Author: Alexander Boot

Most people believe that political taxonomy is essentially binary: Right-wing or Left-wing.

Some will grant that these two colours have multiple shades described by adding forms like far-, extreme-, moderate-, loony-, populist- and so on. Sometimes party affiliation comes into play too, such as Tory or Labour in Britain, Republican or Democratic in the US and some such.

Right-wing is sometimes mistakenly confounded with conservative and Left-wing with liberal – in the former case, to a great extent, in the latter case, totally. Conservatives do overlap with Right-wingers on a few issues, but Left-wingers are about as illiberal as it’s possible to get this side of concentration camps.

Now that we’ve established these premises, let’s play the game of ‘What Are My Politics?’ As a sporting man, I’ll give you a few clues.

I am a firm believer in tradition, specifically Western, which is to say Christian, tradition.

I’m certain that a series of mass rebellions against apostolic Christianity going by the names of the Reformation and the Enlightenment were unmitigated tragedies, steering the West towards a spiritual abyss, if by delayed action.

Western governments, I believe, should unequivocally identify themselves as Christian. Yet exponents of other religions shouldn’t be persecuted or denied the freedom to practise their faith – as long as they don’t encroach on the predominantly and unapologetically Christian nature of Western nations.

I believe states should evolve organically, not by revolutionary outbursts. In that spirit, I dislike all modern revolutions: English, American, French and Russian. They, especially the last three, delivered a blow to reason and morality from which the West is still reeling. That’s why I generally dislike post-Enlightenment modernity.

Along with Plato, Aristotle and every subsequent political thinker of any importance, I’m a firm believer in a monarchy counterbalanced by aristocracy and parliamentary democracy. Mixed governance, what in the past was called res publica, is the most reliable guarantor of freedom.

I regard unbalanced, totalitarian democracy as an abomination guaranteeing that those fit to govern will seldom get, nor will usually seek, the chance to do so. Unchecked democracy inevitably develops into a factor of tyranny, even if it doesn’t start out that way.

If we must have such democracy, I believe it must be limited by various qualifiers, such as those of age, property, education and so on. On the subject of age, people under 25 ought not to be allowed to vote because their brains aren’t yet even wired properly. A push for lowering the voting age is and has always been motivated by nefarious urges.

I believe the right and ability to control the country’s borders are essential aspects of sovereignty. Immigration must be tightly controlled, especially when it comes to cultural aliens, and the state must have the resolve and wherewithal to impose such controls.

That, however, doesn’t mean all immigration should be stopped. Some new arrivals offer vital skills for the host economy, and it’s silly to keep them at bay. However, before they are admitted, their potential for subversion must be carefully assessed.

Schools should be free of ideological indoctrination. Pupils must only be taught traditional disciplines, such as religion, history, literature, mathematics, rudimentary philosophy, natural science, at least two modern languages and either Latin or Greek (ideally both).

Not all pupils are equally gifted academically. Those who’d find such a curriculum too difficult should receive a different education, stressing practical skills needed to survive the rough-and-tumble of a modern economy.

The grammar and secondary modern schools of Britain’s past made British education the envy of the world, rather than the laughingstock it currently is. A return to that or a similar model is desirable. In general, equality must be roundly renounced as a virtue and a desideratum, except equality before God and the law.

University education should be set up in line with Newman’s ideas laid down in his book The Idea of a University, with courses designed to develop students’ ability to think, analyse and synthesise.

If students also wish to take courses in more practical subjects, such as computer science or engineering, these too could be offered at universities, but their proper domain is trade colleges.

Classical music can’t survive by box office receipts while maintaining its quality. Patronage is essential, and if private donors fail to provide sufficient funding, the state must take up the slack. Yet state financing for pop music and other arts perfectly capable of supporting themselves must be stopped.

Defence of the realm from foreign aggressors and domestic criminals is the paramount function of any sovereign country. National budgets should allocate as much funding for these as it takes – off the top, before other expenditures are even considered.

The state has a role to play in the economic game, but it should be that of a referee, not an active player. If history teaches anything, it’s that national prosperity is inversely proportionate to the state’s cut of the economy. The freer the economy, the greater and more widely distributed are the gains.

Taxation should never exceed 20 per cent of GDP, ideally 15 per cent. Low taxation and regulation have been irrefutably shown to stimulate economic growth and hence practically universal prosperity. Green taxes must be summarily ditched, based as they are on ideological bias and no sound scientific evidence.

The state should always pay its way, and deficit spending must be outlawed at peacetime. Public debt must be steadily reduced, which too comes under the rubric of defence of the realm. Having, and serving, debts in the trillions means courting economic disaster that may be as damaging as a military defeat.

A free economy has winners and losers, but, in a civilised country, people shouldn’t lose too badly. Provisions must be in place to care for the old and infirm, widows and orphans, those genuinely incapable of working. How this is achieved, and whether it’s the state or private charities or both that should provide such a safety net, is up for discussion. But traditional, which is to say Christian, mercy dictates that the net must be provided.

This shouldn’t be equated with the welfare state, which must be summarily disbanded. A thriving economy offers endless opportunities for able-bodied adults to support themselves. If they are unwilling to take advantage of such opportunities, they have only themselves to blame.

Now, I could give you plenty more clues, but these should suffice. In case you are still undecided, here’s one last clue that should obviate any doubt: I consider myself a conservative, perhaps with a touch of reactionary here and there.

However, I’m wrong – and so are you if your guess agreed with my self-identification. At least, we are wrong according to the Telegraph columnist Michael Deacon.

If he played the game I proposed, he’d describe me as a raging Leftie. That’s because I despise Tommy Robinson and think his American champions, such as Elon Musk, should just shut up and not poke their noses into things they are too ignorant and too vulgar to understand.

Tommy is portrayed by MAGA zealots as a champion of free speech and a martyr to the cause of upholding true-blue Englishness.

He is in fact a fascisoid thug with a string of criminal convictions to his name, including those for assault, football hooliganism, public disorder, the use of a false passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court (for which he is currently serving an 18-month sentence).

Robinson has the gift of the gab, especially when it comes to spitting out Right-wing chestnuts, such as protecting English identity against Muslim colonisation. These resonate with the MAGA crowd and to some extent even with real conservatives.

Yet no conservative would want to be associated with any cause championed by that yahoo. If Musk et al. see Robinson as a selfless fighter for freedom and national sovereignty, they are welcome to him. Most of his money already comes from North America, and Tommy should be reunited with his benefactors. I’m sure Musk could use his influence to swing a green card for Robinson, if not honorary citizenship (Congressional Medal of Honor?).

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” says the founding document of Western conservatism. By that logic, Tommy Robinson’s heart and the rest of his body should be in the US, although that country already has her fair share of thuggish, half-crazy demagogues.                                      

A couple of years ago, Putin laid claim to subsequent canonisation by adding a new touch to the outdated concept of heaven and hell.

The would-be St Vladimir explained that the Russians needn’t fear a world war and subsequent nuclear holocaust. “We’ll go straight to heaven,” he promised, “whereas they’ll just croak.”

