The end of the Royal Navy has provoked little or no interest. Of course, it has been a long time since Britannia ruled the waves and Britons were never, never, never to be slaves. All the same, Britain is an island. In 1940, the last time invasion was a likelihood, the Royal Navy was at least as significant as the air force in holding the Germans off. At that same moment, the Royal Navy had to destroy large parts of the French navy anchored at Mers el-Kebir to prevent it falling into German hands.

David Cameron is consulting at present with French president Nicolas Sarkozy on ways to merge the navies of the two countries. The British have got themselves into the ludicrous position of building two aircraft carriers with no planes to go on them. What’s more, there won’t be any planes until 2020 — in other words, don’t look to that area for defense. The French do have an aircraft carrier, but it has technical troubles and, with apt symbolism, happens to be out of service right now. In the first Gulf War, moreover, that carrier was deployed but the French government refused to allow on board its Super Etendard aircraft, thus prompting Jean-François Revel to make the memorable quip that the Blue Belle girls should be sent to dance on the empty deck. Political postures trump everything else, and always will.

The minister nominally in charge of defense is Liam Fox, also nominally a Conservative. He has evidently folded. Ministers have underlings to ghost their articles, and in the Sunday Telegraph a really creepy ghost-written specimen has been published under Fox’s name. You’d never know from this article that cuts to the defense budget have put national security at risk. This apology for the end of the Royal Navy opens with the staggeringly nonsensical assertion that “defence must be a sovereign, and therefore an inter-governmental issue.”  How, pray, is sovereign to be inter-governmental? Another equally staggering contradiction follows: The British and French navies are to train together and cooperate in acquiring equipment, technology, and information, but this has nothing to do with the EU. In fact, it marks the moment when navies cease to be national, exactly as Brussels would wish.

By coincidence, I happen to be reading a classic, Robert Southey’s life of Admiral Nelson. In these sad times of degeneracy and closure, the recall of the past is about the only stand-by available. Southey was a leftist, a Jacobin enthusiastic about the French Revolution, who came to see how mistaken he’d been and turned his literary talent to patriotism. Nelson was an anti-Jacobin, with the imagination to understand what defeat would entail, and the genius to achieve victory. Southey records how Nelson once gave junior officers the advice they would need for their careers in the service: They were to obey orders implicitly, to consider as an enemy every man who speaks ill of the king, and finally, “You must hate a Frenchman as you do the devil.”

Pure escapism, of course.

Compare and contrast the case of 34-year-old Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Nasir al Saud, a grandson of the King of Saudi Arabia, with the case of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the imam who injured and blinded himself in some incident of terror and who is therefore fitted with steel claws instead of hands. Both Arabs are putting Britain and its law to the test.

Prince Saud recently stayed in an expensive London hotel. With him was a man called Bandar Abdulaziz, described as his slave and lover. Security cameras in the hotel show the prince hitting and kicking Bandar, who made no effort to protect himself. When Bandar was then discovered dead, the prince admitted to killing him but not to murder. The distinction is not clear. In the trial that followed, it emerged that the prince had about forty thousand dollars in cash in a safe deposit box, that he was in the habit of taking Bandar to restaurants, bars and gay clubs, as well as involving him and a range of other men in homosexual practices.

Found guilty, Prince Saud was sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in prison. No doubt prompted by officialdom, the media at once put it about that the Saudis are likely to make diplomatic moves to bring him home, stifling the facts about his conduct for which an ordinary Saudi would pay with his life. A Saudi source is quoted, “If it is still the wish of the father and the king, the prince will be brought home. It will be very quiet.”

Egyptian-born Abu Hamza arrived in Britain on a student visa in 1979 and was granted British nationality in 1986. The London mosque where he preached was a rallying point for jihadis. He sent some young men, including a step-son, to fight for al-Qaeda in Yemen, others to Afghanistan. Convicted on multiple charges of terrorism and hate speech, he is currently in prison. The law stipulates that he cannot be sent to the United States where he is also wanted on charges of terrorism and might face the death penalty. He is further claiming that he lost his original nationality when he became British, his native Egypt disowns him, and anyhow to send him there would breach his human rights.

So the Saudi is likely to escape justice by hitting on a privileged way of vanishing surreptitiously from the country, while on the contrary, the Egyptian is likely to escape justice by hitting on a privileged way of staying in the country.

