Today was only a half day. We began with a session entitled Defeating Net Zero and other enemies of Freedom in which the panellists exposed some of the stupidities of government policy. Like so much of the weekend's discussion the policy is as much the former "Conservative" government's as the present Labour one's.

Defeating Net Zero panel

Catherine McBride OBE, an economist and member of the UK Trade & Agriculture Commission made the point that, if emissions matter, they matter everywhere. We have deindustrialised the UK and sent our emissions to China. On any analysis, that doesn't help the planet at all. We pay people to plant trees in Scotland where they will die from lack of CO². What we should have done is planted them along our motorways, including on the central reservation where they'd not just absorb CO² but help screen drivers from the bright LED headlights of oncoming cars, which are themselves a consequence of net zero policies.

As a nation, we have only three  natural resources: coal, oil and natural gas. We've decided not to use them. Meanwhile Europe is giving Russia more for gas than it’s giving Ukraine to fight Russia. If we don't want to use our gas ourselves we could have sold it to our European neighbours rather than having them become more reliant on a hostile country. There are countries where solar makes sense. The UK is not one of them. Solar operators are only making money from subsidies. It's a government-sponsored Ponzi scheme. We ourselves import fracked LPG from the US while concreting over our own frackable reserves to ensure we can never get to them – even perhaps in some future military emergencies when we couldn't import what we need for our own war effort. This is, she said, insane. 

Christopher Howarth of the European Research Group explained that for a new government to undo Net Zero in 2029 is an extremely difficult proposition. It's not embedded in any one piece of legislation but in many acts of Parliament. The most recent revision to the target didn't even have a proper debate in Parliament. It was done by statutory instrument and there was no vote at all.The few opponents who might have voted against didn’t even know it was happening. Even when it becomes apparent the damage that Net Zero is doing to our national economy (while making zero difference to global emissions) it will be hard to undo it in a country where it's desirability is taught in the National Curriculum as fact.

I found many of this weekend's discussions interesting and educational but the best speech of all was from Claire Fox (Baroness Fox of Buckley) an "old Lefty" (her words) from my home town in Wales. Claire used to be a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the editor of Living Marxism magazine. She remains on the Left but is reviled by her new identarian comrades because she regards freedom of speech as – not a right-wing excuse to allow hate speech to flourish – but part of the essential inheritance of the Enlightenment. She finds it infuriating that people tell her she's now a Conservative because she believes in free speech. It's a value that's central to our civilisation and does not belong to the Right. 

She warned us that we were in danger of falling down the same rabbit hole as her tribe. It's all too easy (and tempting if you've been under attack for a long time) to join in with the identarian game, but if we start to pursue remedies based on our identity groups being oppressed we will legitimise the whole "woke" movement. We must resist the temptation to pick up their weapons and try to win arguments based on reason, not identity-politics points-scoring.

She gave the example of the current row over the Netflix drama Adolescence. Before she realised it was going to be politically controversial she tweeted that it was a good drama. She is now getting hateful comments from people who want it cancelled because the protagonist is a white, working class teenager and they consider that an attack on everyone in that group. Whatever the producers' reasons for casting it as they did, calling for the show's cancellation and condemning it without watching it is a dangerously familiar, irrational approach.

She thought President Trump was going in for cancellation of his opponents too but warned that "sticking it to the libs" can and will backfire. We must hold onto the idea that words are not violence. The only reason the Left is arguing that they are is to justify the use of actual violence against words! 

Gawain Towler, former Head of Press for UKIP, the Brexit Party and Reform UK followed on from Claire and commented that he'd been horrified by the tactics used by both sides of the Reform UK split. Calling in the police, leaking private WhatsApps and other such attempts at mutual cancellation were indeed echoes of the civil wars on the Left. He made the interesting observation that there was too much talk about hate in politics whereas what really drove most people in politics – in his experience – was love. On the Right, people loved their country and their way of life and the very British tradition of not seeking a perfect society but of muddling through in an imperfect one, which was ours and which we loved. He didn't explain what it was that those on the Left loved (apart from spending other peoples' money) but he made it clear that civilised political debate needs an acceptance that one's opponents are humans with whom we disagree, not monsters. 

