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Messrs Obama and Sarkozy are making belligerent noises about Syria, which seems to be slated to become the next candidate for laser-guided democracy. It’s about time another anti-democrat saw the light (and presumably heard the bang). One can understand how they feel: so far the West’s interference in that region has been such a success.

In Egypt, there’s carnage in the streets; the Israeli embassy has been attacked; Coptic Christians murdered; a gas pipeline blown up; the American University set on fire (I’m sure I’m leaving a few things out). In Lybia, the neodemocrats from different factions are shooting at one another. In Iraq, hardly a day goes by without a mountain (well, a tor) of bodies piling up, while the seven (!) remaining Jews in Baghdad (a third of the population there were Jews between the world wars) are fearing for their lives after their identities have been revealed by WikiLeaks. In Tunisia… well, you get the picture. And we ain’t seen nuthin yet, as US marines must be saying.

The assumption that has been proved gloriously wrong is that, once the ghastly tyrants are out of the way, the moderate Muslims will take over and, rather than tossing grenades at one another and anyone else they don’t like, will start dropping ballots into the boxes. Halleluya!

Now I’ve met a moderate Muslim once; his name was Asif. But perhaps I haven’t been looking in the right places, an oversight to be corrected immediately. So let’s start our search from the Holy Book itself, the Koran. Let me see… Here: ‘Love thy enemy…’ Oops, sorry, got into the wrong book. Now, here we go:

‘Slay them [unbelievers] wherever ye find them…’ (2:91) ‘We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.’ (3:151) ‘Take them [unbelievers] and kill them wherever ye find them. Against such We have given you clear warrant.’ (4:91) ‘The unbelievers are an open enemy to you.’ (4:101) ‘As for thief, both male and female, cut off their hands.’ (5:38) ‘Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends…’ (5:51) ‘Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush’ (9:5) ‘Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.’ (4:74) ‘…If they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them…’ (4:89)

There are 107 verses like these in the Koran, conservatively counted. And, unlike the rather violent passages in the Old Testament, all of these are open-ended, not tied into a particular situation or historical context. This should be enough to show that Islam, for all its sterling qualities, doesn’t foster moderation in its adherents. That isn’t to say that all Muslims are avid murderers of infidels and apostates. Far from it. Most of them are Muslims in the same sense in which Trotsky was a Jew or Richard Dawkins is a Christian. They were born to a faith whose practices they don’t really follow and whose dictates they don’t necessarily obey. So they can indeed be described as moderate — what they aren’t is Muslims.

Most of the Middle Eastern regimes overturned thanks to the West’s meddling were run by chaps like that —  awful, but not really Islamic zealots. Those we have installed are, or soon will be, both. Can it possibly mean that we’ve been wrong? And can we, for Allah’s sake, leave those people alone for as long as they don’t bother us or our allies? By all means, unleash hell if they do, no holds barred. But don’t try to build nations (except perhaps your own, which are all in dire need of shoring up). Such attempts will be as futile as mine has been to find a moderate Muslim. Those chaps seem to be either one or the other. Not both. Agreed, Mr Obama? D’accord, Monsieur Sarkozy?

‘She is the most photogenic of players: young, pretty, bare-footed; and, with her long dark hair and exquisite strapless dress of dazzling white, not only seemed to imply that sexuality itself can make you a profound musician, but was a perfect visual complement to the sleek monochrome of a concert grand… [but] there’s more to her than meets the eye.’ What, did she proceed to take that dress off? Don’t know about you, but I’m getting that funny feeling down there.

This isn’t the description of a budding lap dancer at The Juicy Lucy bar in a bad part of town. Rather, the cited passage comes from a review of a piano recital at Queen Elizabeth Hall. The article in one of our ‘quality’ papers is accompanied by a photo of the young lady in question reclining on her instrument in a pre-coital position with an unmistakable ‘come and get it’ expression on her face. The piano is bright-red, a colour usually found not in concert halls but in dens of iniquity.

