italy or France.

America’s youth doesn’t work as an explanation here, for much of both Paris and London was built in the 19th century, when America was already going strong. Yet either place is more aesthetically ‘blessed’ than any American city.

Loving one’s country is indeed love, a manifestation of both God’s essence and His way of dealing with the world. But loudmouthed protestations and festooned pageants vulgarise this noble emotion, while making one doubt its sincerity.

The same goes for the American obsession with greatness, something she shares with Russia, if in a more benign fashion. A person or, by way of extrapolation, a nation should strive to be good, not great. And then perhaps it will become great.

The criteria of goodness are indisputable, especially for a nation that squeezes God’s name into every imaginable context, including inappropriate ones. For details, look up the writing of the author I mentioned earlier, St Matthew. Acting as his teacher’s mouthpiece, he explains what it means to be good and what kind of people are blessed.

The criteria of greatness, on the other hand, are subjective. Both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump doubtless want America to be great, but they define the concept differently. The only way to decide the issue is to ask the electorate, which by itself shows how relativist this whole idea is.

Greatness may be associated with military strength, territorial expansion, universal prosperity, free medical care, rampant egalitarianism, black lives that matter more than any others, low taxation, high taxation, more immigration, less immigration, abortions banned or available on demand – and who’s to say what adds up to greatness and what doesn’t? One man’s greatness is another man’s Donald Trump.

On this day in 1776 American founders signed the clearest statement of Enlightenment values before the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Some of those signatories, such as the country’s second president John Adams, later got to regret that act bitterly.

“Did not the American Revolution produce the French Revolution? And did not the French Revolution produce all the calamities and desolation of the human race and the whole globe ever since?” he wrote in 1811.

And Tolstoy wrote that every man is a fraction, where the numerator is what he is and the denominator is what he thinks of himself. The same applies to nations, and I’m not sure the product of the American fraction is as unequivocally positive as many Americans so fervently believe.

Still, there is something endearing about so many people celebrating their national holiday with so much enthusiasm. So happy Fourth of July to all my American readers. A country that can produce so many such people can’t be all bad.

The other day I watched a Sky News report on the preparations for the upcoming Pride parade.

The camera panned as if on crystal meth, while London was being turned into a megalomaniac version of the Weimar Republic with a touch of a Nuremberg rally thrown in. Neither the reporter nor the presenter could contain their rapture.

I’ve probably never seen, and definitely never experienced, so much unbridled joy. The two women were laughing, gasping, jumping – exulting. The BBC radio broadcast on 8 May, 1945, was before my time, but I’m sure the victory announcement had to be more restrained and less triumphant.

Floats were getting a trial run, rainbow flags and Take Pride posters were flying everywhere, and the two Sky women helpfully informed us that this was the 50^th anniversary of the event. I was bracing myself for them to squeal “Happy anniversary!!!” or else sing “Happy birthday”, but they managed to desist, if not without some effort.

Will the police be in attendance? asked the presenter. Yes, acknowledged the reporter, they will be. But in civilian clothes, of course, because those prideful multitudes may see police uniforms as a symbol of oppression.

How wrong she was. When the great spectacle engulfed central London yesterday, a fully uniformed police unit marched in step with the prideful ones, with nary a demur. An army platoon followed, marching in their inimitable style, arms swinging, boots beating the tattoo on the tarmac.

Speaking of tattoos, there were millions of them on offer, drowned in the sea of gaudy costume jewellery, face paint, glitter and sequins. One tattoo was exhibited by the Labour Deputy Leader Angel Rayner who marched hand in hand with her boss Sir Keir Starmer (a socialist knight of the realm is a bit oxymoronic, don’t you think?).

Angie established her hetero credentials early, when she got pregnant at 16, had to leave school and eventually became, at 37, the youngest grandmother ever to sit in the mother of all parliaments. And, as far as I know, Sir Keir’s enthusiasm for the LGBTQ+ cause is also disinterested and so much the purer for it. But the duo feel duty-bound to express solidarity with any subversive cause going, and this one is as subversive as they come.