         

The trial of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders is descending into muddle and farce. The idea was to fine him and even send him to prison for inciting hatred by comparing Islam to Nazism and the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. No more free speech, in short, at least as far as anything to do with Muslims was concerned.

The trial has collapsed for the time being. The judges appeared to be rigging it when they refused to recall a witness for Wilders. Another witness for him was supposed to be Hans Jansen, a well-known Arabist professor. He revealed to a newspaper that he had had dinner with one of the judges, and in the course of “ill-mannered and unprofessional” exchanges this judge had tried to put pressure on him. A specially convened judicial panel agreed that “an impression of partiality” had been created, and therefore dismissed the present judges, postponing the trial to a later date with different judges.

The absurdity of these proceedings is wonderful to behold. It is inexplicable that in the Netherlands of all places — the country of Erasmus and Spinoza — the authorities should be trying to make political correctness legally enforceable. They have made themselves a laughing stock, and given Wilders the reputation right across Europe of an honest politician who comes out with what people in the street are thinking but don’t like to say.

For weeks, the Conservative and Liberal coalition in government has been making the British shiver with warnings that the economy is in so frightful a mess that savage cuts will be necessary in practically every area of public spending. £83 billion was the magic figure for these cuts. Everybody, every budget for entitlements, welfare provisions that make it financially more rewarding to be unemployed than in a job, every special interest was to suffer. Trade-union leaders representing the work force and their benefits have been promising to let none of this through. Why, in France the mere proposal to raise the age of retirement from 60 to 62 has been enough to cause riots and mayhem in 300 towns and cities. British unions are positively itching to show they can do the same.

Well, George Osborne, the man supposed to be wielding the knife as Chancellor of the Exchequer, has spoken, and it turns out that the cuts will return the country’s public spending to the level of 2007. Moreover, by 2014–15, public spending is projected actually to have risen. There are areas of Britain where two-thirds and more of the population is employed by the state, which is close to a sovietized command economy. The National Health Service is the biggest employer in Europe, so sacred a cow that its budget and indeed the whole collective system is beyond the root-and-branch reform it requires. (Rather inspirationally, I originally mistyped this as “rot-and-branch.”) Socialism is a fool-proof agent of general impoverization, and once it has entered the society’s bloodstream, disinfection is practically impossible short of a Gorbachev-type collapse.

A very uncomfortable trade-off is that the defense budget is being cut while foreign aid is actually increasing. The details of the defense cuts seem to be drawn straight from Lewis Carroll. For instance, there are to be two aircraft carriers but no aircraft to put on them. One of the carriers will be moth-balled as soon as it is launched. In future, Britain would be unable to recover the Falkland Islands, or repeat the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The moment seems to have arrived when Britain has accepted that steady decline and political ineptitude have left it a second-rank power.

Such a decline places Britain on the same footing as every European country. The entire continent sees no need to have real means of self-defense, as though no other countries might ever create a genuine security crisis. Iran, Turkey, Russia, could probably invade almost unopposed. Given the feebleness, the money spent on foreign aid openly serves the purpose of buying friends. Recipients of aid, however, are never grateful. Maintaining foreign aid while cutting defense is only glorified appeasement, and it will rightly earn international contempt.

How to do justice to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran? That so contradictory and malevolent a character should have pushed his way to the front of the world stage is truly bizarre. Who, or what, is the real self? If he chooses, he can deal rationally with journalists at a press conference in New York while indulging in mystical reveries at the United Nations. It is rational to have a policy of evicting the United States from the Middle East, and setting up Iran in its place as the power controlling the region and beyond as far as possible. It is rational to build a nuclear weapon and delivery system as the instrument to cement future power.

But to enlarge the quest for regional power into a clash of civilizations between so-called “Crusaders” and Islam serves no useful purpose; it is simply false, as well as counter-productive because it warns his enemies that they have no way of becoming friends. He’s able to combine belief that the Hidden Imam of the Shias is on the point of reappearing with a conspiracy theory about 9/11. Bin Laden and other Muslims take the greatest pride in it, but the Iranian president tells everyone that the United States actually destroyed its own monuments. This is on a par with his nonsense about the Nazi Holocaust, which he thinks never took place — but meanwhile he’s going to wipe Israel off the map.

