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.

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. 

Labour appoints 200 ‘cronies’ to Civil Service.

I studied French at A level fifty years ago. The only lines of French poetry that have stuck in my mind all those years are these;

Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne blessent mon coeur d’une langeur monotone. 

It’s from Chanson d’automne by Paul Verlaine, who was born — I found out this week — in Metz. I visited his birthplace; an unassuming apartment building near the Palais de Justice. It wasn’t open so I didn’t go inside. Interestingly, given the 80th anniversary of D-Day currently being celebrated, those lines were broadcast by the Allies to signal the imminent landings to the French Resistance.

My first conversation with the late Mrs P. was on that A level course. Her father later told me I'd made quite an impression. She was the star student and teachers pet. I was comme çi, comme ça — I eventually scored a C. She was infuriated by my dominance in the conversation classes and protested too much about me to her family for the importance of the grievance.

I’ve been expecting to see you for some time,

her father wryly observed, when first I met him. 

The teacher whose pet she was, was a cynical careerist. He later escaped the boredom he never bothered to conceal by becoming Director of Education for our County Council. It was not he who introduced us to Verlaine and Rimbaud (who had a passionate romantic affair in their youth). That fell to a prudish lady whom I teased with constant sly references to the affair. In the 1970s teachers had not yet been trained to praise and promote homosexuality. The poor lady loved their poems and — blushing furiously — defended their “honour” from my insinuations.

A more influential teacher for me was an eccentric who took his three best male pupils to France every year in his Renault 4. My worst enemy, a friend and I qualified when we were 12. After inviting our parents over to meet his wife (and thus be reassured) it was he who took me to France for the first time. It was my first visit abroad. We camped our way down to the Loire Valley and its chateaux — and back.

I remember being impressed by the flying buttresses of Chartres Cathedral and the beauty of the Château de Chenonceau. From the Eiffel Tower in Paris we looked down to watch him be arrested for sunbathing shirtless while he waited for us. Skin cancer was no more discussed than gayness back then. He sunbathed constantly to maintain his nut brown tan. Quite a character, who wouldn’t last ten minutes in suspicious modern times, but a good teacher who believed in what he did.

I wonder what influence these teachers had on my eventual international career — all unforeseen then in rural Wales. As I sit in the lawyers’ quarter of Metz I’m pretty sure they didn’t know France’s legal system differs more profoundly from ours than its language does.

Given a year living here, language would not be a problem. I love the lifestyle, good manners and culture. However I’d miss the organic, bottom-up nature of English Common Law and the way it informs our attitudes. Abolish Parliament, repeal every statute made by our politicians and within five years we’d once more have the best legal system in the world, grown organically in the soil of our everyday experiences.

We have humble courts of law. They have palaces of “justice” (yes those are sneer quotes). Our laws grew like mushrooms. Theirs are gifts from on high for people to submit to gratefully (or evade). Just as Shariah is a gift from Allah, so Civil Code is a gift from Ancient Rome, rewrapped by Bonaparte. You can build a civilisation on it — they have and I am fond of it — but I couldn’t breathe their legal air for long.

One good reason to leave the EU was to prevent more generations of our politicians being infected with the pompous self-importance of theirs. It may take decades to get our MPs back to humility, but our future depends on it.

Before returning to my hotel to process photos and blog, I had lunch at La Bistro de la Cathedrale, TripAdvisor top pick for Metz. I had my most substantial meal for days and thoroughly enjoyed it, staying on afterwards to enjoy a Ricard in the sunshine.   

My album of Metz photos has been updated.

“Breakfast near me” typed into Google Maps this morning yielded several better prospects than yesterday’s mediocre fare in my hotel. I was delighted with my choice — a brunch spot favoured by young French families. The only disadvantage was it made me feel old! Polite young children sang along quietly to the English pop music in the background and were generally delightful. I’m pretty sure they’d no idea what they were singing, but then neither did their parents so only I got to be amused. I’d have been delighted to be a grandad at any of their tables.

The late Mrs P. and I braved disapproving fellow diners on many occasions in England by taking the Misses P to restaurants when they were little. They learned how to behave and never once showed us up. One proud parenting moment was at the old River Room at the Savoy. If daggers looks involved real daggers we’d have been acupunctured to death as we were shown to our table. Our girls behaved with perfect decorum however (just like the young French children this morning, who brought the story to mind) and we had a lovely family meal.

