A state is a regional monopoly of legal violence. It is a necessary evil and should therefore be constrained. If it is allowed to become too large, the resulting concentration of power will attract the worst members of society to work within it. These are not statements of political theory. This is written into the political history of the United Kingdom in recent decades. At its root, I would argue, is a failure of democracy itself. And not just a failure of politicians in power. A well-functioning democracy requires an effective opposition.

When I was a boy, there was a scandal going on in the children’s homes of North Wales where I grew up. It might as well have been Communist China for all the chance there was of any party but Labour ever winning an election there. North Wales was a one party state. If you know you’re always going to win, you also know there’s no chance of ever being held to account.

Paedophiles were able to take over the running of local children’s homes. Public sector workers are Labour’s favourite children (the party is pretty much the political wing of the public sector unions) and — as long as no one ever accused them of being bloody Tories (growing up there, I never heard the word  “Tories” without “bloody” or “fucking” in front of it) — they could use the children as they pleased. They could operate the homes as brothels, providing children for sex at will. And they did.

In the context of the current Muslim rape-gangs story, let’s make clear that this was a pre-immigration horror. The victims and criminals were almost all white. I’m not making a point about about race or religion here. The common factor is state power unchallenged by effective and informed opposition. Every community has monsters in its midst. It’s the job of government to protect vulnerable citizens from them. In both these cases, government prioritised its own reputation over the protection of innocent working-class children. Why?

What was done to those children in the North Wales children’s homes, and what has been done to the children in the rape gangs scandal across the country, was in each case a serious crime. The problem is not the law but that a corrupt and unchallenged state apparatus failed to enforce it. This time it’s happened, not just in Labour strongholds, but across the UK. Why?

I would argue the the apparatus of the British State is out of political control. The Deep State, Establishment or permanent staff of the state is its own thing — operating in the perceived interests — not of the citizens it’s supposed to serve — but of its own members. Therefore, even in areas of the country where opposition politicians might be expected to scrutinise the performance of their opponents, nothing can be done to oppose the state apparatus itself. 

Thanks to the unexpected intervention of a foreign billionaire, an issue the apparatchiks have successfully suppressed for decades has come unexpectedly to the forefront. Government is making concessions — authorising funds for piddling pretend enquiries. They will be staffed (as would a full national enquiry) by people who can expect future honours and benefits from the state if they take long years to bury the issues in Egyptian-scale pyramids of bullshit.

The only thing that should happen now is what should have happened in the first place. All offenders should be prosecuted without fear or favour and with zero regard to their culture or ethnicity. If I were PM, I would appoint a credible recently-retired police commissioner and allocate a budget of a billion quid or so to organise investigations and prosecutions nationwide to bring the offenders to justice. Including, by the way, the policemen, school teachers, social workers, council officials and other apparatchiks who were accessories after the fact to the offences of statutory rape. They didn’t rape the children themselves but, in assisting the rapists to escape justice, they became parties to the crime and should sit in the same dock with the alleged rapists as their co-defendants.

Nothing short of that will do. No number of enquiries, august pronouncements or— God help us — “lessons to be learned” will suffice. Justice must be done, must be seen to be done and must be seen to be possible even where the over privileged employees of an over mighty state are concerned.

This has been a good week. I went into my local hospital for a scan and had a follow up consultation with my pulmonologist. I did not have a pulmonary embolism. My lungs are healthy. A scan last November showed signs of a chest infection – some kind of mild pneumonia – which do not appear now. While all the cardiology/pulmonology kerfuffle was underway, my system recovered from the infection of its own accord. Good news.

I also visited the haematology team at the same hospital. The consultant sent me for blood tests and will follow up next month. This is mostly just to calculate the correct long-term dosage for my blood thinners. She is also curious about the superior mesenteric venous thrombosis I had in 2016

for no apparent cause and with no precipitating factors

That doesn't usually happen without cancer or surgical trauma so she wants to try to establish if, for example, I have a genetic predisposition to clot.