Ahmadinejad is now in Lebanon, and the contrast between the rational and the irrational in his conduct comes into play. Iran has financed and armed Hezbollah to the point where it is now the decisive factor in the country’s political existence. Institutions representing other national or religious elements are effectively at the mercy of Hezbollah and Iran. By means of this proxy, Ahmadinejad is in a position to launch war or civil war, or simply to take over the country in partnership with his sidekick Syria at a moment of his choice.

And what is on the program of this shah on his imperial tour of a conquered province? He intends to go to the border with Israel, and throw a stone across the fence. Edward Said, the foremost Palestinian propagandist of his day, once made the front page when he was photographed doing just that. In fact, the stone-throwing made Said appear childish and ridiculous, and that will also be the reaction if Ahmadinejad really follows his example. It may even be more destructive just to laugh at the man and his preposterous fantasies than to send some F-15s over at ground level.

Mario Vargas Llosa has been touted as a possible winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature these many years, and now he’s won it. He’s that rare creature, a worthy winner. The Swedes who run this prize are generally on the look-out for someone quite the opposite of him, i.e. a radical, if possible someone with a Marxist background, and best of all anti-American. Günter Grass who hid his S.S. membership by being anti-capitalist, poor bemused Harold Pinter, Elfriede Jelinek (whoever is she?), Gabriel Garcia Marquez who dearly loves a tyrant — that’s the sort of ideologue they like to go for. I once met some of the men on the award committee, and a weirder bunch you couldn’t hope to find. They are paid a fortune, and the money is tax-free by kind permission of the Swedish state, so of course they never think of retiring.

It isn’t compulsory for the committee members to have a beard but it helps them pose as profound academics and masters of world literature. In that mode, they praise Vargas Llosa for “his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”  True to form, these chaps are chucking about meaningless language. Structures of power have a cartography, do they? And how exactly does the word trenchant fit images?

I first was aware of Vargas Llosa years ago when he attacked ex-S.S. man Grass for following the fashion of that moment and saying that Latin American countries would not solve their problems until they followed “the Cuban example.” What might be good for Germany in Grass’s view wasn’t any good for Vargas Llosa’s Peru and he was advising it instead to be subordinate to the Soviet Union. Vargas Llosa stood firm against the crazed Peruvian terrorists of the Shining Path and he’s been trenchant in the proper usage of that word in attacking the international soft Left. Out of a sense of civic responsibility, he ran for the presidency of Peru.

Grass was a natural for the Swedish prize committee, and it is a wonder that Vargas Llosa has eventually caught up. His novel, The War of the End of the World is long, slow to start, but it captures the South American experience like no other book. Its central figure, the Governor, is treated with understanding, even pity. I well remember the shock it gave me that here was a South American writer who must be a conservative, therefore practically unique.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, is in court on trial for his opinions. He leads the Freedom party, known by its Dutch initials as the PVV, which in the general election this June won 24 seats in the parliament. Dutch politics is confusingly too fragmented to throw up a clear winner. Wilders and the PVV are lending their support to the Conservatives, and can expect to be in a government coalition with them. I can’t recall any other elected politician in a democracy being put on trial for anything he’s said. No matter what, they’re supposed to debate issues and ideas, are they not?

Wilders likes to repeat that Islam is as dangerous as Nazism, and that the Koran is comparable to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He’s also made a short film bringing out anti-Jewish verses in the Koran, and hilighting terrorism in New York and London as an Islamist phenomenon. Quite likely, this was electioneering and he knew the appeal his words would have. The Dutch, hitherto famously tolerant, have experienced Islamist acts of terror. The murder of film director Theo van Gogh, related to the great artist, and the flight to the United States of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a very public critic of her Islamic faith, in order to escape death threats, have changed attitudes radically. Muslims are probably about 15 percent of the population, and immigration is a very immediate issue in the Netherlands. The PVV got 1.5 million votes, and Wilders is evidently right to say in court, “I am on trial, but on trial with me is the freedom of expression of many Dutch citizens.”

This case might seem to be about hate speech and therefore some sort of jamboree of political correctness. The underlying question, though, has a far greater implication: On what terms are the Muslims going to settle in our midst? Every country in Europe is looking for its solution. The Danes, an even softer touch than the Dutch on handing benefits to all comers, have elected politicians more determined than Wilders to restrict immigration. Thilo Sarrazin, an eminent German banker, has gone just as far as Wilders, stirring up his country with a book criticizing Islam as a source of violence and blaming Muslims for their refusal to integrate. Bans on burkas and minarets reveal how attitudes are changing everywhere.