Thus the two final destinations became separated not along the lines of virtue and sin, and not even according to God’s will, but strictly by ethnicity. All Russians go one way, those of a less fortunate nativity, the other.

This novel take on Christianity was begging for further development, and it duly arrived. Pectoral crosses worn by Russians are now engraved with Putin’s initials, and  priests are consecrating these new symbols of faith with alacrity.

Orthodox Christianity, as interpreted by the Moscow Patriarchate, has thus morphed into a particular cult focused on death and the ruler seen as a living God.

The Russian Orthodox Church expanded on this innovation, or rather return to the faiths of ancient Egypt, Babylon and Rome, by issuing the Creed of the 25^th Council of the Universal Russian Church.

This document refers to the Special Military Operation (invasion of the Ukraine) as the “Holy War” and defines the spiritual mission of the Russian World, whose borders go far beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. (A note to Eastern Europe: you are within this newly signposted territory.) Heroes of the invasion are defined as martyrs, and Putin’s immediate entourage as his apostles. Hence the logical next step of putting Putin’s initials on crosses.

Now, I’ve heard of the sacralisation of power, but this strikes me as a trifle excessive. Then again, over the past 52 years I’ve been regretfully out of touch with the superlative spirit of Russia. According to Medinsky, Putin’s former Culture Minister, it has a physiological origin: the Russians, according to him, are blessed with an extra spiritual gene.

A country where the culture minister is well-versed not only in his immediate field but also in microbiology is invincible. What does our own Lisa Nandy, Medinsky’s counterpart, know about genetics? About the same as she knows about culture, I’d suggest, which is the square root of sod-all.

The new religion demands its own theology, and the Orthodox hierarchs are happy to oblige. For example, the Murmansk Metropolitan Mitrofan offered a new doctrinal vision of death: “If you find a favourable occasion to die, take this step without hesitation because you never know if you’ll get another such chance.”

I dare say the chance to die is a dead cert, as it were, what with death being an unavoidable part of the human condition. Since His Eminence must be aware of this, he had to have something else in mind. The key word there is “favourable”: dying of old age in one’s bed clearly doesn’t pass muster. Only the living God will create propitious opportunities for dying, such as those offered by aggressive war.

Archpriest Igor Fomin, the dean of St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, clarified the matter in line with scriptural sources: “Liberals will tell you now that even the ruler has no right to dispose of people’s lives. We have been brainwashed in this vein for a long time. But the Holy Scripture says exactly the opposite.”

Fr Igor’s flock must be much better versed in matters scriptural than I am, which is why he felt no need to provide specific references. This leaves me in the dark for I can’t recall offhand any biblical verses saying that the Caesar can dispose of his subjects’ lives as he sees fit.

I do remember quite a few verses saying “exactly the opposite”, to use Fr Igor’s phrase. Specifically, they say that only God has dominion of people’s lives, and his realm is separate from the Caesar’s. Then again, that objection becomes null and void when God and Caesar come together in one man, in this case St Vladimir to be.

While other priests are busily blessing the rockets to be fired at Ukrainian civilians, the Savtyvkar Archbishop Pitirim expressed this theological innovation poetically, by bringing the two Testaments of the Christian canon together: “He leads us like Moses, Putin, He guards Christ’s spirit in His heart.”

Now, Moses took 40 years to lead his people to the Promised Land. Putin has been doing a Moses for merely 25, so we have at least 15 more years of roaming through the desert and hoping for manna to come down from heaven. On second thoughts, Christ’s spirit in Putin’s heart may enable him to shave off a year or two.

All this should bring into focus the view that has gained wide currency in Western Right-wing (as discrete from conservative) circles, whereby Russia is undergoing a religious revival, making her, according to a particularly toxic columnist, “the most Christian country in Europe”.

Russian thinkers of the 19^th century, from Chaadayev (d. 1856) to the seven authors of the seminal Vekhi (Landmarks) collection of essays (1909), didn’t see Russia as a religious country even then, long before the advent of Bolshevism.

Unlike today’s Western commentators, they knew the difference between religion and superstition, with Russian peasants shunning their local churches but happily leaping over fires on high holidays. That’s why, when offered the chance to abandon the old cults for the new, they jumped at it.

Lenin and his gang, including the notorious League of the Militant Godless, ordered the extermination of religion, but they weren’t the ones who bulldozed churches and machinegunned their parishioners. It was the pious folk of yesteryear who did that.

And they did so with the kind of enthusiastic industry that usually escapes the Russians when they try to do something productive. On Lenin’s watch (d. 1924) some 40,000 priests, monks and nuns were murdered, which was only the beginning. History books say they were shot, but most weren’t so lucky (I’ll spare you the gruesome details).

Another 80,000 priests were executed in 1937 alone. Altogether by 1941 some 350,000 believers, 140,000 of them priests, were killed either quickly or slowly, by starving them to death in concentration camps.

During the war, Stalin realised that the masses were somewhat reluctant to die for him. In the hope they’d be more amenable to dying for Mother Russia, he decided to take the Church off the mothballs and put it to work.

But, to be allowed to live, the Church had to be tamed. When applied to Soviet realities, that term effectively meant turning it into a department of the KGB. All the hierarchs of the Church were appointed by the government’s Council for Religious Affairs, headed in my day by a KGB general.

The Russian representative to the World Council of Churches, Metropolitan Nicodemus, held the slightly lower rank of colonel, but then the WCC was a Soviet front anyway. To be fair, not all Orthodox hierarchs were full-time KGB officers. Some were merely part-time employees, either informers or agents.

The current Patriarch Kirill, né Gundyaev, was known in the KGB annals as ‘Agent Mikhailov’, whose assignments were meticulously documented in operational reports. The last sentence invariably stated that the assignment “had been successfully fulfilled” – by the mercy of God no doubt.

What the Bolsheviks did to Russian Christianity was monstrous. But what the current lot are doing is even worse. Rather than proudly declaring themselves to be the Satanic atheists they actually are, they choose instead to prostitute Christianity by turning it into a death cult and leader-worship.

They’ll burn in hell for that, but I’d rather not wait that long. I’m sure Putin and his accomplices will be happy to burn at the stake as a shortcut on their road to heaven. And I’d be happy to add some kindling to the pyre.

Say what you will about Trump and his team, but boring they aren’t. Every day they say something to make me gasp and reach for my keyboard – and they aren’t even in power yet.

Most of their domestic policies, with the possible exception of import tariffs, sound sensible, but almost everything they say about foreign affairs oscillates between unspeakably rude and deranged. An illustration of the former extreme was served up yesterday by Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s anti-terrorist chief.

Mr Gorka suggested, or rather ordered, that Britain bring back UK members of Islamic State currently held in Syria – or else.

“Any nation which wishes to be seen as a serious ally and friend of the most powerful nation in the world should act in a fashion that reflects that serious commitment,” he thundered. “That is doubly so for the UK, which has a very special place in President Trump’s heart, and we would all wish to see the ‘special relationship’ fully re-established.”

‘Re-established’ means it’s currently gone, but politicians in general and MAGA people in particular sometimes use words loosely.