Such research may perhaps be useful to others but, as far as I am concerned, I had a problem and it's gone. It's time to return to a proper external male focus, rather than the horrid Woody Allen-like introspection I have inflicted upon you. Had I been guided by my own instincts rather than my friends' concern, I'd be in exactly the same position now but my private consultants wouldn't be updating their Porsches and my health insurance premiums would be lower.

I might also have spent more time writing about such horrors as the government planning to give taxpayers' money and a strategic air base to PRC-ally Mauritius or the vile Gerry Adams or its attempts to silence all discussion about criminal apparatchiks being accessories after the fact to rape. That would have been more interesting – to me and to you, gentle reader – than my internal workings. I can only apologise and strive to do better in future.

In other good news I've been arranging to meet Miss P. the Younger for dinner and a show. We're going to see Dr Strangelove at the Noel Coward Theatre. The ticket was my daughters' Christmas gift to me. Apparently Steve Coogan out-does Peter Sellers by playing four parts rather than three. Should be interesting and, I hope, fun. Finally, a week tomorrow I'll take my middle sister to meet my granddaughter.

Life's good. Let's get on with it. Thank you for your patience with my being a patient.

Everyone who ever participated in the leftist orthodoxy of identity-politics is to blame for the near-total impunity of the Muslim rape gangs in Britain. As I reported here, when I was a young solicitor in Nottingham, a police sergeant told me I was "part of the problem." I had a choice between believing what he told me about "honour killings" in that city or preserving my good standing as an anti-racist liberal. I chose the latter. I feared my career prospects and social standing would be jeopardised (they would have been) if I accepted his honest account. I called a good man a racist (mentally equating him with the likes of Nick Griffin and recoiling in fear from the association) when he was just horrified (as any decent human should be) by young women being murdered.

In that moment, I very much was "part of the problem" and I am profoundly ashamed of that. It is fortunate that – unlike the politicians, local councillors, social-workers and police officers who should have brought the rape gangs or the "honour" killers to justice (or prevented both phenomenona altogether) – I had no occasion ever to make any real life choices on the matter. I believe – faced with actual evidence – I would have made better ones, but the way I failed the good sergeant's test that long-ago day in the early 1980s proves I would have wanted to look the other way, just as they actually did. 

I am not still playing the stupid rainbows and unicorns game of cultural moral equivalence (still less the foul Critical Race Theory game of cultural moral hierarchy) when I make the point that the young white working class girls in our cities have not been the only victims of multiculturalism. Those murdered Muslim girls who (so the sergeant told me) had paraffin poured over them and were burned to death were victims too. It was racist to refuse to consider that their Muslim dads, uncles and brothers might murder them because of their primitive religious and cultural notions. It was racist for our authorities to treat Muslim men who gang-raped white girls differently than they would have treated others. It was racist to cover up these horrors in order to protect the myth – shamefully repeated just days ago in his annual Christmas message by His Majesty the King – that multiculturalism has been an overall benefit to Britain.

Some of us have been making these points as best we can for a long time. Many of us had given up, if we're honest. It was clear that the official narrative that we were racists and that these stories were disinformation – a "moral panic" as Wikipedia puts it – was going to prevail. Until recently the key social media market of ideas – Twitter – was controlled by the Left and attempts to raise the issue were likely to be memory-holed by their private sector woke equivalent of Orwell's MiniTru.

Miraculously, Elon Musk – a modern Edison, with plenty to occupy him besides our concerns about free speech – bought Twitter and (in one of history's greatest acts of philanthropy) set it free at his own personal expense. He told advertisers who sought to maintain its old Newspeak regime to "go fuck themselves." Miraculously he got involved in the issue not just in America (where the Constitution gives him some basis for hope) but in Britain too.

My British Constitution textbook at law school illustrated the supremacy of our Parliament by jokingly saying that it could – in law – make a man into a woman. Little did its authors know that dimwit politicians would later prove the educational point of their joke by making it real. Our constitution – as a result of centuries of struggle with the monarchy, which Parliament decisively won – can be summarised in just three words – "Parliament is supreme"

Our Supreme Court's name is Blairite NewSpeak. It is not supreme at all. Any crap that Parliament chooses to inflict upon us is law – however destructive, immoral or vile it may be. The COVID-19 pandemic smashed the last romantic delusions of the likes of me, Lord Sumption and the long-dead authors of that textbook that customary constitutional checks and balances constrained Parliament. They just didn't. If some charlatan had convinced our MPs that executing gingers would stop the spread of the virus, they could have legislated a Ginger Shoah - and it would have been good law. I am horrified to admit – based on their conduct in recent decades – that I think the police constables I was brought up to respect and regard as my protectors would have rounded them up without moral pause.