In Britain, it turns out, lamb sold in a number of supermarkets is halal, that it is to say slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law. New Zealand provides much of the lamb for sale, and it is almost all halal. The Daily Mail has revealed that schools are serving halal meat. Halal meat has not been identified as such, in other words, customers cannot know that they are having to integrate with the practices of Muslims, and not Muslims with their practices. Food suppliers are making special concessions to Muslims in secrecy, just as special concessions permit Muslims to go to sharia courts where Islamic law applies and they avoid English law.

The estates of the Prince of Wales supply lamb to Waitrose, a chain store, and its spokesman says this will no longer be halal. Well, that lacks the in-your-face thrust of the Wilders trial, but it may signify that the fight for identity is happening even in supine Britain.

The Labour party in Britain has a new leader, one Ed Miliband. You don’t recognize the name? Nor do 99 in a hundred people in Britain. This unknown quantity is 40 years old, and he’s done nothing in his life except politics. There is another Miliband, first name David, who was expected to become the Labour leader. His experience is similarly narrow, he too has done nothing except politics, but at least he was foreign secretary in Gordon Brown’s government, now mercifully defunct. There were moments when Miliband D was being encouraged to rise up and stiff the disastrous Brown, but he funked it every time. If he’d had the guts, he might have replaced Brown, won the election, and been prime minister today.

Actually the two brothers are best described by words in the idiom of today, like nerd or geek. They both seem to lack whatever it is that makes real human beings. But there it is, we electors aren’t really choosers any more, as our politicians seem self-selecting. Miliband D and pretty well all the smart money thought that he was a shoo-in to become Labour leader now that Brown has lost the election and vanished in a puff of smoke. He ran the rather regal campaign of one expecting his due. And then Miliband E, his younger brother, suddenly, unexpectedly, decided to run against him. Fratricide! Cain and Abel! They made a pretense of brotherly love, though the masks kept slipping. The crunch came when Miliband E said that the Iraq campaign had been a regrettable mistake. Miliband D had backed it and his anger at this attack was at last something real. It is of course now dogma in Labour circles that Blair lied about Iraq’s weaponry, groveled to George W. Bush, and he and everyone associated with him are no better than criminals.

The voting system of this leadership election is manifestly unfair, so that Miliband D actually got more of the significant votes from colleagues but Miliband E won on account of block votes from trade unions. That was accidental, so to speak. What is purposeful about the winner is that he has become the Labour leader only by stiffing his brother. When the result was announced, Mrs. Miliband D was seen on television to weep. The poor woman was also wearing an outfit chosen for victory. They hastened away home, and after a suitable pause Miliband D has announced that he is retiring to the back-benches at Westminster and will not serve under his brother.

What kind of men can they be to have got themselves into this confusion and rivalry, protesting love while each promoting personal ambition at the expense of the other? The answer may lie in their background and upbringing. Their father, Ralph Miliband, was a hardline Marxist and Stalinist, one of a group of academics who in Cold War days were saying that every crime and brutality was right if it was in the Soviet interest. On meeting him, I recall that I was horrified. The boys’ mother, Marion, happens to be in the news too. She belongs to a group of left-wing Jews who have sent nine of their number on a yacht to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and deliver aid to Hamas. The Israelis have taken charge of the boat.

The whole Miliband family performance, in my view, is a throwback, yet another attempt to practice socialism and discover how far they can push it.

When I was in Paris years ago, I happened to drive along the Left Bank of the Seine, emerging at the underpass where Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, had died in an accident. There I saw dozens of Muslims aligned in the prayer position, turning their backs to the traffic and perilously close to being run over. Islam prohibits worship of that kind, considering that it smacks of polytheism. All over Muslim Africa, for instance, there are tombs of marabouts, holy men and saints, where the pious come to pray, but Islamists under the impulse of strict Wahhabi doctrine attack them and destroy any monuments if they can.

Poor Lady Diana was going out with a Muslim, one Dodi Fayed, when she was killed. Conspiracy theories at once sprang up that the mother of the future King of England was pregnant, and malign forces therefore murdered her rather than have to tolerate her giving birth to a Muslim child. A Muslim group in England published a pamphlet about the death of Lady Diana, and I couldn’t resist writing off for it. It proved innocuous. But I was entered as Brother Jones on their mailing list.