Before we called for the bill the Italian leader of the band providing live background music came over to chat to the girls He was surprised to find we were English. He said we looked just like a family in Italy and that it was “lovely to see” — for the first time in all the years he'd played at The Savoy. I still think it's a mistake for parents (and society in general) to assume young children are too barbaric for polite society. They don't have to be. 

I adjourned to a nearby park to take photos, catch up on messaging and read the Sunday Telegraph and my usual blogs on my iPad. I sighed to see there was a children’s playground. In London a lone elderly man (especially one with a camera) would trigger suspicious gazes. The French families today were stereotypically insouciant as I sat on a bench nearby.

French privacy laws make street photography (ironically pioneered by their greatest photographer, Cartier-Bresson; whose most famous photos would now be forbidden) illegal. I was careful to respect a law I despise by ensuring any human subjects were unidentifiable figures in the frame.

I think my desire to obey laws is one of the reasons I’m a libertarian. People with looser attitudes to compliance may worry less about 3,000+ crimes per Parliament being created (as happened under New Labour).

I used to ask people how many of those new crimes they could name. No one ever knew more than one; hunting with hounds. Others included entering a nursery school without prior appointment, which must be broken regularly by grandparents stepping in when a parent is delayed. However well intended those new crimes were (and most were just pointless propaganda to make the government seem "active" and “caring”), it’s not good to make the perfect knowledge of law assumed by our courts even more of a legal fiction.

Not least because it undermines respect for Law itself. A few laws based on commonly-accepted moral principles and rigorously and reliably enforced are the way to build respect for Law. The alternative makes lawyers rich but I can see no other benefit.

That said, I note the current British election campaign turns once again on the stupidest question of all — "what can government do for me?" The answer, if you’re not an apparatchik or on benefits, is “***k you and take most of your earnings.” That, however, is a lesson not yet learned.

Keir Starmer is keen to add 1.5 million new voters aged 16 and 17 to the electorate, precisely because they'll have learned no economic lessons at all. One wonders why anyone ever thought it a good idea to put our children's education in the hands of parasites who profit from voter ignorance. It would certainly account for why Starmer is also keen to drive more future voters into state education.

Not one party in this election proposes less government and fewer laws. Not one. Unless something changes (I hope it does because both my grandads volunteered to defend my right to do so) I shall for the first time in my life not vote. Even when I lived abroad I voted every time by proxy until I lost the right to do so. The Conservatives are authoritarian statist socialists with no respect for individual freedom. So of course are Labour, but at least they're honest about it. Given a choice between thieves and lying thieves, I'm not inclined to express an opinion.

After being brought down by such political reflections while reading my newspaper and blogs, I set off again in holiday mood to take photographs. I headed to the plan d'eau de Metz, a kind of leisure-boating marina. I'd forgotten about my intermittent fasting regime and found myself not having lunched with minutes to go. The few restaurants that were open on a Sunday had closed by 2.30pm, so I grabbed a beer and an ice-cream at a place which – it transpired – sadly lacked a loo. Like many gents of my age, this is now a matter of more concern than it used to be. I swiftly followed the directions given by the ice-cream vendeuse and found myself in a queue. A clever automated public WC performed an impressive cleansing so thorough each time that it took longer than the typical visitor! Fortunately, I was spared embarrassment and continued my waterside walk in happier mood.

I'd planned to call an Uber to return as I did yesterday. When I checked the distance however, I realised I'd walked in something of a circle and was less than half a mile from my hotel. In consequence, though I'd planned to walk a little less than yesterday, I ended up covering the same modest distance. I enjoyed the walk more today. Partly because I'd left my tripod and lighting gear in the hotel to lighten my load. Mainly because I was more confident I could handle it. 

My album of photos has been updated if you’re interested.

I was picked for a jury in the end. Our verdict was delivered last Thursday. I can now discuss the case and the proceedings in court but it remains illegal to discuss our deliberations. I will say nothing here about what went on in the jury room. All opinions are my own. I do not speak for other jurors.