The name of the aspiring pole dancer cum pianist was unknown to me, which is par for the course, as the definition of a star (or celebrity) these days is ‘someone I’ve never heard of’. To correct this gap in my cultural development I went to YouTube and found a dozen performances by her. Having listened to several, I can state with absolute confidence that a generation ago her kind of playing wouldn’t have got one into a decent conservatory, never mind onto a concert platform. The amazing thing is that most of the listeners’ comments are in agreement with this assessment. ‘Please… this is music, not Olympic games’ is a representative remark. Nor is it a strip joint, may one add.

Just for the hell of it, and a generally complimentary reviewer did once describe me as a ‘grumpy old man’, think of some female players of the past. Myra Hess. Maria Yudina. Clara Haskil. Marcelle Meyer. Marguerite Long. Can you, in the wildest flight of fancy, imagine a reviewer talking in such terms about those sublime musicians? Why, the chap, along with the paper’s editor, would have been taken away by the men in white coats as fast as an ambulance could go.

The circle is vicious: because tasteless ignoramuses use every available medium to build up musical nonentities, nonentities is all we get. And because the musical nonentities have no artistic qualities to write about, the writing nonentities have to concentrate on the more jutting attractions, using a vocabulary typically found in soft-porn publications. We are indeed a sorry lot.

Tomorrow HMG will unveil the recovery scheme to end all recovery schemes, the National Infrastructure Plan. I suggest adding another modifier to reflect its essence more accurately.

The Plan provides for the construction and reconstruction of many roads and railways, which by itself is good. But that’s the only good part. For only £5 billion of the the Plan’s £30 billion budget will be derived from cuts in public spending. The rest will be looted from our pension funds, or else come from China’s largesse. To use either source of financing isn’t so much ill-advised as downright criminal.

Starting from the end, the world’s biggest communist tyranny isn’t much given to charitable impulses. Nor does it pursue strictly economic objectives. As with any other communist state, its economy is but a means to a ghastly political end. Add the two together, and it becomes clear that the Chinese tyrants will demand a steep price for their munificence. Since the price can’t be financial by definition (we are skint, to use a technical term), it has to be political: Britain’s support for, or at least neutrality to, whatever China wishes to undertake, which can only be nasty. The underlying message is that HMG will do anything for self-perpetuation — an ugly pot of message to sell our soul for.

Yet another raid on our already depleted pension funds is yet another outrage. Here the purpose is two-fold: one declared, the other real. The first is getting the money to build all those lovely things, which is the minor part. The second, major part is to reduce our independence from the state, driving us deeper into its clutches. Our inept spivocracy must realise that only those wholly dependent upon it are likely to vote it in. Hence it’ll swell the public sector and the dependent underclass until the whole society explodes. What does it matter, as long as their jobs here or in the EUSSR are secure?

The stratagem of using giant construction projects as a way out of economic mess lacks even novelty appeal. It was first used by Franklin D. Roosevelt to get America out of depression. Millions of youngsters were made to toil for $1 a day to pave the government’s way towards having more control over the economy in perpetuity. FDR used the Great Depression as a road to more socialism, and therefore a drastic increase in the state’s size and power. Another, somewhat more radical, socialist got the message, and Nazi Germany embarked on its own construction projects. A network of autobahns crisscrossed the country; trains began to run on time. However, as both socialists discovered to the world’s detriment, such giant, publicly financed schemes couldn’t by themselves pull their countries out of the economic morass. It took a war to do that. Auschwitz and Coventry, Dresden and Hiroshima, Stalingrad and El Alamein — 50 million dead, all told. And then the trains began to run on time again.

Historical parallels are crying out — is anyone listening? Coupled with the West’s brinkmanship in the Middle East, our governments’ methods of improving the economy are fraught with dangers that may be somewhat worse than the routing of our pension funds.

The only way a government can affect the economy positively is by affecting it negatively — by not extorting ruinous taxes, not spending more than it earns, not regulating businesses into bankruptcy, not providing education that doesn’t educate, not tying our future to that of another giant socialist project, the EUSSR. Leave positive actions to us, Messrs Cameron and Osborne. We may not all understand the difference between Lang Lang and Glenn Gould, but we do know how to make a living. If you let us.

I hope none of this sounds too alarmist. But, if there was one thing Marx was right about, it’s that history repeats itself. And reruns tend to be worse than the originals.