Britain does want to be America’s friend. Friendship is a wonderful thing, and I can attest to that from personal experience. I have several very close friends I know I can count on, as they can count on me. Moreover I value their views and take their advice and opinions seriously.

However, if any of them stated that their friendship is contingent on my running my life according to their peremptory guidelines, I’d suggest they take two words, one of which is ‘off’, and arrange them in the right sequence. America may be “the most powerful nation in the world”, but that’s precisely what any British government should tell US officials who talk to Britain as their subordinate, not just a friend and ally.

The other day America got her own taste of Muslim terrorism, and Britain has had to suffer many more incidents of that nature. Far be it from me to regard any Muslim as a potential terrorist, but there’s nothing potential about the miscreants who have stated and proved their allegiance to the terrorist cause.

By fighting on the side of evil they have forfeited their right to British citizenship, and their potential for recidivism is high. However, if Mr Gorka is so concerned about their plight, perhaps he should use his influence to help them migrate to the US. He made that move himself as a young man, so it’s a well-trodden path.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk continues to dictate lenience for another British criminal, Tommy Robinson, thereby showing he knows next to nothing about British law and understands even less. Now, Mr Musk has self-acknowledged problems with mental health, and he should really seek qualified help before he goes off the rails completely.

Someone calculated the number of messages Musk put on his X platform in just one day. Turned out he was posting once every six minutes on average, and half of his posts concerned Britain’s domestic policies.

It’s heartwarming to see such a busy man taking so much interest in helping the country of his grandparents out of its mire. After all, Mr Musk continues to run three mega-companies, while also trying to come to grips with his brief of cutting trillions out of America’s public spending.

Add to this his obsession with populating faraway galaxies and implanting AI wires into every earthling’s head, and one would think Musk has enough on his plate already. However, he displays nothing short of insane energy in finding time to harangue Britain and demand the ousting of His Majesty’s government. (A note to Elon: ‘His Majesty’ refers to King Charles III, not Donald Trump.)

To be fair, Britain isn’t the only country whose affairs the MAGA crowd wants to run on pain of losing America’s friendship. The other day, Musk’s future boss Trump demanded that NATO members increase their defence spending to five per cent of GDP.

Since America herself only spends 3.4 per cent, this seems unfair, but Trump explained it isn’t: “We have a thing called the ocean in between us, right? Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe?”

There I was, thinking we were talking proportions, not absolute numbers. Considering that America’s GDP is almost twice that of Europe, the greater number of billions may still add up to a smaller proportion. But yes, Europe’s defence does depend on the US to an inordinately great extent, and yes, Europe definitely should beef up its defences – at any cost, given the current geopolitical situation.

Then again, in an age of ICBMs and electronic warfare, “a thing called the ocean” doesn’t offer as much protection as it did in the past. America appointed herself as the leader of the free world, but she depends on the rest of the free world as much as the other way around.

And if Trump chalks up America’s defence spending in the debit column, he should also use his much-vaunted business acumen to figure out the benefits of his country’s leadership position. It doesn’t bear thinking about what would happen to the US (and the rest of the West), for example, if the dollar were no longer the world’s reserve currency. What if the 36-trillion-dollar US debt were denominated, say, in yuans?

It’s like the ledger sheet of a property development project, Donald. You spend so much, you borrow so much more, such is the return to expect – pluses and minuses, debits and credits, that sort of thing. Let’s count the beans on both sides, shall we?

Over the past few days, Trump has also made other pronouncements on foreign affairs that make his mental health as suspect as that of his underlings. Some of his ideas are sound, such as America regaining the control of the Panama Canal she relinquished in 1978 courtesy of Jimmy Carter. (“We built it, we paid for it, it’s ours,” American conservatives were saying at the time.)

But that idea came packaged with other revelations that collectively add up to Trump’s intention to embark on a campaign of territorial expansion, by force if necessary. He has made no secret of the low esteem in which he holds NATO, both as a concept and definitely as it currently is. Yet now he has begun to make thinly veiled threats to invade a NATO member, trying to outdo Putin in that activity.

In his first term, Trump attempted to buy Greenland, the world’s largest island, which is currently an autonomous province of Denmark. Greenland’s prime minister replied the island wasn’t for sale, and the matter was dismissed as an unfunny joke.

Now Trump has declared that Greenland is vital to America’s security, which is why he must buy it, not just continue to use it as home to several US bases. When asked whether he ruled out an invasion if America’s overtures were again rejected, Trump gave an evasive answer.

Even though the territory left the EU after a referendum in 1985, Denmark still controls its foreign and defence policies. Moreover, the EU has stated its commitment to providing “aid and assistance” in the case of an “armed aggression” against Greenland.

Now I was under the impression that Europe should strengthen its defences against such likely adversaries as China and especially Russia. Trump’s hints, dropped with his usual logorrheic irresponsibility, suggest that we should fear an attack from the west as well.

He probably didn’t mean it the way it sounded, and every time Donald shoots off the lip, MAGA zealots insist he should be judged by his deeds, not his words. This ignores the fact that, when uttered by world leaders, words become deeds – and in this case, extremely dangerous ones.

Once he got on his imperial hobby horse, Trump refused to dismount. He also suggested that, since the US is Canada’s biggest trade partner, Canada should become America’s 51^st state. By the same logic, the US should become a province of China, a country leading other countries by a comfortable margin as America’s partner in trade.

Canada also happens to be a member of the British Commonwealth, and King Charles is her head of state. Thus Britain may have something to say on this subject, provided Musk allows her to speak.

Trump didn’t say whether he contemplated doing an Aaron Burr and leading a military expedition into, say, Quebec. I wouldn’t put it past him: he seems perfectly capable of saying anything. So there’s another NATO country, quaking in her boots in anticipation of an American invasion.

Compared to that, Trump’s desire to re-baptise the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America sounds rather tame. Indeed, if the French can refer to the English Channel as La Manche or to the Channel Islands as les Îles Normandes, why can’t Trump call that gulf whatever he wishes?

But he ought to give more thought to the new name. After all, technically speaking, Mexico is America too. Perhaps calling it the Gulf of Texas or the Gulf of Dixie would be more apposite, but the possibilities are endless.

I look forward to Trump’s second shot at presidency, if only because I know I’ll never run out of topics to write about. On balance (a word that seems not to figure in Trump’s lexicon), I think his tenure will be a success, certainly domestically.

But if Trump plans to act not as the leader of the free world but as its dictator, he will damage America not only internationally but domestically as well. He is definitely a man of action, but it wouldn’t hurt if occasionally he acted as a man of (prior) thought too.

Call me a latent Luddite, but I wonder what will happen when automation makes millions of blue-collar workers redundant.

I realise that similar concerns were voiced when the first machines were installed to turn manufacturies into factories. The concerns led to action, and back in the early 20^th century some French labourers gave rise to the word ‘sabotage’ by throwing their wooden shoes (sabots) into the works.

And what do you know, they needn’t have worried. After the first growth pains, industrial productivity increased no end, new factories, even new industries, popped up like mushrooms after an August rain, and blue-collar workers became relatively prosperous rather than absolutely impoverished.