The latest catalogue from this group has reached me. This astonishing document of 48 pages advertises a website and what must be several hundred books and several hundred DVDs and CDs covering every aspect of Islam. Scores of these items refer to the Prophet with the regulation Peace Be Upon Him attached to his name as PBUH. The authors are Arabs or Pakistanis, with only about three or four having English surnames. Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, has a title, How to Protect Yourself from Jinn and Shaytaan, I see, and also Ma’roof and Munkar, Enjoining What Is Right and Forbidding What Is Wrong, and of course The Power of Israel in the United States. No guesses about the contents.

Here is a completely self-enclosed world, with instruction on how to think about everything from spiritual matters to the treatment of women and the education of children, banking, language, superstition, history, and 9/11 (no guesses about those contents either). A flyleaf enclosed with the catalogue publicizes, in large letters, “The Greatest Weapon of a Muslim is not the Sword, the Gun, or the Bombs but Dawah [which means outreach]. We must train people to present true and balance [sic] Islam and open up the doors of our Mosques for Non-Muslims.” But there is no sign of outreach to others. The appeal is strictly to the faithful. This operation must be quite expensive, and they claim to be relying on voluntary contributions. Perhaps some Wahhabi or Islamic benefactor is paying for the outreach, but I imagine them to be sincere, with real dedication to propagating Islam and therefore keeping Brother Jones on the mailing list. A quite distinct and separate culture is taking root in the country.

Catholic popes are a rarity in Britain. It is my impression that no pope ever came to the country before the Reformation, and certainly none after, until Pope John Paul II thirty years ago, and he was on a pastoral mission. Pope Benedict XVI is on a state visit, a very different thing. As head of state, the Queen received him, which is more than a symbolic gesture, as she is also Defender of the Faith. The Catholic and Protestant traditions acknowledge one another.

Shortly before the Pope arrived, an interview given by the German cardinal Walter Kasper in a German magazine was picked up. It is safe to say that nobody except leading churchmen have ever heard of the cardinal or the magazine. But he is quoted saying, “When you land at Heathrow you think at times you are in a Third World country.” Uproar. Consternation. The cardinal has had to drop out from the Pope’s tour and pretend to be ill. The media, in particular the BBC, wallow in excitement that the tour is going to prove a disaster. The director general of the BBC, one Mark Thompson, has just admitted that the BBC used to have a left-wing bias, and Sherlock Holmes himself couldn’t detect anything different now.

We don’t know if the Cardinal was referring to the scummy canteens, filthy lavatories, and tacky tourist shops of Heathrow. Perhaps he was commenting on the social composition of those flying in and out of the airport and by extension the country. One characteristic of Third World countries is the inability to accept criticism, and the reaction to the cardinal’s words proves that he is right.

The media managed to create the impression that the Pope’s tour would be strongly opposed. The Catholic Church was presented as reactionary, out of date, wrong about contraception, the home of paedophilia, etc. But when the Valiant-for-Truth mustered, they turned out to be a pretty small and ragged crew of actors, one very self-satisfied female journalist with answers for everything, a couple of homosexual activists, a professional atheist or two, a writer of children’s books, some young lad from the Humanist Association (whatever that may be), all in all carrying no weight. Alongside them is Ian Paisley, the self-appointed cleric who claims to speak on behalf of Northern Irish Protestants and likes to bellow “No Popery!” whenever he can. So a few leftist atheists and a few Protestants form an alliance of the narrow-minded, and prove yet again the fascinating political phenomenon that extremes invariably manage to meet.

As for the public — surprise, surprise — they have turned out in much larger numbers than anyone anticipated, to listen to an mild-mannered and thoughtful old man telling them that human beings need both faith and reason. The message seems to be: It is late in the day, but the decline to the Third World can be halted.

Michael Burn, always known as Micky, has just died at the great age of 97, and he ought to be celebrated. His life is a kind of shorthand for the whole twentieth century, and absolutely unrepeatable, since he was in turn a Nazi sympathizer, a commando captain who stormed the Germans at the famous raid on St. Nazaire in 1942, a prisoner of war in the fortress of Colditz, a Communist sympathizer, the lover of the shameful traitor Guy Burgess (it took more courage to admit that than to shoot it out with the Germans), married to Mary, one of the great beauties of her day, a writer and an anthologized poet, a Catholic convert — I have probably overlooked some of his incarnations as he tried to give answers to the question of how a complete human being ought to live.