Our democracy-run-riot is based on the assumption that reaching a certain, barely post-pubescent, age is a sufficient qualification for voting. The underlying belief is — and inevitably has to be — egalitarian: a tattoed, facial-metalled delinquent is deemed as able as, say, a doctor or engineer to make a contribution to the political process. This is as sure a way as any of vindicating Joseph de Maistre’s comment that every nation gets the government it deserves. Since we have considerably more juvenile delinquents than doctors or engineers, we deserve nothing better than our current spivocracy.

But it’s not just government that gets poisoned by toxic egalitarianism — education and culture are writhing in suffocating agony too. As anyone who has ever taught at school will tell you, the very notion of comprehensive education is an oxymoron. Forty-odd years of that, and British education, which at the time of grammar schools and secondary moderns was the envy of the world, has become its laughing stock. Education Secretary Michael Gove seems to realise this, which is why he is talking about reintroducing ‘elitism’ to our education. Good idea, that: excellence in any area is a pipe dream in the absence of a hierarchy, fluid as it should be. But the well-meaning Mr Gove is missing the point: we are now into the third generation of comprehensively ‘educated’ populace. Arranging millions of pupils in a hierarchical order commensurate with their attainment and potential will take hundreds of thousands of teachers capable of achieving such noble aims. Where are they going to come from? Most of the current lot are only barely more literate than their pupils, and almost as barbaric. It’ll take another two generations to get out of this vicious circle, by which time it’ll be too late, if it isn’t already.

If there is one lesson history teaches us, it’s that, in addition to its immediate destructive effect, egalitarian social experimentation has a knock-on effect. Once those dominoes start tumbling, there’s no stopping them. And there’s also another lesson, not yet learned by many: this institutionalised barbarism doesn’t result from a past mistake. There was no mistake. Our governments have achieved exactly the result for which their statist loins ached. Mass availability of real education would endanger their self-perpetuation. For a literate population would realise that our rulers are capable of committing dozens of solecisms in a short address. A numerate population would know that the cock-and-bull sums peddled by the government don’t add up. A population educated in the moral foundations of the West would be inclined to toss this bunch of self-serving nonentities out on their ear. Can’t have that, can we?

The venom of egalitarianism is all-pervasive — just look at what’s happening to our music. By this I don’t mean the pop flatulence that even in our conservative papers solely qualifies for the name of ‘music’ with no modifier. No, I’m talking about the modified ‘classical music’ that too has fallen victim to the universal lack of discernment cultivated by every institution in our society. The public definitely gets the music it deserves. Since, as a rough assessment, no concert audience these days contains more than a few people capable of telling a rotten performance from a sublime one, extra-musical factors are sole contributors to a performer’s career. That’s why, say, our piano scene is dominated by talentless hacks like Lang Lang who play the instrument with the dexterity of circus acrobats, and an artistic sensibility to match. The public doesn’t mind — any performance, no matter how inept, gets the same decibel level of ovation. Perhaps Mr Gove should cast his eye over this as well, for real music was composed for few by fewer. It’s hierarchical (‘elitist’ in today’s parlance) — or it’s nothing but cheap amusement. Make it egalitarian, that is universally available and paid for by the masses democratically voting with their cash, and you’ll end up with performers whose ignoble spirit is no higher than that of their audience, even if they have what these days passes for technical mastery. This doesn’t mean they have no talent — just that it lies in areas other than music. Tireless self-promotion, hard-working shilling, photogenic appearance, crass commercialism, cynicism, contempt for their art, and an avid devotion to all the deadly sins except gluttony and sloth all come to the fore.

One example, if I may, coming from a report by a highly reliable informant. The orchestras of Ljubljana and Zagreb recently joined forces to perform Mahler’s 8th Symphony, perhaps the largest-scale work in the choral repertoire, nicknamed the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ in reference to the number of musicians required (but seldom reached). The project had ramifications going beyond music — it was a symbol of unity between Chroatia and Slovenia, countries that haven’t always seen eye to eye. Hence it attracted much attention from TV stations, and not just in the cities involved. And that’s why the orchestras invited a star conductor from Russia to guide the project through. A lot of work was needed for an undertaking of this magnitude, and many rehearsals. He was seen as the right man for the job.