I won't identify the case though you may guess from the details here. I am sure the defendant will be pleased if you do. He's a full-time political campaigner and told the court repeatedly that he wanted to be arrested and charged so he could have his "day in court" to speak out about "the real criminals" in HM Government. He claims to have played the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service for fools in order to achieve that goal.

I suspect he will have been disappointed. The trial attracted little press interest. All accounts I have seen since it ended (I didn't look while it was in progress, as directed by the judge) are identically worded so probably came from a single agency. The defendant will have hoped for more journalists to show up. 

The defendant estimates his impact on the world very highly. On the day he was arrested, he was protesting a suggestion that HMG might send teams armed with COVID-19 jabs into the homes of the unvaccinated. He believes that plan – which he described as terrorism – was never implemented because of his actions that day.

I doubt the idea would ever have been acted upon. Even taking needles to the doorsteps of the potentially unwilling would not have gone down well, let alone the forced vaccinations he seemed to think were intended. The vaccination teams would have needed police protection and the "optics" in a world where people film such things on their mobile phones would have been awful. 

The defendant's motivations were only relevant to understanding why he was there that day. They were not relevant to his guilt or innocence. He wasn't prosecuted for his opinions. In fact, his own video showed the police officer waiting patiently while he expressed his opinions on a FaceBook live stream.

He was arrested outside the home of a prominent politician. His arrest was for criminal damage due to a miscommunication between police officers. Accepting he had not committed that crime, the CPS authorised an intent charge instead. He was indicted for taking objects (posters and glue) to the scene with intent to cause criminal damage. 

He had been arrested fourteen times before but never brought to trial. It would have been easier to get his day in court if he had been more robust in his actions. He was keen to point out that he abhorred violence and differentiated himself from the "Stop Oil" protestors prepared to commit crimes to make their point. He seems to have been carefully calibrating his actions so as to get arrested without offering any violence. I think he might well have been released without charge for a fifteenth time if it were not for the police miscommunication.

He claimed in court he brought the posters and glue to give the impression that he was going to put them up. He did so to get arrested and charged. The Crown's evidence was his video saying he would put up the posters and redacted extracts from a police interview in which he said several times that he would have done so. He had lied to the police so that he would be arrested and charged. He never intended to cause criminal damage. He just wanted his "day in court". 

It seems to me he was guilty of wasting police time by telling those lies. The Criminal Law Act 1967 says;

Where a person causes any wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making to any person a false report tending to show that an offence has been committed, or to give rise to apprehension for the safety of any persons or property, or tending to show that he has information material to any police inquiry, he shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for not more than six months or to a fine of not more than two hundred pounds or to both.

So his defence to Crime A was that he had committed Crime B.

The defendant was the only defence witness. I found it hard not to smile when his counsel earnestly pointed out her client didn't have to give evidence. It was obvious that time on the stand was his goal. Prosecution counsel tried to keep him to the point in cross-examination but his own counsel (probably on instructions) let him ramble. The judge was polite to the point of indulgence in this respect, but did cut him off a couple of times when he strayed too far from the subject at hand.

His opinions were irrelevant to his guilt or innocence. It didn't matter what was on his posters or why. All the jury had to decide was whether we were sure he intended to glue them to the politician's home. The judge's summing up and directions were clear and painstakingly impartial. He said the defendant claimed to have been "bluffing" to the police about his intentions, rather than "lying", for example. There were three components to the alleged crime; having the materials, intending to use them and lacking a lawful excuse. There was no dispute about his having the materials and no suggestion of a lawful excuse. 

We returned a verdict of not guilty and I am comfortable with our decision. I am also comfortable with our jury system. After this experience, I am happy and relieved still to retain my confidence in this ancient institution. We took our responsibilities very seriously. We discussed all relevant issues at length and came to a mature conclusion on the evidence. I was actually rather impressed.

From time to time, especially when juries don't deliver the results our establishment would like, there is pressure to "reform" the jury system. Such suggestions should be resisted. In general, though as Kant said "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made",  juries do justice rather well. If I were charged with a crime of which I was not guilty, I would want a jury to decide my fate.