The event was billed as “the biggest and most inclusive in history”, but the guru of British homosexuality, Peter Tatchell, is disappointed. The parade, he complains, has become “too corporate and commercial” and not political enough.

Now I have some history with Mr Tatchell. Some 11 years ago, I wrote a piece in The Mail about Boris Johnson, then London mayor, allowing homosexual advertising on buses but banning a Christian response in the same medium. Fair should be fair, I wrote, using the word ‘aberration’ in the process, but strictly in the dictionary sense of a deviation from the norm.

Tatchell was aghast. He immediately published my photograph, along with contact details, in his paper PinkNews, inviting his readers to express their feelings. As a result, I received hundreds of abusive e-mails, some containing death threats.

So yes, he is right. Homosexuality is no longer a perversion, and not even just a perfectly legitimate choice of a lifestyle (dread word). It has become, like everything else nowadays, a political issue.

If Mr Tatchell wishes to make it even more political, that’s his privilege. I still find something odd, however, about a man whose chosen form of political self-expression is buggering another man. Yet I realise I’m hopelessly behind the times there.

That’s why, I suppose, I also struggle with this movement calling itself ‘Pride’. I just don’t get it. How can anyone be proud about the type of sexual intercourse that gets him through the night or, in this case, through Hampstead Heath?

My classically educated friends tell me that the Ancient Greeks had two words for pride, but the one that applies here has come down to us as ‘hubris’. Its meaning in ancient times changed depending on the context, but in legalese it meant assault or sexual crimes.

Is that what those marchers mean by pride? I doubt it, but perhaps they should. Sexual assault on public morality and decency seems to describe the 50 years of these abominations accurately. I doubt our civilisation can withstand another 50 years without collapsing in on itself.

Now we are in the classical mode, Ovid wrote: Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Times change, and we change with them.

Some 60 years ago, the American comedian Lenny Bruce got in trouble for telling this joke: “A boy asks his father, ‘Daddy, what’s a degenerate?’ ‘Never you mind and keep sucking’.” Lenny was arrested for obscenity. Today, the same joke would get him arrested for homophobia.

I like some modern politicians more, or usually even less, than others. Yet I pride myself on understanding them all, good, bad or indifferent.

Their motives are hardly enigmatic. Anyone blessed with a rudimentary understanding of human nature, especially if laced with a soupçon of scepticism, can read politicians like an open trash novel.

Thus I’m sometimes pleased, more often disgusted, but hardly ever confused. Yet Putin has succeeded where so many have failed: I’m man enough to admit I’m utterly mystified.

What has produced this rare effect is his comment on Sweden’s and Finland’s impending entry into Nato. This has a direct bearing on the on-going war, or rather the reasons for it put forth by the Russian side.

Putin, his propagandists, emissaries and Western agents, witting or unwitting, have been screaming that the eastward expansion of Nato presents a mortal threat to Russia. One such Western groupie (who will henceforth go unnamed lest I may be accused of waging a personal vendetta) has been playing this theme with no variations in his Sunday columns for at least 15 years, hardly ever omitting it.

The theme had a crazy logic to it. Nato has devised an anti-Russian conspiracy. At its heart is the strategy of encircling Russia with Nato members, like a noose tightening on the neck of this saintly, peaceful country.

Nato leaders are waiting for a propitious moment to catch Russia unawares and strike. But not on your nelly, says Putin and his aforementioned cohort. Russia is forever alert, ready, in the ignored words of the British anthem, to confound her enemies’ politics and frustrate their knavish tricks.

What those Western scoundrels describe as Russia’s acts of aggression against her neighbours are actually preemptive attempts to beat Nato to the punch. Russia has to lash out because she has been severely provoked and menaced by Nato’s expansion.