Yet the conductor didn’t deign to turn up in that part of the world for a single rehearsal, not even one immediately before the performance. He made his entry backstage 15 minutes late, when the public was already beginning to slow-clap and the TV folk to worry about their time slots. The maestro then sequestered himself in his room and wouldn’t come out. Finally, the desperate orchestra delegated one of the first violins to find out what was what. The violinist deferentially opened the door a crack, only to hear the conductor discuss the sale of a huge consignment of timber with his business manager. Now can you imagine Sir Thomas Beecham behaving that way? Klemperer? Fürtwangler? Toscanini? Mengelberg? And musically the Russian wouldn’t have been fit to carry their scores to the concert hall.

Considering that the chap already has (as opposed to earns) an income in high seven figures, one would think he’d be able to show more respect for his art. But, a product of modern egalitarianism that he is, he doesn’t even understand what’s required. Like any modern spiv he pursues nothing but money, power and fame, devoting his time to flogging from one venue to the next (sometimes two in different countries on the same day). And he is a typical rather than exceptional figure, allowed to prosper by a comprehensively educated public, money-grabbing impresarios and concert organisers assisted by illiterate musicologists, including those working on our increasingly demotic BBC 3. (One cretinous critic wrote in the Telegraph a few years ago that Maxim Vengerov is ‘not only the greatest violinist of our time, but the greatest of all time’. Now Vengerov is a vulgarian with a quick bow who wouldn’t be out of place playing at a wedding somewhere in Siberia. Even to utter his name in the same breath as Menuhin, Szigeti, Stern, Oistrach, Szering and countless others is chronically stupid. Saying he’s superior to them goes beyond ignorance and stupidity, entering the area of conscious subversion.) How similar, how very similar to our politicians.

I really wish you could read Russian: browsing through their papers and websites is such fun. Here are a few snippets.

An award-winning newsreader was delivering a deadpan item on a disagreement between Putin and Obama. When the US president’s name came up, the young lady, without changing her dispassionate expression, made an obscene one-finger gesture to the camera. The next day she was fired, much to the dismay of millions of Americans who know how she felt.

**

Who says philosophy is dry and academic? A massive fight broke out during a heated discussion at the recent International Philosophical Forum in Moscow. Two philosophers, a man and a woman, had suffered serious injuries before the police (several dozen of them) broke up the fisticuffs. Getcha, you Foucault Kant!

**

A 46-year-old policeman has been charged with selling his service sidearm to a friend for seven thousand roubles (£140). However, the policeman only received two thousand, as he already owed his friend the balance. Fair is fair.

**

Late one night near Archangel a traffic policeman stopped a car obviously being driven by a drunk driver. The driver’s daughter, court bailiff Fedulina, was the passenger. When the traffic policeman tried to confiscate her father’s driving licence, the bailiff swore unprintably and bit the officer’s left shoulder. Since there were several witnesses present, Miss Fedulina was charged with ‘committing violence, not threatening to life or health, on an official discharging his lawful duty.’ The young lady must have felt peckish.

**

In an unrelated incident, a young girl in Chuvashia has been sentenced to 1.5 years of penal colony for biting several policemen. The officers had been summoned by the perpetrator’s mother who was unhappy with the drunken behaviour of the girl and her friends. Sounds like a generation gap to me.

**

In yet another unrelated incident, head of Mari police has been temporarily suspended for starting a drunken brawl with a businessman in the restaurant Lada. The perpetrator attacked the businessman, tore his jacket and bit him several times. When arriving policemen tried to quiet him down, he tried to bite several of them too. It’s not just the crisis that bites.

**

Speaking of the crisis, the Duma deputy (MP) Eduard Markin sent out his bodyguard to exchange 300,000 euros into rubles. The parliamentarian himself had found a bank willing to do the transaction. At the door of the bank the bodyguard was met by a man who introduced himself as the employee who had spoken to Mr Markin on the phone. The man then collected the euros and walked back into the bank, locking the door behind him. When after a while the bodyguard knocked on the door, he was let in only to find that the man was no longer there, while the door to the emergency exit was swinging on its hinges. When queried, the Deputy explained that he wanted to exchange the money because he thought the euro was about to collapse. Sound judgment of Europe, shame about the woeful misunderstanding of his native land.