I met him when I was researching a biography of Unity Mitford. She had gone to live in Munich in the hope of being picked up by Hitler. This was a lady’s version of a street-corner pick-up. Amazingly, it worked. Micky also came to Munich, and Unity introduced him to Hitler. There can’t be many people still around who shook hands with Hitler and received a signed copy of Mein Kampf, as Micky did. He told Hitler that he, Hitler, was very popular with the young in Britain, and Hitler was pleased, commenting on Micky’s good manners and seeing to it that Micky was officially invited to the Nuremberg rally. Micky also took in his stride a visit to the Dachau concentration camp — he used to reflect with horror that he had believed the camp was a positive part of the new Germany. A couple of years later, he realized how mistaken he had been, and became a soldier. The purpose of the St. Nazaire action was to deny the French port to the German battleship Tirpitz. Several commando units took part, and five men were awarded the Victoria Cross. Micky was the sole survivor of his unit. Captured, he was interrogated by a man he recognized from the Nuremberg rally.

In Colditz, he wrote his first novel and switched to Communism. As a special correspondent for The Times after the war, he covered the show trials that Stalin instigated throughout the Soviet bloc at the start of the Cold War. He thought that Laszlo Rajk, the Hungarian Communist, really was guilty as charged and deserved to be executed — and that too made him look back with horror at his gullibility. He almost ruined himself by setting up some sort of communistic cooperative in the splendidly named town of Penrhyndeudraeth in North Wales, where he lived (and was a friend and neighbor of Bertrand Russell). Luckily, he wrote some successful books, including Mr. Lyward’s Answer, about reclaiming juvenile delinquents. In 2003, he published Turned Towards the Sun, his thoughtful and fascinating autobiography.

In the end, Catholicism gave him the inner solace he sought, I think — but what life choices, and what experiences! R.I.P.

Tony Blair has just published his memoirs, a 700-page slab with the title “A Journey.” Since leaving office, Blair has been giving lectures here, there, and everywhere, taken on consulting jobs, been busy solving the Middle East dilemmas, and been photographed on vacations, so when did he find time to sit down and write? I know it takes me two years to write a book, not counting time on research.

Anyhow, one always wonders who really has written the books of retired politicians. There is usually some poor ghost toiling in the background. I have only dipped into this one, but the tone of voice is Blair’s and I guess that he may have dictated it. However, Craig Brown, a brilliant parodist, has just rewritten Little Red Riding Hood as told by Blair. What Blair says he also unsays, and Craig Brown gets this style of canceling himself out with a pitch that is perfect.

Of course, Blair must have expected that the reception would be stormy. The point of the book is to praise himself by denigrating his successor, Gordon Brown, long-time colleague and rival. Brown is quite probably the worst prime minister Britain has ever had. Not that he is stupid. Far from it. He is quite a substantial figure, informed in several fields. What’s wrong is his character. Blair sums this up in three words: “Emotional intelligence, zero.” Brown proved unable to communicate with either individuals or the collective electorate. His unhappiness at having to show himself a human being was painful.

It is unusual, nevertheless, for an ex–prime minister to cut his successor off at the knees. Edward Heath resented Margaret Thatcher. He let it show in the scowl on his face but didn’t openly campaign like this in print. The timing of the publication is also fraught, since the Labour party is in the process of selecting a new leader. Blair’s book makes for divisiveness and faction. Brown’s revenge will come, and it will be cold.

The consequence of publishing this memoir is that Blair is hated with an intensity that I can’t recall any previous politician arousing. It is an irony, seeing that he sold himself as “a pretty straight kinda guy.” He’s so hated that he has had to cancel book-signings. People sound willing to rough him up. He’s perceived as a liar who made up reasons to go to war in Iraq because he was sucking up to George W. Bush. I am virtually the last person left in the country to defend Blair’s decision to participate in the overthrow of Saddam. I have just found myself in the company of undoubted conservatives, some of them with military backgrounds, and they could hardly believe their ears when I said that the campaign opens up the Middle East. The Arabs are taking themselves down, and taking us with them. If they can’t help themselves, then we have to help them. Everyone in the room, like everyone in England, was too busy hating Blair to be bothered to answer.