Those who used to make candles began to produce electric bulbs, wheelwrights and carters learned how to make cars, and chaps who were wizards at building windmills switched to constructing power stations (they may now have to switch back, but that’s a separate conversation).

Yet Bertie Russell stated, correctly, that something that happened in the past is no guarantee that it’ll happen in the future. The thought is generally sound, although the illustration he offered was slightly bizarre: the sun, he said, may still not rise tomorrow even if it rose yesterday.

But yes, similar fears have been voiced and allayed in the past. However, the automation revolution may not be as benign as its industrial precursor, which actually wasn’t excessively benign.

If hundreds of workers toiling at a conveyor belt can be replaced with a couple of computer geeks adept at pushing the right buttons, we are talking about eliminating, rather than rechannelling, blue-collar employment. And, contrary to liberal wishful thinking, not everyone can become a computer geek.

There exist millions of people not endowed with the mental faculties required to perform in an economy defined by information technology, robotic automation and artificial intelligence. We may all be created equal in the eyes of God and the US Declaration of Independence, but we aren’t all created equally intelligent.

One difference between now and then is the speed at which change occurs. Thanks to tremendous technological advances, what used to take years now takes months, weeks or even days. So even assuming, counterintuitively, that millions of blue-collar workers can retrain to be systems analysts, they may not have enough time at their disposal.

Computers can now fly planes, navigate ships, drive trains and even cars, with some gadgets easily performing tasks that used to keep thousands employed. Where will those thousands go, now that their skills are no longer needed?

Globalisation is another factor that exacerbates this problem. Manufacturing industries, those that tend to employ muscle, move to places where muscle is cheap, outsourcing production to Third World countries.

After all, we can’t survive by just selling software packages to one another. Someone has to make things we use every day, and the natural tendency is for manufacturers to look for those who can make those things cheaply.

That puts more pressure on blue-collar employment – even assuming workers could learn how to make widgets by operating robots, they’ll still come up empty if those widgets are now made in China or Brazil. Moreover, shifting manufacturing to Third World countries creates a strategic risk.

Some of those countries may like our money but not necessarily us. They can become, or side with, our enemies at the drop of a bomb. At least that would solve the problem of blue-collar workers – they could all go into battle, thereby keeping their numbers down to a sensible level.

Such doomsday scenarios apart, there is no denying that accelerated automation will produce crowds of people passing over from employment to the tender mercies of the state. The innately tyrannical modern state wouldn’t mind: the more people depend on it for their livelihood, the more powerful will the state become. And rapacious appetite for ever-growing power is a feature of all modern states without exception.

Here the interests of the state overlap with the urges of our exceedingly work-shy masses. We depend on millions of migrants doing menial jobs because British people don’t want to do them. They’d rather draw the King’s shilling by malingering and claiming disability.

Thus, burgeoning automation may well become an instrument of state tyranny, general social malaise, corrupted morality and reduced national security. And now come the first words I think British babies, destined to become pragmatic adults, learn in their cribs: so what are we going to do about it?

I’m not going to equivocate about this. My reply is resolute and unequivocal: I haven’t a clue.

If the history of technology teaches one lesson, it’s that, if things can be done, they will be done – regardless of the attendant concerns. We’ll continue to automate and computerise every step we take in life, even if it means producing a net loss in the areas I’ve outlined.

Other than that, I really have no answers. But I do have lots of questions, and I count on those better-versed in the relevant disciplines to enlighten me. Let’s just say that so far such questions haven’t been answered, and they aren’t even often asked.

That’s a pity because problems of catastrophic proportions may well be looming. We may be automating our way to disaster – and I did tell you I’m a closet Luddite.

What else can they possibly be if they show that foreign nationals are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex crimes than Britons born and bred?

Obviously, no progressive person can think that disparity is there because foreigners commit more crimes. And in any case, all such persons know that our police are institutionally racist.

When they arrest a foreigner, especially one from a racial minority, the poor chap is probably innocent. That’s why arrested and guilty are two different things, and, when it comes to minorities, never the twain shall meet.

This attitude is so dominant that neither the Home Office nor the police can do their job properly. How is it possible, for example, to establish proper admission and deportation policies without Parliament knowing the breakdown of all criminal offenders by nationality, visa and asylum status?

Yet both major parties have steadfastly refused to collect and release such statistics, and I did tell you there’s no fundamental differences between the Tories and Labour. In fact, the last time such a proposal was thrown out was in the run-up to the general election, when Rishi Sunak, nominally a Tory, rejected a backbench amendment to his Sentencing Bill.

God forbid he’d undermine his woke credentials just as the nation was about to go to the polls. It has to be said that Sunak’s wokery didn’t make a Labour landslide less imminent and possibly made it more so. Even worse, neither he nor the Tory Party is likely to learn their lesson. Going woke is like riding a tiger: you can’t really stop.

The league table of sex crimes I espied in The Telegraph is the first of its kind. It shows the leadership position of not just foreigners in general but – and you know how much it pains me to say this – Muslims in particular. In fact, of the top 10 sexually criminal nations only the Congo is partially Muslim. The other nine are solidly Islamic.

Albanians lead the league by a wide margin, with also-ran Afghanis trailing far behind, closely followed by Iraqis, Algerians and Somalis. Even assuming that some of those arrested Muslims are pristinely innocent, a certain statistical bias is still hard to ignore. It requires something HMG is unlikely to provide: an explanation.

One such would be that Muslims are naturally more virile than native-born Britons, so much so that they find it hard to contain their rampant libido. After all, when it comes to arrests for all crimes, foreigners outscore indigenous Britons only by two to one, not 3.5 to one as they do with sex offences. Thus, their sex criminality is much greater than their criminality in general.

However, the same groups lead the way in overall crimes as well. For example, in 2021, twenty per cent of all Albanian migrants were arrested for various crimes, which is pretty good going. By comparison, the corresponding figure for British suspects is a meagre 1.2 per cent.

Nevertheless, I tend to reject out of hand any biological, racial or ethnic explanations of social trends. This isn’t to say I don’t think they have a role to play, but if they do, it’s only a walk-on. The star of the show is culture, understood in the broadest possible sense.

To put this assumption to a test, one should try to find out whether Islamic culture predisposes men to take shortcuts to women’s affections. In the West, sex crimes transgress against the prevalent understanding of a woman as an autonomous human equal (in my marriage actually superior) to a man. “Neither male nor female,” wrote St Paul, and he wasn’t talking about transsexuality.

Even the most cursory familiarity with the Koran, the foundation of Islamic culture, shows that the status of a woman there is somewhat different. For example, that holy book explains that most dwellers of hell are women, who are a source of seduction and evil.

Women should be beaten if their husbands feel such punishment is merited, and men disciplining their wives in that manner aren’t accountable to God. A woman isn’t allowed to seek divorce except in extreme cases. A man, however, can divorce his wife simply by three utterances to that effect. In case of divorce, a wife’s share of the assets is half of a man’s.

Did I say “a woman”? Actually, men are allowed to have up to four wives, which encourages seeking variety as the spice of amorous life. And here we begin to touch on the cultural aspects of Islam that are relevant to my subject today.