While the rape gang horrors were partly the fault of legislators, who could and should have acted, they were not the fault of legislation. Our laws on this subject are good. What was done to those young girls was a crime. Just as the honour killings were crimes. The failure was not of the Law but of the apparatus of Britain's Deep State – its political and administrative Establishment. A blind eye was turned on political grounds. A system of two-tier justice arose – under the leadership of #TwoTierKier as the country's chief prosecutor – not because of the Law itself, but its wilful non-enforcement. Thousands of British girls have been raped and God knows how many have been murdered because thousands of our so-called servants wilfully failed in their duties. And they did so out of contempt for us. Our children didn't matter to them as much as their careers and their social standing. 

There is no hope for the nations of the UK or for British society if those Deep State apparatchiks cannot – now that the issue has been raised so forcefully by Mr Musk – finally be brought to justice. Nothing short of a massive relocation from the corridors of power to those of our prisons will suffice - to be followed by an even greater purge of our civil service.

There is also no hope for our future unless the underlying issue of mass immigration of undesirables can now be openly and honestly discussed and addressed. A recent poll conducted by the Muslim Council of Britain reveals that one third of Britain's Muslim residents are thinking of leaving. They clearly fear we are awaking from the moral slumber of "woke".

Let's prove them right. 

The cause of my two medical episodes remains undiagnosed. It wasn't my heart. My angiogram showed that, while not perfect, it's not bad for my age and doesn't account for my symptoms.

The working theory is now pulmonary embolism (clots in my lungs) but this has not been verified by scans. The DVT in my leg has been treated with blood thinners – probably dispersing them – and clots small enough to cause my symptoms without killing me are anyway difficult to see.

Further tests are scheduled next year, but as the treatment will be the same whatever the outcome, I am relaxed. I am a practical man and will only dwell on unresolved problems. The doctors simply want to verify their diagnosis and they're welcome as long as my insurer is happy to fund their research.

In even better news, my granddaughter arrived in the early hours of 18th December. She's perfect, a healthy size and beautiful. I guess I am smitten and would probably think that anyway, but I really don't think it's bias!

I now know - and like - her name. I've named a star after her, sent her a cuddly goat in reference to how I learned of her impending arrival and have sent her all the important books she'll need in infancy.

Together with my mother and sister, I plan to visit her for the first time next Saturday. So far I've only seen her on FaceTime and I can't wait to hold her in my arms. 

Miss P. the Younger called on me earlier this week and we watched The Muppet Christmas Carol together - a family tradition since my daughters were very young.

Yesterday, my sailor nephew and his girlfriend visited for the match at Craven Cottage and after that I had the pleasure of introducing them to Pouilly Fuissé, Margarita and Macallan as we watched Christmas movies together.  

Today, I am heading North with Speranza to spend Christmas with my mum in North Wales;  our first without my dad who died on Valentine's Day this year. Christmas Day will be hosted by my youngest sister at her home in the Welsh countryside.

The political climate in Britain remains as dire as it's been in my lifetime. The sixth-formers are in charge and have no concept of their own incompetence or indeed any other relevant realities. The news from Germany is horrific and it's clear its people have been betrayed by their political class every bit as profoundly as we have. However, for once, I've been more focussed on personal joys. Even if the civilisation I love is doomed (and there is a risk that it is) key life events must be celebrated and enjoyed.

With that in mind, gentles all, I hope you are all able be with those who love you and to celebrate Christmas in the best possible spirit. Take a break from worrying about the vile specimens of humanity attracted to political and administrative office. Be properly present with your friends and family as they deserve.

I wish you all every joy and hope for the best for all of us in 2025. See you here next year.