There's much scope for reform of criminal justice in our country. The courts could certainly be far better run. The time wasted is horrifying. That horror is amplified by the calm acceptance of it by officials to whom it is obviously normal. To be fair perhaps that's because my life was spent in the private sector where time is money and money is survival? Maybe fellow jurors from public sector backgrounds were not nearly as shocked by all the faffing about?

I don't think so though because this was not my first experience of it. I began my legal career in the 1980s doing criminal defence work. The partner who offered me that job was a renowned specialist. The law had recently been changed to allow specially-qualified solicitors to appear in higher courts. He found out I had done well in the first advocacy training course for solicitors to lead to that qualification.

I enjoyed advocacy and was probably suited to the work. I had wanted in my youth to be an actor and, to be honest, I liked the performative aspects. I gave it up after a year to do commercial work partly because I hated the amount of time wasted on waiting around. The courts were as organised as any monopoly needs to be – i.e. not at all. I couldn't imagine a life driven by that. This week reassured me I chose correctly all those years ago.

As someone with a real estate background I was also shocked by the poor design and layout of the modern buildings housing the court.

In the private sector HM Government is known as "the simple shopper." All its spending is in Milton Friedman's fourth category of "someone else's money spent on someone else." It's famously useless at purchasing; typically securing neither quality nor value.

I can only assume, from the sublimely inefficient layout, that the architects who designed our court building saw "the simple shopper" coming a mile off.

The biggest difference from my long-ago experience of the courts was all the technology. Not only are there laptops and tablets everywhere, it has affected evidence-gathering too. Back in the day, the jury would have heard about the events in this case from policemen reading (with permission) from their (paper) notebooks. We got to see the events over and over again on video from FaceBook.

As in so many aspects of modern life, we have more data to process. The question is whether it leads to better decisions or just wastes more of our time. On that, gentle reader, the jury is still out. 

This week and next I am on jury service.

The jury is the last of Britain’s institutions in which I have any faith. I learned about “criminal equity” (known in the US as "jury nullification") during the legal history part of my long-ago law degree. For example, the hated “game laws” providing for capital punishment of poachers were reformed against the wishes of the landowning gentry in Parliament because juries refused to send men to their deaths for those crimes. They acquitted the guilty to subvert the system. In the end, to secure convictions, Parliament had to scale down the punishments.

As a libertarian I believe that most of our current laws should not exist. Perhaps there will be some scope for criminal equity if I am asked to convict someone under one of those superfluous laws? I should be so lucky.

So far, as I was not selected for any of the trials, I have had a day of my life wasted in a scruffy, noisy and uncomfortable "Jury Assembly Room." Looking around me, it's clear I am – as is of course to be expected – going to meet people outside my usual circle. I look forward to that with interest. As names were called out for each jury, there were precious few Smiths and Joneses. I'd estimate about one traditional British name per jury. Interestingly, there were almost as many names from Eastern Europe as from the Sub-Continent. I may get the chance to practise my Polish.

The officials marshalling us citizens like cattle seemed efficient enough though their training did not involve public speaking. They had difficulty projecting their voices (if indeed they were trying) and they were not supported by any sound system. Given the noise from the in-room cafe (selling meals at precisely £5.71 – the maximum allowed expense), the general hubbub of a crowded room and the fact that the court is under the Heathrow flight path, that made it difficult to hear them at times.

They had the usual condescending tone of people whose wages are funded by state force. I enjoyed it when the lady welcoming us had a script to read thanking us for our contribution. She just couldn't sound convincingly grateful. Let's just say I fancy my chances if I ever get to play her at poker.

I also noticed the usual over-familiar use of first names. The private sector is just as guilty of that these days, but it's particularly annoying from state functionaries from whom I cannot walk away. In fairness, I despise the British state so much that its employees would need to be epically polite to please me, even if they wanted to. In truth, if they knew how much they get on my nerves, I suspect it would make their day. So I must just grin and bear it.

My only direct interaction was to enquire politely about reimbursement of taxi costs. The lady said "no" before I finished my sentence and without enquiry about my reasons for asking. I am not short of money for the fares and will put my own comfort and convenience first regardless. I just wish now I'd never asked. It wasn't worth the irritation for the sake of a few quid. I guess the optimist in me still hopes for one pleasant interaction before I die with the state funded by most of my life's work.