Islam’s approach to sex in and outside marriage is rather different from ours. For example, if a man wants sex, his woman isn’t allowed to say no. If she does, she’ll be cursed by angels. “Not tonight, I’ve got a headache,” just isn’t part of Islamic folklore.

Men are allowed to take child brides, following the example of their religion’s founder. They are also allowed to rape captives and slaves without risking God’s (or man’s) punishment. A bride’s silence is always interpreted as her consent to marriage, which you must agree is a long way away from our current idea of consent. And so on, ad infinitum.

None of this predetermines criminal behaviour of Muslim men towards women. In fact, I know quite a few Muslims and I can vouch for their innocence of any such offences. However, a man weaned on such a spiritual diet must be statistically more likely to treat a woman as merely an object, whose human value is circumscribed by her sexuality.

And statistics is what we are talking about here, relative not absolute values, large groups not individuals. Hence, league tables of crime shouldn’t determine each individual case of a man seeking immigrant status in Britain. But it would be foolhardy to disregard such data altogether or, even worse, refuse to collect them.

P.S. Case in point: When German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, visited Syria the other day, her image is deliberately blurred in the official photograph released by the new, victorious government. She is undeniably a woman, which just won’t do.

I’m happy for the Americans. Their country must have so few problems that the president-elect and his right hand can redirect their boundless energy to helping Britain out of her morass.

This isn’t to say no morass exists, nor that Trump and Musk aren’t making good points. In fact, I agree with most of them. However, both gentlemen routinely overstep the fine line separating valid criticism from meddling in the affairs of a sovereign country.

At the moment, their two-prong attack focuses on Britain’s energy policy and Keir Starmer’s record as Director of Crown Prosecutions, both truly appalling. The two critics seem to be dividing the workload: Trump is at the moment talking about energy and Musk about Sir Keir.

The president-elect responded to the news that Apache, a US oil company, would cease production in the UK because of the “financial impact of the energy profits levy”. Indeed, when Boris Johnson was PM, he and his chancellor Rishi Sunak raised the windfall tax on oil companies from 35 to 38 per cent.

This goes to show yet again, if any further proof is necessary, that there is no substantial divide between our two main parties: both are woke and Left-wing, if perhaps to different extents. Both are committed to the economic suicide going by the name of net zero.

Now, Trump may be all sorts of things, but woke he isn’t. That’s why I’d happily sign my own name under his message to Britain: “The UK is ­making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of the windmills!”

However, Trump and I are different in more ways than I can count, but the one relevant here is that I am a British subject, and he is a foreign politician. Trump is entitled to his opinion, and in this case I happen to agree with it, but he isn’t entitled to talk to Britain the way he undoubtedly talks to his flunkeys.

There is an element of blackmail here as well, because Trump knows that Britain desperately needs a trade deal with the US. At the very least, Starmer craves an exemption from the blanket import tariffs Trump is planning to impose because, if he goes through with that idea, it will cost Britain billions.

Now, that idea is wrong, almost as much so as Britain’s shutting down North Sea drilling. But Trump has the power of his convictions, right and wrong ones alike, and he is unlikely to back down. This gives him leverage over Britain, but it still gives him no right to talk to us in the peremptory tone of a blackmailer.

There are more important things than money, national pride being one of them. Starmer would be within his rights to tell Trump – in the idiom the latter favours – to shove his deal and his directives where the sun don’t shine.

Musk also has a point when attacking Starmer’s record as DCP. Starmer, Musk said, “was complicit in the rape of Britain when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years. Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crimes in British history.”

I agree with this point, but not with Musk’s right to make it publicly. He is no longer just a private citizen with a huge capital and an ego to match. From 20 January onwards he’ll also have a key role to play in the US administration, and it’s outrageous that he sees fit to demand criminal prosecution of the prime minister of a foreign country and America’s staunchest ally.

Indirectly, Musk also took a swipe at Nigel Farage, who is the ally within an ally. In his pilgrimage zeal, Farage has turned Mar-a-Lago into an equivalent of the Ferney of 18^th century progressives, the Santiago di Compostela of Christians and the Mecca of Muslims.

However, for all his sycophancy to Trump and Musk (who is waving a $100 million bait before Nigel’s nose), Farage is a British patriot. There is a line he won’t cross, and his rebuke of Musk is exemplary.

In his own political evolution, Musk has been swinging from left to right depending on which way the economic wind was blowing. At the moment, he has swung as far right as it’s possible to go without having to don a brown shirt. All marginal parties and individuals in other countries are his friends and beneficiaries, and unfortunately it’s not just the benign Reform Party that he patronises.

Musk also supports Germany’s AfD, which is desperately trying to downplay its neo-Nazi roots in search of political respectability. And Musk’s British pet is Tommy Robinson, the darling of the MAGA crowd currently serving an 18-month term for contempt of court, the latest of his numerous criminal convictions.

In spite of his touching concern for British legality, Musk demanded that Robinson, a former member of the British National Party and the founder of its successor, the English Defence League, be released from prison.

If Musk counted on Farage’s support, he miscalculated. The ungrateful would-be recipient of Musk’s largesse said: “Anyone who looks at my history will know that I did more to defeat the BNP than anybody in British politics. I have always forbade them to be members of Ukip, the Brexit Party and Reform. That includes a certain Mr Robinson. He is a serial criminal … he seems to want to launch a holy war. I don’t. Elon Musk makes his own mind up. He is the high priest of free speech. He is entitled to those views.”

His ignorance of the Past Participle form of the verb ‘to forbid’ emphasises Mr Farage’s credentials as Trump’s friend. However, other than that, he is absolutely right.

Farage also put his finger, perhaps inadvertently, on another point worth making. Musk, a recent convert to the right end of politics and hence exhibiting a neophyte’s zeal, along with, more important, Trump, seems to be putting together an international anti-woke crusade.

There are some indications that such seeds may fall on fertile soil, what with voters in various countries showing signs of exasperation with tyrannical woke politics and indoctrination. The US herself, Argentina, Italy, several Eastern European countries, Germany, to some extent France are all leaning that way.

However, voters are fickle, and they tend to display as much spinal elasticity as Mr Musk himself. Let’s not forget that the same US electorate that commendably voted for Trump this time around had twice elected Obama and came close to electing Harris.

No anti-woke, anti-Left campaign will succeed unless it’s conducted with tact and discernment. Tact is demonstrably lacking in the pronouncements made by both Trump and Musk, and I doubt it’ll ever creep into their statements later – neither man has the right psychological makeup for it.

But discernment is even more important. Looking from across the ocean, MAGA chaps may not spot the difference between serious politicians like Farage and fascisoid scum like Robinson – or between, say, German conservative parties and the AfD.

If they lump them all together into the same campaign, that’s how the masses will perceive them. That will compromise the whole movement and arm subversive Lefties with enough ammunition to fight a successful rear-guard action.

The best way for Trump, Musk et al. to shake other countries out of their Left-wing torpor isn’t to be rude and bossy to them, but to turn America into a glittering success story by implementing conservative policies across the board. That will provide an example others may find difficult not to follow.