Organising for Freedom panel

The closing discussion on Organising for Freedom was interesting in that it came closest to addressing the problems facing the divided Right in Britain. There's not much doubt that the British electorate is going to be ready to ditch Labour at the next election, but would the parties of the Right be ready to offer them that option? I asked again how the Conservative Party was going to win back the trust of the electorate. I said its traditional voters were furious they'd wasted fourteen years of opportunities and were bound to ask – even if offered an excellent programme – why they should believe it would be implemented based on past non-performance? I was disappointed with the response. Mumbling about acknowledging error and apologising really didn't cut it for me. The panel was much happier talking about reforming the Conservative Party's organisation than its ideology. 

People seem to have forgotten that Margaret Thatcher was not just an excellent PM but a cunning Leader of the Opposition. She'd circumvented the Tory Grandees, Central Office and the Conservative Research Department (none of whom were her friends). She'd assembled, together with Sir Keith Joseph, a team of academic advisers and policy wonks at the Centre for Policy Studies and produced a programme for a future Conservative Government. I led my university's student Conservatives to control of our student union for the first time in its history during her period in opposition. We were enthused both by her leadership and the policies the CPS was producing. All of us had read, for example, its pamphlet "Why Britain needs a Social Market Economy."

In a Britain where net zero, critical race theory and gender fluidity are taught as fact at secondary school, some similar effort is going to be needed to win the trust of the electorate in general and particularly the young.

I have funded my two daughters through bachelors' and masters' degree courses at the Universities of Cambridge, London and the LSE. Ideologically, they might as well have attended KGB staff college under Beria. A lot of students these days tick ideological boxes to win their degrees while privately dismissing the crap they're taught, but still some of it sticks. The challenge of winning them over is greater than Thatcher ever faced. I think it's a legitimate criticism of Margaret's legacy, much as I admired her, that she took on the wrong foes. Rather than fighting the soon-to-be-irrelevant coal miners, she should have fought the Marxist infiltrators of our schools, universities and - most-insidiously - teacher training colleges. The Education "blob" is at the heart of the Leftist deep state and a primary cause of our national decline. 

It was an interesting weekend and it's always uplifting to be among like-minded people of goodwill. However I heard nothing to convince me that Reform UK and the Conservative Party will have united or allied and agreed a programme to give voters the weapon they'll want by 2029 (if not sooner) to beat Labour to an electoral pulp.

The Third Annual Freedom Festival Tickets, Sat 22 Mar 2025 at 09:30 | Eventbrite.

This is what we believe.

If it is not necessary to make a law, it is necessary NOT to make that law

Greg Smith MP, a survivor of the Tory rout at the last election had good ideas for policies but no real answer to my question as to how – even if they were accepted by Blue Labour – the Conservative Party could expect to be believed. Their traditional electorate was furious with them. That was the message of the election and they still hadn't received it as far as I could see. They'd had plenty of chance (and a healthy majority) to implement his ideas, but had crawled to The Guardian instead.

I hesitate to opine on a war involving Russia. I lived and worked there. I have Russian friends and am on record as admiring its culture (arguably the most artistically complete of any human civilisation) and its people. I am open to slurs that this translates into sympathy for its utterly despicable government. It really doesn’t. I wish — for what that’s worth — it would lose this war. The invasion of Ukraine was morally wrong. Ukraine’s defensive struggle is just and brave.

We’ve lived at peace for so long, thank God, that — outside military families — most Britons’ experience of war is limited to movies in which good guys win in the face (for dramatic effect) of overwhelming odds. The plucky and virtuous vanquish evil at the end of an elegant dramatic arc involving some maverick who defies the orders of idiot commanders to snatch a noble victory.

War just isn’t like that. Might is not right, but it prevails. Britain can be proud of plucky ancestors who, for a while, stood alone — just as Ukrainians do right now — against a superior enemy. The courage of the Few made ultimate victory possible but World War 2 would have been lost were it not for the intervention of allies (including Russians under the only contemporary leader viler than Hitler) prepared to fight and die at our side. Pluck was great. Moral superiority was noble. Greater force won.