It's a criminal offence to write about details of the trial or jury deliberations. I wouldn't do it anyway as that's a good law. We could not reasonably ask jurors to participate in criminal trials if they were at risk of their identities or opinions being exposed to people they might convict. However, I will let you know my general impressions of the process.

Let's hope I retain my faith when my service ends.

Firstly, some sad news. Some of you will  – like me – have once followed JMB's Blog Nobody Important. It's open only to invited readers now but back in the heyday of blogging (when we all thought citizen journalism was going to change the world) you will remember her often mentioning her husband, whom she dubbed "The Old Scientist". I am sorry to report that he has passed away at the age of 89. I had the pleasure to meet him just once, when I stayed at their home in Vancouver on my North American road trip in 2013. He was a decent man who lived his life well and I feel for my friend in her loss.

Secondly, as I seem to have exposed more of my personal life than usual of late, just a brief report that – though my situation is as sad as before – I am getting on with my life and feeling better. I had a good run in Speranza to visit my parents last weekend. There are not many Ferraris in the world with over 91,000 miles on the clock, but (touch wood) she's in fine fettle and running well. I don't know why I don't drive her more. Call me shallow and materialistic, but she lifts my spirits every time. It is hard to feel sorry for yourself on the open road at the wheel of a bella macchina. I can't wait for borders to be properly re-opened so I can visit my friends on the Continent. 

Thirdly, a brief "state of the nation" summary from my point of view. If you think I am wrong, please tell me. Trust me; I would love to be wrong. 

It is gradually dawning on the British public that they've been had over COVID. They still don't tell the pollsters so but it's becoming an object lesson in the difference between stated preferences (which often signal "virtue" or seek to give the questioner what s/he wants) and revealed preferences (shown by how we behave in practice). For example, when out and about in London it's clear that only state fanatics and submissives are still wearing masks. I dutifully obeyed when on public transport in London for most of the Scare, but now I just carry one to wear if challenged by an official. Most travellers are not wearing them and the submissives now dare to do no more than cast a stink-eye. I hope the divisive hatreds stirred up by Government propaganda will now die down but I fear that many friendships have been irremediably broken. 

Most of the West panicked in a very similar fashion, though Florida has thankfully provided a control group for an experiment that would otherwise have lacked one. As data reveals the ineffectiveness of non-medical interventions (the use of state force) we can therefore expect a united front from the global establishment and its lickspittles in the media. Data will be spun. Evidence will be bought, paid for and rigged. Every government will point at all the others and say "we followed global best practice based on the data we had at the time." That may have been true for a month or two at the beginning but it's clear now that the British Government, for example, knew damned well that its tyrannical measures were not necessary. The real scandal of "partygate" is not that Downing Street civil servants at the heart of the state apparatus ignored the law. It is that their conduct reveals they knew their propaganda was false and/or wildly exaggerated. 

If they believed what they told us, the law would have been irrelevant because they would have been too scared not to comply. 

The British Establishment is safe however. Not least because, as it metaphorically thrashed the British public, HM Opposition's only complaint was that the whip was not thick enough, was not applied soon enough and was wielded with insufficient vigour. The Labour Party is not going to hold HM Government's feet to the fire for forgetting our every liberal tradition because HMG's ripostes will all be examples of Labour's demands for more, more, more state violence. 

It's hard to say now (as I have believed my whole life) that Labour cares less about Liberty than the Conservatives. I am not sure the latter has left any space at the authoritarian end of the political spectrum for Labour to occupy. The "Conservative" knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat was to boss us all about in excruciating detail, while borrowing on a colossal scale to throw public money at the problem. If a Labour manifesto were ever to be written in plain English, that's pretty much what it would say. As "Conservative" support for government tyranny weakened, Boris Johnson, in effect, became the Leader of the Labour Party – herding its lobby-fodder to vote for his measures. Every time he wrote about Liberty (and he has done so many times in his career as a journalist) he lied. He may be the cleverest PM we've ever had, but he's also (and I recognise this is a huge claim) the least principled.

Intelligence without principles is more dangerous than the politicians' usual dozy uselessness. I see no better replacement from either side of the House, but he must go. 