Conversely, an attempt to bully HMG into submission is guaranteed to cause a negative reaction among Britons, including many of those who detest the Starmer gang. My advice in the title above stands: mind your own business, chaps. And turn your own business into a triumph.

It’s a general rule supported by much empirical evidence. When it comes to schooling, conservatives educate, socialists indoctrinate.

Since socialists are in charge of education in Britain and just about everywhere else in the West, our schools keep churning out ignoramuses who have the hysterical power of their hairbrained convictions.

At least Tory governments try to reverse this tendency, but their attempts are invariably smashed against the stonewall of teachers, unions, pressure groups and school administrators. Most of these were educated at various hatcheries of wokery, to which they pledged lifelong allegiance. They use their strength in numbers and vocal chords to defeat any encroachments on woke probity.

I’m happy to report that this divisive confrontation is now over. Perfect harmony exists between Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and the groups I’ve mentioned. They are prepared to launch their combined assault on what’s left of British education.

To that end, Miss Phillipson has set out to change the national curriculum. She wants to “breathe new life into our outdated curriculum to make it more diverse”. It should reflect “the diversity of our society” and indoctri… sorry, I mean teach, youngsters to “appreciate the diversity of Britain.”

Some subjects, currently “mono-cultural”, are set to be “decolonised” in order to “embed anti-racist and decolonised approaches in the curriculum”. Let’s hear it for the “inclusive curricula that reflect diverse authors, cultures and perspectives.”

As the founder and chairman of the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism, I wholeheartedly support this approach to education. Indeed, if our schools can only teach youngsters one thing, it should definitely be how to appreciate and admire the diversity of our society. In fact, that indeed does seem to be the only thing Miss Phillipson would like to teach in her new curriculum.

However, it pains me to say that she has her work cut out for her. For example, it’s not immediately apparent how things like physics or mathematics can be twisted… sorry, I mean improved, in light of the new programme. I have every faith in our educators, and I know they’ll try to do their level best, but the task seems borderline impossible.

Hence the main thrust of new education will be directed against… sorry, I mean at, the humanities, mainly literature and history. The guiding spirit of the drive for diversity is Prof Becky Francis, who in the past criticised the Blair government for “an obsession with academic achievement”.

I couldn’t agree more. Even the Blair-type obsession of this nature runs against the grain of British education. Academic achievement, fancy that. It’s much more important, explain our educators, to steer clear of “traditional” English literature, especially in “majority white” classrooms.

Thanks to the emigration policies of successive governments, such classrooms are becoming exceedingly rare, but – fair enough – a few here and there are still extant. It stands to reason, of course, that those classrooms shouldn’t be allowed to be mired in white complacency. So the first target for re-education has been well spotted.

The Association of School and College Leaders laments that “in particular, ethnicity and sexual orientation are under-represented in the national curriculum”. I share their frustration, but no immediate corrective steps suggest themselves readily.

If American literature has produced quite a few books highlighting ethnicity and, mainly in the 20^th century, sexual orientation, classical British literature is tragically remiss in that area. I suppose hints at fashionable sexuality can be discerned in Oscar Wilde’s works, and perhaps one or two ‘confirmed bachelors’ pop up in other places as well, but none of it is explicit. It’s as if those writers were ashamed when they ought to have been proud.

The situation with ethnicity is even more dire. Classical English writers from Chaucer onwards were unapologetically white people who, as good writers will, described the life they knew. Which is to say the life of white people. Other races hardly ever figure.

Such lackadaisical omissions can be corrected on stage easily enough, by having, say, Hamlet played by a black transsexual woman missing a limb or two. But rewriting the play to make the Prince of Denmark speak in the idiom once popularised by Ali G seems like a tall order.

The five main exam boards of Britain explained that: “The literary canon should better reflect the range of cultures and experiences of all young people.” Splendid idea, that. The trouble is that such a literary canon has so far failed to materialise.

Perhaps members of our educational establishment should put their day jobs on hold and actually produce a canon to satisfy their exacting requirements. As new books and poems are being written, the old literary canon, all those Shakespeares, Keatses and Dickenses, could be squeezed out one by one, until the Great Literary Replacement has been achieved.

However, one has to doubt that such a Herculean feat can be accomplished within the lifespan of this government, even should it have more than one term in office. Still, no harm in trying, a stitch in time and all that.

At least with literature one can see a clear path to improvement in line with the reinforced commitment to “in particular, ethnicity and sexual orientation”. History, on the other hand, can’t by definition “better reflect the range of cultures and experiences of all young people”.

You see, by its very nature, history deals with the past, whereas “all young people” live and acquire their experiences in the present. The present is infinitely more diverse, multicultural, transsexual and generally better than any period in the past, that much goes without saying. Alas, and I don’t know how to put this not to offend anybody, the past stubbornly remains firmly lodged in, well, the past.

I agree that our DEI educators are entitled not only to their own opinions but also to their own facts, but I’m just concerned that, if they rewrite history completely, they’ll undermine their own credibility. They do have plenty of it, credibility, but if it’s undermined, they’ll have less. That saddens me.

To their credit, they don’t give up easily. For example, some history teachers (and a popular TV show) insist that Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of George III and hence a queen of England, was black.

No written or pictorial evidence for this supposition has so far been unearthed, but who’s to say it won’t be in the future? This is a line of thought perfected by Darwinists: yes, they say, the missing link hasn’t yet been found. But it may be found in the future, which means it will be found, which means we can safely assume it has been found.

In a similar vein, King Edward II is always believed to be homo- or bi-sexual, though not yet trans-. James I definitely had a commendable sexual orientation, as any reader of his letters to the Duke of Buckingham will confirm.

That fact should definitely be given a much greater prominence in history lessons, but one should tread carefully. Since James was Scottish, a teacher may run the risk of offending that devolved nation, thereby sinking into xenophobia, Little Englishness and potentially racism.

Altogether, these are rather slim pickings left for our DEI-fied educators. Since they can’t rewrite history as easily as literature, the only path open to them is to nail Britain’s past to the wall of opprobrium by portraying it as racist, homo- and trans-phobic, misogynist, colonialist – and nothing else.

Giant strides are already being made in that direction, but there is still room for improvement. And with Bridget Phillipson in charge, such improvements won’t be long in coming. I trust her implicitly.

Pope Francis wouldn’t make the short list of my favourite pontiffs, and he’d even struggle to get on the long one. Yet his homily at New Year’s Day Mass serves a powerful reminder of what it means to be a Christian in general and Catholic in particular.

One hopes it would also remind those holding different faiths or none of what it means to be a decent person. But, when it comes to killing by state, otherwise known as euthanasia or ‘assisted dying’, that hope is slim.

Priests are free to hold all sorts of political and cultural views, including, as most these days do, those I find objectionable. But any priest who supports that abomination should be summarily unfrocked, and I’d even go so far as to say that even lay Christians ought to be excommunicated if they see nothing wrong with euthanasia or, for that matter, abortion.

Some views are simply incompatible with Christianity, certainly its apostolic denominations. One can get away with having no respect for, say, private property or real music, but not for human life, which is only God’s to give or take away.

Congratulations to His Holiness for refusing to obfuscate that straightforward message with a smokescreen of qualifications and equivocations. He spoke forcefully about the urgent need to protect “the precious gift of life, life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying.”  