So when I read that Ukrainian troops are outnumbered ten to one on parts of their frontline and when I recall the Russian military’s historic contempt for the value of its own soldiers’ lives, I sigh at the assumption that President Trump in suing for peace is siding with the monster Putin. Those attacking him never advocated allying with Ukraine in more than name. They would call him crazy if he despatched so much as one Cruise missile. What they’re demanding is more meaningless solidarity by gesture; the geopolitical equivalent of a Ukrainian flag on their country’s Facebook profile.

When Biden promised to stand by Ukraine, it was gesture politics of the most expensive kind. He commanded the most powerful armed forces the world has ever known but planned to send neither troops nor airstrikes nor missiles. He sent only taxpayer dollars to sustain Ukraine’s war effort to its inevitable end. He and his NATO allies praised Ukraine and raised its flags on their town halls while being prepared to watch that plucky nation fight to its last man.

I am not advocating World War 3 on Russia. I don’t think the democracies of the West have popular support for that. American and British mothers aren’t ready to see their sons die for a far off, corrupt nation of little economic significance. Even French and German mothers are not prepared to waste Anglo lives they might later need to defend their own borders. For that’s how — in truth — Continental Europe sees NATO. They’ve long avoided the full economic cost of defending themselves and grown fat and complacent under US protection, while failing even to meet the modest defence commitments they make. They sneer at the naïve, unsophisticated Yanks while relying on them for defence.

Germany under Merkel pursued a suicidally stupid energy policy of increasing dependence on Russia, without worrying about what that might mean for the future. Deep down lay the unspoken, perhaps subconscious assumption that Germany’s safety is for idiot Yanks and their inselaffen (island apes) sidekicks to die for. If making the crazy Green Party happy made that more likely or difficult, so be it. As a partner in a pan-European business, I experienced these attitudes first hand, I also, by the way, experienced visceral hatred of Russia from at least one Ukrainian colleague.

I was living and working in Warsaw when Poland applied to join NATO and I heard how my Polish colleagues viewed that. They wanted shelter under America’s nuclear umbrella from their historic foe to the East. I wasn’t sure it was wise to give it as I feared they didn’t grasp the “no first strike” defensive doctrine at the heart of the alliance. Asked by an official of our Foreign Office what I thought, I said I worried the Poles might bait the Russian bear once under American protection. She told me our then Foreign Secretary had the same concern, but that the US view would prevail. In fairness to Poland, it’s been a responsible and compliant member. It passed a key test when stray Russian missiles landed on its territory and it accepted it was an error. It has also always paid its dues.

Nonetheless the most cynical thing the West under the leadership of Biden did was holding out the hope of NATO membership to Ukraine when the present war is over. They never expected a Ukrainian victory and were not prepared to fight for one, so that was gesture politics of the most despicable kind. In the miraculous eventuality of Ukrainian victory, I would still counsel against introducing a poisonous historical enmity into a purely defensive alliance.

Until we admitted ex-Warsaw Pact countries into NATO it consisted entirely of nations who would welcome peace with a prosperous and successful Russia as a full member of the Free World. Admitting members with powerful historical grievances against Russia merely fuelled the paranoia of the military and intelligence elites there, of which Putin — an ex-KGB spy inside a NATO country — was a typical member. That paranoia was already inflamed after the collapse of the Soviet Union by the failure to wind NATO up. It was an anti-USSR alliance, they argued, so the need for it had ended. If history had ended in the triumph of democracy, why keep the West’s nukes pointed East?

I personally feel it was just another example, familiar to all libertarians, of a governmental (in this case multi-governmental) agency not accepting the need for its own dissolution and the consequent loss of tax-funded jobs. Create an agency against poverty and you ensure the constant redefinition of poverty so bureaucrats can keep on working against it. The less actual need for their jobs there is, the more attractive their jobs become! How perfectly wonderful then, from the point of view of the parasitical class, to be a well paid employee of a military alliance that not only never had to fight but now had no actual foe!