I cannot imagine ever bringing myself to vote again. I have always voted (as I remember explaining to my Polish teacher as she prepared to vote for the first time in the immediate post-Communist era) in the cynical manner of an intelligent citizen of a long-standing democracy. I know them all for rogues. Their aspiring to have power over their fellows while living on them parasitically reveals them as such. So I have always voted for the robbers who would steal – and the thugs who would bully – less. I never saw my vote (except perhaps during the Thatcher years) as anything more than a damage-limitation excercise. When push came to shove, however, it seems – even in my world-weary cynicism – I was deluding myself.

Can we hope for any useful lessons to be learned from the pan-panic? When the butcher's bill is received for the non-COVID patients killed by state action, will it give politicians pause for the next emergency? We can hope so. I fear what they have mostly learned, however, is that if they deploy their psychological-warfare "nudge" units effectively enough, they can get us to put up with far more than they'd previously dreamed of. Buckle up, friends. I suspect you're going to see more of your governing classes than you previously feared.

I have been too delicate (or is it fearful?) to comment much on how different the London to which I returned to live in 2011 was from the one I worked in twenty years earlier. To friends I’ve remarked that the monastic silence I used to enjoy on public transport has been replaced by a bazaar-like Babel. I’ve mentioned that Londoners no longer make way politely for each other in the street or on the Tube. Most remarks I could have made however would have exposed me to allegations of “racism” and those are best avoided in casual conversation. If I’m going to say something dangerous, I prefer to do so in writing that I can take care about and revise!

A remark between friends in a bar that “it doesn’t feel like home anymore” or “it’s not at all like an English city” could get one into hot water — however harmless (and true) such observations might be. So, cyber-warrior for free speech that I would like to think I am, I keep (mostly) shtum. Who needs censorship when we are all self-censoring so assiduously?

This book, by Ben Judah, has no such concerns. It tears into those issues and does so without qualms. It does more than merely put statistics on such observations, though it certainly does that too.

“There is a whole illegal city in London. This is where 70 per cent of Britain’s illegal immigrants are hiding. This is a city of more than 600,000 people, making it larger than Glasgow or Edinburgh. There are more illegals in London than Indians. Almost 40 per cent of them arrived after 2001. Roughly a third are from Africa. This is the hidden city: hidden from the statistics, hidden from the poverty rates, hidden from the hunger rates. They all discount them: a minimum 5 per cent of the population.”

The author, a journalist, takes his readers into the parallel universes that make up modern London; universes that know little of each other and share one major truth — to them my London is a legend and Londoners like me (and the few of our descendants that still live here) are fabulous beasts. They are as likely to know a unicorn as us.

“Between 1971 and 2011 the white British share of London’s population slumped from 86 per cent to 45 per cent. This is the new London: where 17 per cent of the white British have left the city in the first decade of this century.”

He spends time with street people around Hyde Park. He hangs with a Nigerian policeman and a Nigerian teacher. He visits with the pampered wife of a Russian minigarch. He hangs with the drug dealers who serve my part of West London in a market I pass most days. He smarms and lies his way into the company of people who probably shouldn’t open up to him. At times I worried for the safety of his subjects such as the prostitutes talking about their murdered friend. Sure, he changes their names but the details are so specific that their identities are only protected by his assumption that no one connected to them will do something so “old London” as read his book. 

The pace of the change he documents statistically (he’s a recent arrival himself and has no emotional baseline against which to measure it) is phenomenal. The new arrivals have had little chance (even if old Londoners had reached out to help them — and we didn’t) to absorb the local culture or adapt to our customs. Not only do they keep themselves to themselves - they remain in the siloes of their specific identity group.

“There is a whole African city in London. With more than 550,000 people this would be a city the size of Sheffield. And it has grown almost 45 per cent since 2001.”

The cheery slogan of our age is “diversity”. It’s as real as slogans usually are. A black teacher in an East End school observes (having first asked to adjourn to an offsite location where she feels free to speak):

‘They say this is a multicultural school. But it’s not. The school is dominated by Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslims, with some blacks, a few whites and EUs coming in. I went to a Muslim school in Nigeria, so I can recognize this.’