This story bears no relationship to reality, but it adds up on its own terms. Nato has indeed been expanding eastwards over the past 30 years. Russia may indeed feel threatened, even if no threat actually exists. But perception is reality, didn’t Andy Warhol say that? So, if Russia perceives danger, it’s real.

Alas, seen in that light, the attack on the Ukraine diverts from the ironclad logic of the narrative. First, no plans had been afoot to admit the Ukraine to Nato, certainly not in any foreseeable future. But fine, if Putin felt such a development was imminent, it was.

But how was the attack on the Ukraine supposed to roll Nato back? What response did Putin envisage? That all the recent Eastern European members would rush to the exit? Not very likely, is it? Much more realistic was to expect that even those countries that had until then resisted Nato membership would be frightened into joining.

That’s exactly what happened with Sweden and Finland, and these – with no disrespect for such Nato members as Albania or North Macedonia – are serious and prosperous Western countries. Moreover, Finland in particular has been shoring up her defences against a possible Russian aggression ever since 1945.

The Nato Summit at Madrid fast-tracked their membership, which instantly proved that Putin’s professed strategy was counterproductive. Rather than emasculating Nato, the attack on the Ukraine tightened Nato’s muscles. Rather than limiting Nato membership, the attack has expanded it.

One would expect Putin to respond by visiting the ten Egyptian plagues on those pesky Scandinavians or at least by making credible threats to that effect. And sure enough, that was his immediate reaction. But that happened before the Madrid Summit.

Now he has changed his tune. Speaking at a press conference the other day, Putin said: “We have no problems with Sweden or Finland, of the kind we regrettably have with the Ukraine. We have no territorial issues, no disputes, nothing to worry us about Finland’s and Sweden’s Nato membership.”

Excuse me? There I was, thinking that Putin gnaws at his fingernails day and night worried about Nato breathing down Russia’s neck. Yet now he has “no problems” with Nato getting another 830 miles of border with Russia. Moreover, that border now runs a mere 240 miles from Petersburg.

Just a few months ago Putin fretted about the missile flight time from Poland to Moscow. Yet Poland is 867 miles away, as the missile flies. So what about the flight time from Finland to Petersburg? Putin ought to be weeping and wailing and gnashing his teeth, yet he just shrugs: “No problem”.

Let’s walk backwards now. Putin clearly isn’t worried about Nato launching missiles at Russian cities because he knows no such threat exists. Ergo, he isn’t really worried about Nato’s eastward, or for that matter northward, expansion, not for any military reasons at any rate.

Ergo, he didn’t attack the Ukraine to stop that development, especially since the Ukraine herself had no chance of being admitted into Nato at least for a generation. Ergo, he did so for some other reason.

In search of what that might have been, I backtrack to 24 February and find out that Putin’s stated aim was then to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” the Ukraine. Since every Russian (and the nameless pundit I mentioned earlier) knows that the Ukraine’s commitment to both militarisation and Nazification is unwavering, that aim could only have been achieved by occupying the whole country and installing a puppet regime.

Yet, as if committed to deepening my confusion, Putin says that: “Nothing has changed. I did say that in the early morning of 24 February, and I said so publicly to the whole country and the whole world… I specified the ultimate goal: liberating the Donbass, protecting those people and creating guarantees of Russia’s security.”

That means leaving those militarised Nazis to their own vices and devices in the rest of the Ukraine. It also follows that at issue here is the security of Russia herself, not just that of the denizens of the Lugansk and Donetsk provinces of the Ukraine.

Hence, if I understand correctly which I’m sure I don’t, it’s not Nato in general, but specifically those two provinces that threaten Moscow and Petersburg. Is that what Vlad is saying? I’m no longer just confused. I’m befuddled.

In any case, how does the terroristic bombing of schools, hospitals, kindergartens, residential buildings and shopping malls, like the one in Kremenchug, fit into this redefined plan? It doesn’t. That’s why nothing like that ever happens.

Thus Putin: “The Russian army doesn’t strike civilian targets – there’s no need.” However, Russia does strike such targets even in the absence of a need, unless of course all the video footage of fires, ruins and corpses is fake. Or unless the Ukies are killing their own civilians to make Russia look bad.