From the American public’s point of view, the end of the Cold War was bound to weaken support for the NATO alliance. It could rest on the laurels of its “victory” for a while but they were bound to question the cost of it while peace prevailed. Putin saved the asses of the NATO bureaucracy by invading Ukraine. He made Russia a threat again. Without his insanity, President Trump might now be calling for NATO’s dissolution, rather than just complaining about most of the other members hitching a free ride by failing to meet their commitments.

My sympathies are with the peoples of Ukraine and Russia, both of whom live under corrupt governments and political systems that — even more than elsewhere — gamify evil. No military outcome of this war will change that, alas. Only the Russian and Ukrainian peoples can sort out their oppressors and I hope one day that they do. For now, President Trump is morally right to seek peace, rather than keep extending the slaughter with pointless, expensive gestures. As for leaving the European nations out of the discussion, they have nothing to contribute. When you’re cowering uselessly behind your big friend, you don’t get to tell him how to fight. Sorry. Step up and do your bit or keep your annoying whimpering to a minimum.

I don’t know if President Trump will succeed in securing a decent peace or even if his tactics so far are the best. I know he’s right to try and I know the interests of the European members of NATO are best-served by somehow keeping the long-suffering American taxpayers he represents onside. Perhaps even by - quelle horreur — meeting their obligations?

I lived and worked in Continental Europe for nineteen of my twenty years overseas. I have more friends there than here in London and often think I should have refused my late wife’s dying wish for me to come home. I’d have a better life in Warsaw.

It’s interesting to watch my Continental friends react on their socials to President Trump’s overtures to that monster Putin — the greatest modern example of a real life Bond villain. Their sympathies, like mine, are with plucky Ukraine. Its soldiers, outgunned and outmanned, have fought like lions and their place in history is assured. Toasts will be drunk and songs will be sung, for sure. But they’re losing and not one European power is ready to send in troops. Under Biden the policy of the West was to fight to the last Ukrainian. Trump sees it in more practical terms.

If anything more is to be done, my European friends, as usual, expect the United States to expend the required blood and gold. Their contributions to NATO never meet the agreed level — with the honourable exceptions of Britain, Poland and Greece. Greece only hits the percentage of GDP target, by the way, because its GDP shrank faster than it could shrink its army!

I exempt Poland from this criticism. It has stepped up its contribution to NATO to more than the minimum and it won’t be long before its army is bigger than Britain’s. The Poles, if anything, are too eager to fight Russia. That doesn’t change my prediction of the outcome, sadly. History shows how much they love a bloodily glorious defeat. When I told a Polish friend once that the whole point of war is victory he replied 

That must have been many a Polish soldier’s dying thought!  

Partly from the envious anti-Americanism that is Joe European’s least endearing feature, they are condemning Trump before a word is spoken. Like many politically-minded (rather than business-minded) people, they underestimate the man rated by the best negotiator I ever knew as the best negotiator *he* ever knew.

Decades ago, as a trainee lawyer, I asked an experienced litigator — and devout Christian — how he reconciled what he’d just done in the meeting we were walking back from with his religious principles. Startled, he asked what I meant. I said we both knew what our client hoped to get from the insurance company we were suing, but he’d demanded four times more. Hadn’t he just lied through his teeth? He laughed and told me;

Negotiations aren’t about truth. They’re a ritual dance. If I’d said the real number they’d have assumed we wanted less. Their numbers were also a matter of negotiation. My conscience is clear and I can face my God.

Trump’s drama, trolling and exaggeration is in the same category. Most people just don’t get it and react to his bluster like that naive articled clerk I once was. Everything he says and does is calculated to find a path to the best achievable outcome. There’s not a virtue-signalling molecule in his body and yet there’s more actual virtue than in his hypocritical critics. 

My European friends are comparing Trump to Chamberlain and Putin to Hitler. Europe seems unable to move on from World War II. Every issue is analysed through the historical lens of how they mishandled the rise of the Nazis. As someone once said, all we really learn from history is that we never learn from history.