**

Having left Russia as a child, my fellow ex-Muscovite Anatole Kaletsky doesn’t strictly qualify as an item in Russian news. Still, you can take a boy out of Russia… I’ve commented before that Mr Kaletsky is our most reliable economic analyst: you can safely bet that every prediction of his will turn out to be its exact opposite. His analysis of the present and past equals the acuity of his forecasts of the future. Germany got into her present ordeal, he writes, by sticking to manufacturing whereas ‘the modern economy is about borrowing money and financial services.’ Deputy Markin read the situation better.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that the 50% marginal tax rate on annual incomes in excess of £150,000 is costing the Exchequer over £1 billion a year. The reason is simple: Entrepreneurs up their sticks and move to sunnier economic climes. The actual figure is probably higher, for many foreign businessmen, entertainers and sportsmen who could otherwise move themselves and their money to Britain refrain from doing so. Though for obvious reasons their number can’t be calculated precisely, it’s unlikely to be trivial. The tax ought to be scrapped, conclude those not entirely bereft of common sense.

That only shows how little they understand the real purpose of modern taxation. It’s not so much keeping the government solvent (an end that’s out of reach for modern governments anyway) as keeping the people under its thumb. For any modern government, be it a democracy, a tyranny or a democratic tyranny, is innately totalitarian. Those who have no laws to answer to rely on coercion and violence to exert their control. Those somewhat restrained by a tradition of justice rely on economic levers instead.

High taxes, preferably but not necessarily accompanied by inflation (which is a tax requiring no legislative approval), prevent too many people from becoming independent from the state. Those from whom the state extorts 60% of their income (all told) have to devote every waking moment to making sure they can still survive on the remaining 40%. All the government has to do to bring them to heel is push the button on the money-printing press, and within a year or two the 40% becomes 25% in real terms. In fact, real incomes everywhere in the West have been stagnant for 20 years, and in Britain they’ve actually decreased in the last 10.

If, say, we paid a flat 20% rate, not only would we not bother to cheat, but we wouldn’t depend on the state’s largess in our retirement. That isn’t an outcome the state, as personified by our politicians, craves. They want to take, or inflate, our money away and then use it to create a huge underclass with a vested interest in perpetuating the government — in the hope that all those Peters robbed to pay Pauls will also come begging to the state’s doorstep when what’s left of their money runs out.

Promiscuous government spending inflates not only currency but also assets. Realising that their money is losing value people rush either to spend it or invest it into something that’s less likely to disappear, mostly property. A steadily inflating currency turns everyone into either a reckless spendthrift or freewheeling speculator, including those who are by nature neither wastrels nor gamblers. Thus quantitative easing (presumably ‘queasing’ for short) spells qualitative disaster. Add to this extortionist taxation, and the state has control over our economic destiny. Wishing to bind its citizens hand and foot, the state itself had to slip the tethers of fiscal responsibility.

And yet no one protests. Scrofulous youths climb into smelly tents because they hate capitalism and love hating. Yet responsible, Barbour-clad adults will march to protect their right to chase foxes but not to save society from totalitarian economism and tyrannical taxation. It is of course our patriotic duty to pay taxes — but only to a government pursuing patriotic ends. Anyone who thinks our Daves, Nicks, Georges and Vinces fit this description is sorely misguided.

Dave ‘David’ Cameron has discovered that reducing our public debt is harder than he ‘envisaged’. Actually, as I ‘envisaged’ in my book The Crisis Behind Our Crisis, it isn’t hard at all. It’s either easy or impossible. It is, or rather would be, easy if we were governed by statesmen. It’s impossible because we aren’t.

A statesman would have the brains to knows what needs doing, the will to do it and the moral sense to put the country’s interests before his own. The first requirement is rarely met among our politicians. The second and third, hardly ever. All three together haven’t been seen since Margaret Thatcher, misguided though I think she was in many ways.

What has created our runaway debt isn’t mismanagement of the existing system but its congenital defect. Capitalist wealth creation can’t accommodate socialist wealth distribution. It’s as simple as that. Since abandoning what’s left of our capitalist economy (about 50% of it is already socialist) will lead to the kind of tyranny England has never seen, it’s socialist distribution that needs to be abandoned. Does this begin to make logical sense?