But wait a moment. Just as I was ready to accept that version of events, the Russian Defence Ministry admitted that the Kremenchug shopping mail was indeed destroyed by a Russian rocket, although that wasn’t its intended target.

This doesn’t really clarify matters. If anything, it obfuscates them. Surely even the legal sense for which the Russians are universally famous should stretch to realising that the defence of “I didn’t mean to open fire on that crowd of schoolchildren, it just happened” wouldn’t cut much ice in any court.

There’s only one way out of the growing confusion, mine and no doubt yours. We must ignore the noises produced by Putin and his shills, both in Russia and in the West.

Instead, we should rely on the evidence before our eyes, as processed by the minds God gave us. Then none of us will be confused.

We’ll know that Putin’s evil fascist regime attacks its neighbours because it can’t stand the thought of their joining – no, not Nato, but Western civilisation. Membership in that club potentially comes packaged with the kind of freedom and prosperity Russia has never had, not ever will have unless she too travels the same road.

Fascist regimes can’t compete against civilised countries – they can only try to destroy them, either by occupation or by sabotage or by indiscriminate bombing. For fascist regimes are by their nature terroristic, and this is what terrorists do – they wreak destruction.

Like werewolves, Russian ghouls can only be stopped by a silver bullet. This is a metaphor for a resolute Nato response – whatever form it has to take. (Note to Nato leaders: expressions of concern and half-hearted arms supplies don’t qualify.)

When a major bank happily loses accounts to uphold a pernicious ideology, you know it’s the end of the world.

A harbinger of that apocalyptic catastrophe was provided by Halifax, one of Britain’s biggest banks. The company posted the picture on the left, accompanied by the slogan ‘Pronouns matter’.

Since the badge identifying ‘Gemma’ seems to be pinned to the lapel of a man’s jacket, pronouns she/her/hers probably do matter in this case. They save customers the trouble of deciding whether the clerk they are talking to is a man, a woman or a proud member of one of the other 70-odd known sexes.

Halifax explained that the new labelling was designed to avoid ‘accidental misgendering’. This concern for people’s feelings is commendable. After all, if a conspicuously male clerk named Gemma is addressed with a masculine personal pronoun, he/she/it may go into an irreversible psychiatric tailspin, with suicide looming large.

Alas, Halifax customers lack similar sensitivity to things that really matter in life. More than 10,000 instantly complained about the bank’s “antics with pronouns”. A conflict between principle and business was brewing, but the bank stood its ground.

Halifax’s social media manager belied the common image of bankers as people who’d sell their daughters into slavery for a small amount. “If you disagree with our values,” he/she/it countered, “you’re welcome to close your account.”

Hundreds of Halifax customers have already taken the bank up on that kind offer by closing their accounts, cancelling their credit cards and discontinuing their insurance policies. But hey, as the great adman Bill Bernbach once said, “A principle isn’t a principle until it has cost you money.”

Much as I despise the principle involved, I find the bank’s steadfastness strangely appealing. But then I’m neither its customer nor, more to the point, one of its shareholders.

You know, shareholders? The kind of people to whom publicly held corporations owe fiduciary duty? If hundreds of absconders turn into thousands, those investors are bound to see their holdings rapidly heading in the direction of brown wrapping paper.

Will they then share Halifax’s commitment to wokery über alles? Somehow I doubt that, but I may well be mistaken. It’s quite possible that the rot has already set so deep that the whole society is tottering.

If you are still struggling with the definition of totalitarianism, this is it. Totalitarianism isn’t about mass executions, torture cellars and concentration camps. All these are symptoms that may or may not show.

The essence of totalitarianism is a dominant ideology so pervasive and bossy that it rides roughshod over everything else: morality, common sense, sanity or, in this case, money.

Contrary to what a character in a popular film said, greed isn’t good. But it’s better than this.