The hypocrisy here is breathtaking. If his critics were any more ready than him to send in their troops, they’d have the moral high ground over him. They aren’t and (Poland perhaps excepted) they never will be. So whether it’s just or not, Ukraine can’t win. The only people the Germans and French are ready to see die in this war are Ukrainians, Americans and their loyal English-speaking sidekicks — as usual. So they have no moral basis for their maiden auntery  

The post-war settlement has expired. Continental Europeans have to meet their long-neglected NATO obligations and stop expecting Uncle Sam (already carrying more debt than the world has assets) to pay for everything.

Putin is evil, yes, but Ukraine is every bit as corrupt as Russia and would add nothing to NATO’s strength. It’s in the right here as a matter of international law and (for what it’s worth in war) morality. But international law is a myth unless the rich nations enforce it by (plausible threat of) military action. Europe is just standing by signalling virtue while breaching sanctions and sending half the military matériels it promises. Meanwhile Ukraine loses men and wealth with no hope of victory. When the last Ukrainian soldier has died or surrendered, what do Europeans think the outcome will be? Ukrainian flags on your socials won’t win it mes amis.

My advice to my Continental chums? They should let the President try to make peace and hold their comments until they see the result. Based on all my years working in Continental Europe, I expect them all to decry the result and pretend their leaders (prepared to sacrifice nothing) would have done better. It’s bullshit. War is hell and has to end eventually. This is not a Hollywood movie. There are no guarantees that the (relatively) good guys will win. If you won’t end it with arms, then jaw jaw is all you have. This man is much better at jaw jaw than you are so shut up and stop assisting the enemy by showing him how divided the West is. 

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.

At simplest, the Deep State is just a new name for what we used to call The Establishment – people in and around positions of power who exert influence by virtue of who they are and their social circle – i.e. whom they know. In Britain it tended to include the aristocracy because they were the wealthy elite of the time and had a tradition of involvement in politics and administration under the banner of noblesse oblige. Wikipedia tells us;

In 1955, the journalist Henry Fairlie popularised the contemporary usage of the term The Establishment to denote the network of socially prominent and politically important people:

By the 'Establishment' I do not mean only the centres of official power — though they are certainly part of it — but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.

Those on the Left might argue that no new name is needed. The Establishment now – for reasons worthy of separate study – is completely left-wing. We just have different personnel because, in their favourite phrase, "society has moved on. Get over it." 

Perhaps the main difference is, however, that Leftists see everything as political and are more likely to exercise the soft power of influence in ways the old Establishment would have considered (if it had ever even occurred to them) as improper.

To understand just how differently the Deep State works, listen to at least some of this three-hour-long episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, in which he interviews American entrepreneur Mark Andreessen. In a restrained, mild-mannered way Andreessen gives examples of what he calls "the raw application of power" – without legislation, regulation or due process. It is genuinely scary. 

If you listen at 1hr 34mins to his explanation of de-banking as it's been used in America, for example, he says;

It's a privatised sanctions regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens what we do to Iran

This has been happening to crypto entrepreneurs, fintech entrepreneurs and in legal fields of economic activity (e.g. medical marijuana, prostitution and guns). Thirty of his own investors have been debanked. The Biden administration has extended it to political opponents in general. Andreessen says it's one of the reasons he began supporting Trump;

We can't live in a world where somebody starts a business that is completely legal and then gets sanctioned

Nothing is written down. There is no appeal. The bank just responds to a request from an organisation that can make trouble for a highly-regulated entity. The government just says "it's a private bank and can do what it likes". It's just the raw application of power. If it happens to you, you must live on cash and try to find a new field of business where the "Eye of Sauron" no longer notices you. How can you tell if the eye looked away? Keep applying for bank accounts until someone demonstrates your status has changed by allowing you to open one. 