A series of ironclad laws need to be passed, a) limiting the state’s take to 25% of GDP, b) obligating the state to run budget surpluses until the debt has been reduced to below 10% of GDP, and balanced budgets thereafter, c) introducing a flat 20% income tax rate, while reducing corporate taxes, eliminating inheritance tax and severing most regulatory tethers on the economy (except for those that protect consumers against, say, cartels). Jobs and growth, so dear to Nick Clegg’s heart in word and so alien to it in deed, will follow with the certainty of night following day. And the debt will melt away faster than you can say ‘fiscal responsibility’.

I’m talking about first the rollback and then elimination of the welfare state. I’m also talking about developments that any politician will find so politically impossible as to be insane. As much as mention anything like this in Westminster, never mind Whitehall, and you’re out of a job. Off to Brussels you go, with an outstretched hand, begging ‘giza job’. (Actually, EU folk being less sensitive to the political imperatives of demotic English, our job seekers could even resume their posh accents. Why, Dave could even revert to David. Wouldn’t that be nice?)

So let’s make this more politically feasible, shall we? Taking a cue from the American revolution would help. That revolt was triggered by Britain trying to extract from the thirteen colonies a tax in the overall amount of £78,000. To put this in perspective, Britain’s national debt at the time was about £130 million, and it cost the country more than £200,000 a year to maintain her troops in North America after the French and Indian wars. So the amount was hardly exorbitant. Still, the colonists objected to taxation without representation on principle. (In due course they were to discover that they hated taxation even with representation, but this a different matter.) Their objection, which I suggest we echo, established a useful equation: taxation equals representation. Now if A equals B, then B equals A. Applying this proven logic to our situation, we obtain a different equation: representation equals taxation. Consequently, only taxpayers should have the vote.

If we began to regard voting as a privilege to be earned, rather than an automatic entitlement, then sanity could return to our politics. No longer able to buy their votes with our money, politicians would  have to focus on earning them. Then they wouldn’t pretend, usually by lying through their teeth, that they are doing something about reducing our suicidal debt. Phoney ‘austerity’ simply wouldn’t be on. All those measures so far have amounted to (possibly) slowing down the growth of the debt, not reducing it. It takes an inveterate cynic to carry on so. It takes a slave to nod his assent.

There’s no doubt that the steps I propose would create civil unrest. If even HMG’s pathetic pretence at ‘austerity’ brought tents to St Paul’s, real decisiveness may well bring barricades to Whitehall. But that would give the state a golden opportunity to vindicate its existence by fulfilling the very role for which it was instituted in the first place: public protection from external enemies and internal trouble-makers. The police would have to abandon the role thrust upon them, that of social workers, and disperse the riots, using whatever means it takes to do so. If army units have to be brought in to help, then that too would have to be done. And if a state of emergency has to follow, we’ll have to accept it as a necessary evil. ‘The desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy,’ as Guy Fawkes is supposed to have said.

Our disease is indeed desperate, one requiring chemotherapy, not aspirin. Chemotherapy hurts. But without it, the patient dies.

I know all this sounds unpleasantly extreme. If someone could suggest a nice, gentlemanly way out of our troubles, I’d be more than willing to sit up and listen. So far no one has. Our ‘leaders’ never will. That’s why our government will continue to live on borrowed money. And our society, on borrowed time.

Though Mr Ashdown and I live some of the year in the same part of France, we don’t live on the same planet. Paddy’s choice of residence shows he’s a man of impeccable taste (but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?). Alas, his choice of arguments in the recent Times article proves that taste doesn’t always spring from intelligence. Unless the intelligence on offer is of the extraterrestrial kind.

Mr Ashdown indulges in an odd sort of I-told-you-so rhetoric. We should, according to him, have joined the euro 15 years ago, when he pushed for it, even though he magnanimously allows that at this moment the idea isn’t all that attractive. Had we joined then we’d be in clover, rather than, well, the sort of stuff we’re in now. We wouldn’t have followed the bad example of those irresponsible southerners, borrowing themselves into the poor house. (Are the Irish southern? — my geography is weak). Instead we’d rely on our well-established fiscal probity and powerful manufacturing base to emulate Germany. Had we been subject ‘to the euro disciplines’ we wouldn’t have been ‘free to repeat our old indisciplines’. That takes us into the notoriously barren past-subjunctive territory ruled by King Whatif. It must be close to the planet Mr Ashdown is from. Normally this isn’t my favourite destination, but I’m willing to go there just this once.