Unfortunately, he also called for “the elimination of the death penalty in all nations”, but hey, we can’t all be perfect. A valid argument can be made that the death penalty for murder upholds the sacred value of human life, rather than denying it. In any case, this is a separate conversation.

To his credit, the Pope has never been bashful about letting his views on abortion be widely known. At various times, he has referred to it as “murder”, akin to “hiring a hitman to solve a problem”, while describing pro-abortion laws as “homicidal”.

However, that ship has sailed, at least in Britain. As far as I know, even the mildest anti-abortion legislation isn’t even being mooted. But ‘assisted dying’ is a current issue: even though the relevant bill passed its second reading recently, it still isn’t a law.

It passed narrowly, which gives some hope for the future. In fact, 147 Labour MPs opposed it, along with most Tories and two out of five Reform MPs, including Nigel Farage. That three other Reformers supported the bill emphasises the difference between right-wing populism and conservatism, but again this dichotomy is for another day.

One of the most vociferous campaigners for the bill was TV presenter Dame Esther Rantzen, who is suffering from Stage 4 lung cancer. As a survivor of Stage 4 cancer myself, I sympathise with her plight, but not with her view on the state killing her — and eventually millions of others — by way of relief.

Her suffering touched a chord in what passes for Keir Starmer’s heart. Back in October, he said that he had “made a promise to Esther Rantzen before the election that we would provide time for a debate and a vote on assisted dying”.

That was one campaign promise Starmer has kept, which is more than one can say for a whole raft of other promises he has broken with blithe cynicism. Not only did he push that diabolical bill through two readings in Parliament, but he himself voted for it with so much enthusiasm that it was easy to get the impression he’d happily stick a needle into Dame Esther’s arm himself.

She should thank God he didn’t, and neither did anyone else. Had the bill become a law there and then, Dame Esther would probably no longer be with us. As it is, I for one was happy to read her announcement that “the new wonder drug I’m on” may hold back the spread of her cancer “for months, even years”. 

If AstraZeneca’s Osimertinib can add so much time to Dame Esther’s life, it will make a powerful statement in favour of modern pharmacology – and a rational one against killing by state.

One of the requirements for doctors to kill a patient with impunity is that he is to have no more than six months left to live. This requirement is based on certain premises, all of them dubious.

First, doctors can seldom pinpoint the end of a life with any accuracy. I’ve known several people given months left to live who then went on to stick around for several more years. Doctors can make a mistake and so can medical science.

Second, this denies the possibility of a miracle, delivered either by God or, as in Dame Esther’s case, a pharmaceutical company or – most likely – both. Practical and theological arguments thus merge into one, delivering the kind of blow to the ‘assisted dying’ bill from which it would never recover in any decent country.

That the bill will likely become a law in Britain before long diminishes her claim to being a decent country. An essential qualification for this accolade is unwavering belief in the sanctity of human life – something demanded by God, Pope Francis, simple decency and even common sense.

Sorry, give me a second to catch my breath.

The New Year Honours List has just been announced, and I was so astounded by some of the awards that I immediately went to the Royal Family website. What exactly are the qualification criteria?

There they are, in black and white: “To be made a Knight or a Dame is to receive one of the highest honours in the United Kingdom, and is usually granted to those who have made a significant contribution to their field, usually on a national level.”

In other words, to become a knight of the realm a candidate has to be very good at what he does. Because of his sterling performance he provides invaluable services to the crown, which is to say the nation, the part of it under his purview.

If that’s the case, how can the name of the London mayor Sadiq Khan be even whispered in this context? I’ve lived in London for 36 years now, and to say he is the worst mayor I’ve ever seen is to say nothing. Yet here he is, the freshly anointed Sir Sadiq Khan.

Let’s put it this way: if a hypothetical mayor were elected on the promise of harming London in every possible way, and if he then devoted every waking moment to achieving that goal, he couldn’t possibly be any worse than Sadiq Khan.

If elevation to knighthood were a matter of ideological purity, then of course Khan would be a perfect candidate under this government. He is further to the left than even Starmer’s cabinet, by far the leftmost government in the past 50 years or so.

And then he is a minority hire, which gives him a jump on competition both ideologically and electorally. After all, Muslims make up 15 per cent of London’s population, and with a co-religionist candidate on offer, they are guaranteed to vote as a bloc. That’s how Khan has managed to win three elections to the post he is demonstrably unqualified to hold.

However, the website of the family that bestows, or rather rubberstamps, the honours doesn’t mention ideology, religion or race among its criteria for “one of the highest honours in the United Kingdom”. (I hasten to add that, as the founder, chairman and so far one of only two members of the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism, I’d welcome such criteria with an open heart.) No, it specifically talks about a record of high achievement.

So what’s Khan’s record like? Well, he has indeed achieved impressive numbers.

Khan was first elected in 2016, and since that year the level of robberies, stabbings and other violent crimes has steadily fallen… No, not in London. Only across England and Wales. In London it has risen 30 per cent.

Twenty per cent of Londoners have been attacked or threatened with violence in the past five years. Khan responded to that lamentable situation in a predictable fashion, by busily closing down police stations all over the city. Police commissioners in other places have been just as busily opening new ones, but what do they know?

Having reduced the number of police officers in London, Sadiq Khan then hamstrung the remaining ones by limiting the use of stop and search. That tactic is blatantly racist according to him, and racism is a worse crime than any that could be prevented by stop and search.

At the same time, the mayor has looked with avuncular good humour on marches in support of Muslim terrorism, which have become ubiquitous since the 7 October pogrom. These have turned central London into a no-go area for Jews, along with those gentiles who frown on anti-Semitism.

Under Khan’s tutelage, 150,000 London Jews don’t feel safe even in the quarters they traditionally inhabit. They are routinely abused when leaving synagogues on Saturday, or when changing buses shuttling between Golders Green and other Jewish areas. Cars flying anti-Semitic banners speed through Jewish neighbourhoods with impunity. In response, city officials helpfully advise Jews not to display any outward signs of their religion, just to be on the safe side.

Climate fanatics also enjoy a free ride under this mayor. In fact, the same groups of thugs happily drift from anti-Semitic to anti-capitalist marches in an attempt to take control of London streets. The mayor looks on with a beatific smile as ‘protesters’ block major thoroughfares and throw orange goo on great paintings in London museums.

Khan himself is a climate fanatic, or rather a fanatic of the power-grabbing potential of climate activism. That’s why he has evidently decided to rid London of cars.

Socialists always hated private vehicles even before the elaborate global warming swindle became a force. A car is a factor of independence from public transport and hence from the state, which makes that form of transportation intolerable.

The mayor has set out to make cars unusable in London, and he is succeeding famously. And if they can’t be expelled, they can be turned into cash cows for our corrupt councils.

Acting in that spirit, Khan has greatly expanded ULEZ (the Ultra Low Emission Zone), imposing a daily charge of £12.50 on drivers of older vehicles in outer boroughs. That penalises the poor people Labour claims to protect, many of whom have to rely on their cars to go to work.