At 2 hours 30 minutes, he explains the old concept of "barriers to market entry" and how it now works in practice. Big business often supports more regulation. Why? Because it can afford thousands of lawyers and compliance officers to work in the newly complex framework and potential new competitors can't. So over-regulation creates a barrier against market entry – it prevents new competitors from starting up. The banking regulations introduced after the crisis in 2008, for example, have ensured that not one new bank has entered the US market. 

On the topic of AI, he makes the interesting observation that we might have to think more like medieval people to understand our world in future. There will be new AI entities at work among us which might be thought of metaphorically as angels, demons or spirits. As such they would be easier for medievals to deal with than for us products of the Age of Reason. He goes on from that to say that ancient ways of thinking might also help us deal with "woke", which he regards as having every characteristic of a religion – except redemption.

The woke have understood – as ancient rulers did – the power of ostracising. Socrates chose to die rather than just go into exile because he was a creature of his culture and wouldn't survive outside Athens. The woke don't need to kill a modern dissenter – just cut him off from the society in which he thrives. A very few people (eccentrics like Jordan Petersen, for example) can bear that (though even he seems to have had a breakdown) but most who can are so weird that – to a casual observer – their protests make the cancellation seem justified. We are social creatures who fear being ostracised so much that we submit to the threat of cancellation as readily as we would to a threat of death.

Being ordered about by a black nurse with an impenetrable accent the other day, I understood not a single word. I held my tongue and followed the crowd in reacting to her for fear (perfectly justified as this employment tribunal decision shows) of being cast out of the righteous. I am ashamed of my weakness. Communicators have a duty to make an effort to be understood. I should have politely encouraged her to make an effort. I am ornery enough to do so on occasion, but was in an A&E department in fear of my life. Worse – if I am honest – I feared the condemnation of my daughter who was with me.

This isn't just true for the educated elite. Take the Chester City football fan condemned in public for a racist gesture at a rival player. He committed suicide before the police could even find him. He knew there would be no forgiveness and still less any hope of redemption. 

At 33 mins 45 secs, Andreessen makes the point in taking about cancellation on social media that:

All new information is heretical by definition. Anytime anyone has a new idea it's a threat to the existing power structure. All new ideas start as heresies and if you don't have an environment that can tolerate heresies you're not going to have new ideas. You're going to end up with complete stagnation and if you have stagnation you're going to go straight into decline. 

I am retired so can give three hours of my life to this stuff. I can't help but think that if Joe Rogan would hire an editor he could magnify the impact he has on the world. If you have time, give it a listen. If not, at least try to listen to the discussion about de-banking. It is terrifying. 

Last Monday went better than I could reasonably have hoped. I went into hospital at 06.30 am to be prepped for theatre. The procedure was interesting and I remained conscious throughout under mild sedation. A probe was inserted into my right wrist and fed through into my heart. My consultant reported, while looking inside it, that my heart was fine with no more furring than might be expected in someone my age.

This was surprisingly good news for everyone except my health insurer, which might well be wondering about the money it spent both on the scan that suggested the procedure was necessary and on the very well-staffed (consultant, anaesthetist and half a dozen nurses) procedure itself.

I am not out of the woods as this leaves my symptoms to be otherwise explained. Given that I am already being treated for a clot – a DVT in my left leg – it's most likely that other clots are affecting my lungs. If I have experienced these symptoms all this time for that reason, without lethal effect, then I am a lucky man indeed. My consultant commissioned a CT scan on my lungs while I waited to be discharged and promised that my original cardiologist will get back to me with a plan. 

I am already on Apixaban (thinners) and that's likely to be the continuing treatment, I suppose. In terms of my mobility and general health I am no better than I was before these events, so it's a bit odd to be happier. The unexpected clean bill of health on my elderly heart has – together with my doctors' assurances that I will be fixed – cheered me up however. I have been making plans for trips to make when I am fit enough to wander about with my camera gear again.

I skipped the last home match at Craven Cottage for fear of repetition of the incident last October 19th. I have now been on thinners for ten days so I plan to go to the match against Wolves tomorrow to see if they've made any difference yet. Rather than use taxis as I did on October 19th, I'm going to take the usual couple of buses and see how I cope.

Fingers crossed.