Germany is the second-largest exporter in the world, behind only the rather more populous China. Britain is a very distant eighth on that list, closer to Mexico than to Germany. We are behind not only the Calvinist Netherlands (with about a quarter of our population) but also the fiscally irresponsible Italy and the would-be German France. The Germans drive mostly German cars, the Italians mostly Italian ones, the French mostly French ones. We drive mostly German, French and Italian ones. Has Mr Ashdown seen a lot of TVRs in his part of North Burgundy? Is that what made him decide Britain still has a strong manufacturing base? In fact, as proportion of GDP, our property business has outstripped all our manufacturing combined — an astounding achievement in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Presumably we can move up the ladder by exporting our houses and tower blocks to China, and then — watch out, all those Merc, Fiat and Braun makers.

Mr Ashdown suggests we wouldn’t have acted like those who are so different from us (all those garlic eaters) by reaching for the cheap euro loans. We’d be more like those similar to us, say the Germans and Dutch. I dare say, on purely empirical evidence, the Irish are rather closer to us than the Germans are — and even the latter, along with the French, went well over the debt limit they themselves had set. In other words, ‘euro disciplines’ are a figment of Mr Ashdown’s imagination.

We should still join the euro, pontificates Mr Ashdown, when it’s ‘in Britain’s interests’ to do so. How about never? Is that a precise enough time frame? The euro, along with the EU in general, isn’t an economic project but a political one, which the likes of Paddy know but choose to ignore for our benefit. Economically the project is as illiterate as it’s unrestrained ideologically. As soon as we realise this, Britain’s position vis-à-vis the euro will appear to be roughly the same as it was in 1940 vis-à-vis all those German bombers flying from French bases. Except that now they try to buy, rather than bomb, Britain into submission. Mr Ashdown would go along with that, provided the price is right. So money is what he means by ‘Britain’s interests’, as if there were no other. Such crass materialism — even if it weren’t grossly misplaced — seems odd in a devout socialist, but then only on this earth. On Mr Ashdown’s home planet this must be par for the course.

And there I was, thinking nothing much could surprise me any longer. I was wrong: apparently, Sir John Major is advising Dave Cameron on foreign policy. I confidently expect further imminent additions to Dave’s advisory staff: John Terry (diversity), Bernard Madoff, in absentia (economics), Brian Sewell (family policy). It’s good to know that our PM is being guided by true experts.

Mr Major, as he then was, left during his tenure an indelible impression upon me, not to mention the rest of the country. What was especially fetching, apart from his taste in women, was his answer to the question of whom among his predecessors in office he regarded as his role model. Pitt? Canning? Peel? Disraeli? No, none of those. Mr Major, as he then was, unerringly picked Neville Chamberlain as the most outstanding PM in British history. One can understand why: what could have been more appealing to John ‘Edwina’ Major than the old newsreels of his idol waving that piece of paper in the air. Peace in our time. But not just yet.

To push through the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Major had to combine Chamberlain’s knack for appeasement with Churchill’s bellicosity in fighting off the MPs who had misgivings. At the time he referred to them as ‘bastards’ and questioned their intellectual competence and emotional stability. Indeed, who but insane idiots could have found anything wrong with Britain stepping on the path leading to a Germany-dominated Europe?

What surprises me is that Sir John isn’t also advising HMG on fiscal policy. After all, his experience in that area is invaluable. For it was Major who, as Chancellor, dragged Britain into the ERM in 1990, a marriage that ended in divorce and cost the taxpayer £3.4 billion — a trifling amount by today’s standards but a tidy sum at the time. I’m sure if Major joined forces with Michael Heseltine (who believes we should join the euro soon), they could thrash out a policy Dave ‘David’ Cameron could claim as his own.

One does wonder whom Dave would single out as Britain’s most illustrious Prime Minister. A pound gets you a euro, it must be John Major.