At the same time, Khan expanded the congestion charge zone, which Boris Johnson had narrowed when becoming mayor. Add to this the punitive 20 mph speed limit even on major roads, a profusion of bus and bicycle lanes, new traffic islands being constructed every day, and you’ll see why the Tom Tom Index identified London’s rush hour as the slowest-moving in the world.

That’s why cabbies can no longer make a living. For every 10 drivers leaving the trade, only two replacements come in, and no wonder. With only the meter moving fast, passengers have to count on their own two feet or the dirty and unreliable tube. Buses are no good in Central London: for example, courtesy of the good mayor, the 22 Bus takes at least an hour to travel the three miles from my home to Oxford Circus – and not just in rush hour.

This war on cars hits London’s retail businesses hard, with pubs, restaurants and shops going out of business at an impressive rate. But it’s especially damaging to emergency services that can’t get through bottlenecks even with the benefit of sirens and flashing lights. When Londoners talk about murderous traffic, they often mean it literally.

So what exactly is the “significant contribution” Sir Sadiq (as he now is) has made to the public administration of what to me is the world’s greatest city? None at all, although he has indeed contributed significantly to London’s public administrators. One in every four pounds we pay in council tax goes straight into the pension funds of council members.

That’s quite a lot, considering that London council tax has grown by 71 per cent since Sadiq Khan became mayor. That achievement clearly appealed to Starmer, in line as it is with the government’s policy of taxing people out of every hope of independence from the state.

The only surprising thing about Khan’s knighthood is that he hasn’t been elevated straight to the peerage. Such significant achievements deserve the highest accolade on offer.

Happy New Year!

Every year or so, Peter Hitchens feels the urge to defend the man he unashamedly calls “my greatest ally”, the Putin stooge Graham Phillips.

Phillips is a journalist of sorts, who has been doing Putin’s bidding since 2009, an undertaking in which he is as enthusiastic as Hitchens himself. Unlike Hitchens, however, he hasn’t learned how to offset his message with disingenuous qualifiers.

Today, for example, Hitchens writes: “He has been more sympathetic to the Russian cause in Ukraine than is either right or wise for someone who calls himself a journalist.” By implication, Hitchens himself shows the right amount of sympathy, just enough to keep himself out of trouble with the British government.

Unlike him, Phillips has never bothered to couch his admiration for Putin fascism in journalese, even when the hack had to commit crimes against humanity in the process. Hitchens refers to one such rather coyly: “He has behaved questionably (I put this mildly) towards a British prisoner-of-war captured by the Russians, and to others in similar fixes.”

‘Questionably”, I’m afraid, is the wrong word here, even when qualified in Hitchens’s skilful manner. Allow me to refresh your memory of the crime that only rates “questionable” in Hitchens’s lexicon.

In 2016 Phillips published a video in which he taunted a Ukrainian POW who had lost his sight and both his arms. With the Russians’ blessing, Phillips also interviewed, or rather interrogated, a captured British soldier fighting in the Ukrainian army. The soldier, Aidin Aslin, wasn’t a willing participant – in fact, he was handcuffed throughout the interview.

That violated the terms of the Geneva Convention that bans coercive interrogation of POWs for propaganda purposes. Already at that time, plans were under way to charge Phillips with war crimes, which is a rare accolade for British journalists.

When he wasn’t busy participating in the torture of Ukrainians and Britons captured by the Russian invaders, Phillips kept inundating the electronic waves with the most brazen pro-Putin and anti-Ukrainian propaganda this side of Russia’s own media, often even outdoing them.

His masters rewarded Phillips’s loyal service as best they could. In 2015, the Russian Border Service, an FSB branch, gave him its aptly named ‘Border Brotherhood’ Medal. He has also received several medals from the ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk, which is sort of like getting a Medal of Honour from the Manson family.

“Mr Phillips,” writes Hitchens, “seems to be the only British person living who does not have any human rights.” Including, it seems, the most essential one: “Mr Phillips is legally forbidden (for example) to pay the council tax on his London house.” I wish someone deprived me of that particular human right.

Phillips isn’t allowed to return to the UK, which is why “he is living in a bombed-out, unheated block of flats in the city of Mariupol.” What’s left of it, after the Russians bombed the city flat, occupied it and looted whatever they could find under the debris.

However, contrary to what Hitchens claims, with his usual cavalier treatment of facts even tangentially related to Putin’s Russia, Phillips isn’t the only Briton denied re-entry into the UK. Shamima Begum, who left Britain for Syria and took part in Islamic State atrocities, was stripped of her citizenship in 2019, and in 2021 the Supreme Court banned her from returning to appeal the ruling.

To quote a government document, “Under section 40 of the BNA 1981 any British citizen, British Overseas Territories citizen, British Overseas citizen, British National (Overseas), British Protected Person or British Subject may be deprived of their citizenship if the Secretary of State is satisfied that: it would be conducive to the public good and they would not become stateless as a result of the deprivation.”

The banishment of Phillips is unquestionably “conducive to the public good”, and he doesn’t have to “become stateless as a result of the deprivation.” Putin has been generous in granting Russian passports to his foreign agents, and Phillips is among the most industrious ones.

I agree with Hitchens that ideally banishment should have been legalised by due process, and I’m sure this technicality will be taken care of in due course. But when it comes to defending his “greatest ally”, Hitchens uses such arguments as subterfuge. In reality, he supports everything Phillips says and does, and has done so for a couple of decades at least.

He acknowledges as much: “My own writing, broadcasting and debating, critical of Ukraine and of British policy towards it, could be cited against me in the same way under a slightly dimmer government than we now have.” You don’t say.

Not a “slightly dimmer” government but a slightly more principled one would, as a minimum, shut Hitchens up and prevent him from spouting Putin propaganda in support of what he once called “the most conservative and Christian country in Europe”. After all, freedom of speech shouldn’t, and at wartime doesn’t, protect enemy propagandists.

One such, William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, was strung up for similar efforts in 1946. The death penalty for treasonous propaganda is no longer on the books, and no doubt Hitchens would argue in any case that Britain isn’t at war with Russia, as she was with Nazi Germany.

That’s another technicality because, though it’s true we haven’t declared war on Russia, Russia has declared war on the West, including Britain. For the moment, this is a hybrid war, one that only includes sabotage of infrastructure, terrorist acts, electronic warfare, massive propaganda – and of course beastly aggression against the Ukraine, which is as closely allied with the West as Hitchens is with Phillips.

The legal situation is such that Hitchens can’t be charged with treason, the way Joyce was. But he has done more than enough to rate censure and being drummed out of the profession he has brought into disrepute by his shilling for fascism.

P.S. When in 2018 I wrote about Russia’s poisoning shenanigans in Salisbury, Hitchens kindly sent me an e-mail insisting that Russia’s guilt hadn’t been proved. I’m eagerly awaiting his comments on Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile.

His logic will probably run along these lines: Russia’s crime hasn’t been, nor is ever likely to be, established beyond reasonable doubt in a duly constituted court. Ergo, Russia isn’t to blame. Hitchens is a master of such fake syllogisms, and he has his own standards of proof when it comes to Putin.