Asked if the children she teaches are becoming English, she answers

‘With black children they do. But with Asian children they try not to. The Muslims I don’t think they will ever be English. They don’t want to be at all.’

As the Guardian’s review of the book says (casually smearing Nigel Farage as a racist with its usual disregard for truth or justice)

It’s easy to imagine how Nigel Farage or the Daily Mail might exploit his material.

but someone should be exploiting this material, surely, in order to address the issues it raises? God knows the Guardian never will because these poor exploited people are cleaning its readers’ lavatories and keeping down the costs in their Mayfair restaurants. The native workers who might best be hoped to sympathise with their plight are too despised by Guardian readers these days to be listened to. 

The lost souls living in misery amidst London’s wealth have been drawn here by lies. Not ours but those of people traffickers who hold many of them in near slavery among us; making them pay off at 100% interest the debts incurred to get here while threatening to harm the families back home they came here to help. Or their lies and those of compatriots who came here before them who make up success stories to “protect” their families from the squalid truth.

They dared to come here illegally because of half-truths about our respect for legal rights — portrayed to them as weakness. Yet those rights — pace the Daily Mail — are not the problem. It’s the weakness of the enforcement of our laws that leaves them here in legal limbo.

The book is not well-crafted. A good editor could have made it more pleasurable to read but this is not literature but journalism. It’s the literary equivalent of a visit to Auschwitz — a moral duty from which enlightenment, not pleasure, should be expected. I commend it to you not for your enjoyment but for the benefit of your soul. 

So says Anna Soubry, an MP for a party with literally zero support. Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition leader with the lowest approval rating since records began, agrees. On the back of the Supreme Court’s apolitical decision, would-be plutocrat Gina Miller smugly continues her well-funded political assault on the biggest democratic vote in the history of our nation. She does so flanked by the leaders of minority parties too “frit” to face an election. This is democracy Jim, but not as we know it.

The law is now clear. The PM erred. I am sure he will respect the decision. That legal judgement is one thing but the jubilant fake-democrats’ equally clear determination to use it to thwart our decision to leave the EU is another. Please don’t quote me that “no mandate for no deal” nonsense, by the way. No deal acceptable to Parliament is on offer and they are doing all they can — in active concert with the other side’s negotiators — to prevent the government achieving a better one.

They will accept nothing short of stopping Brexit. All else is lies, mystification and agitprop.

Several of them referred reverentially to the Supreme Court as the “highest court in the land” but that is a blatant lie. They are straining their every sinew to ensure that our highest court continues to be the European Court of Justice, that our highest political authority remains the EU Council of Ministers and that our government is the EU Commission. These self-proclaimed “democrats” are today celebrating the chance this decision gives them to fight for our judiciary, legislature and executive to remain on foreign soil unaccountable to the British people.

That’s not a fantastic day for democracy but it is a great day for fantasy democracy, fake democracy — for Britain remaining a colony of a foreign power. Because if your Supreme Court is in another country, that’s what you are — a colony. As Tony Benn warned decades ago and as Guy Verhofstadt recently confirmed to rather surprising wild applause at the LibDem Conference, the EU sees itself as an empire. The days of European imperialism are not over, it seems, until the failed imperial powers of the past have another go. 

Unlike the Remain ultras, I can accept a decision I don’t like. The court’s ruling surprises me in light of the Bill of Rights but I am no constitutional law expert and I now accept our constitution is as they say. I have nothing to say against the judges concerned. I won’t reargue a case determined by the court I (unlike Anna Soubry et al.) believe should be the highest in the land.

It changes nothing as to the political and moral rights and wrongs of Brexit however. 

Those calling for the PM’s resignation are hypocrites. He has offered to resign by calling an election. Knowing they would lose, these triumphant “democrats” refuse to let him do that. They don’t want to back him, but they refuse to sack him. Knowing a new Parliament would (if the Conservatives see sense and act in concert with the Brexit Party) be solidly for an immediate Brexit, they prefer to hold him in place and try to use him as their puppet.

The court’s decision is disappointing but the Millerite thugs’ hypocrisy, elitist disdain for the British people and cynical hostility to true democracy is drearily predictable and utterly infuriating to decent patriotic Brits. They are playing with fire and I hope only they get (metaphorically) burned.