There may be nothing else for it — he’ll be the first British ex–prime minister to have to go hide in Florida.

It’s instructive to watch mainstream opinion-makers dealing with matters of which they disapprove — they don’t examine the parties’ opinions but select personal details that make the author out to be a most unpleasant individual, if possible with implications that he is an imperialist, racist, fascist, etc., and he and his work are therefore beyond the pale. A splendid example of such smearing is the review by Robert Harris in the Sunday Times, Britain’s leading Sunday newspaper, of V. S. Naipaul’s new book, The Masque of Africa. And before I go any further, I should like to declare that I have known Naipaul since the days when he was beginning his career, and have always appreciated the open mind and intellectual curiosity that won him the Nobel Prize.

Harris has reached only the second sentence of his review when he is telling us that Naipaul has been knighted (very bad) and has “increasingly reactionary views” (deplorable) and though in the past he may have written great books set in Africa, he has moved on from the continent socially, meaning he knows people like Conrad Black and the Rothschilds (shocking beyond belief, eh?). Next up comes the comment that this book may well be the most “mordantly unsympathetic account of Africa” since Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief — the linkage implying that Naipaul is poking fun at serious things (disgraceful, inexcusable). Failing to prove what a bad book this is by supplying evidence from the contents, Harris simply comes out with the word, “repulsive.” (Cue for applause from the gallery.) By then, I was anticipating that Harris would go for the grand slam, and sure enough, he ends the review by saying that Naipaul reminds him of Oswald Mosley, the pre-war British fascist leader. (Bravo, ovation, all stand.)

This book is about to be published in New York. For many years, Naipaul was one of the star writers of the New York Review of Books, doing it the favor of publishing some of his most original work there. In keeping with its impeccably correct political correctness, the NYRB might do a Harris now. The sole alternative tactic available to liberals is to pretend not to notice, passing over the dreadful book in silence. From personal experience, however, let me reassure one and all that Naipaul lets his work speak for itself, and has almost certainly never heard of Harris or given a thought to the NYRB.

There is nobody quite like Mark Steyn, which is why he’s worth following. How the Left hate him. Ian Buruma, for instance, your pocket all-purpose lefty, has tried to dismiss him in a footnote merely as a humorous writer. (In a recent book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, Paul Berman goes to some lengths to show thoughtfully and fairly how Buruma attacks the worthy and defends the unworthy — but that’s another story.) Mark Steyn is a humorous writer, but he has a serious purpose, namely to point out that the Western world has Islamist enemies who wish it ill. We could deal with those Islamists except for one thing: A large segment of our fashionable opinion-makers, so to speak the Burumas of this world, think that Islamists aren’t as bad as all that; and if they are, then we are still worse, and what we stand for isn’t really worth defending. So the public doesn’t know what to think, and a few self-appointed custodians push them into all manner of doubt and guilt by accusing anyone who criticizes, or — horrors! — laughs at Islamists of Islamophobia, racism, fascism, etc. etc.

That’s what happened to Mark. Maclean’s, the prestigious Canadian magazine, published an extract from his well-known bestseller America Alone — there’s no doubting that he criticizes and even laughs at Islamists in the book — whereupon assorted Human Rights Commissions in Canada fell on Mark and Maclean’s: There’s a code with a Section 13 that prevents free speech, and there is someone called Richard Warman, a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission who has been a plaintiff on every single Section 13 case in the last six years. Where did this lord of the printed word spring from? He and several others badly wanted to suppress Mark, and they had Muslim accomplices.

Mark tells the whole extraordinary story in his latest book, Lights Out, whose subtitle is “Islam, Free Speech and the Twilight of the West” (the implication should provide Buruma with another scornful footnote).

Free speech is indispensable to freedom and a civilized society. If the Warmans and Section 13 busybodies have their way, then indeed Mark will be proved right and the lights will go out eventually. As far as I can judge, Mark has won his case at whatever financial and personal cost; he has certainly made the Canadian would-be censors look ridiculous. On the NR cruise earlier this year, he refused to let me buy a copy, but has sent me one instead, with a dedication to my wife and me as fellow cruisers “on a sea of despair.” No, no, he’s riding the waves.

The last combat brigade has pulled out of Iraq. There are still 50,000 American troops there, but their purpose is nation-building, which in the context means training the Iraqi army and police force. This, at a time when the deadlock persists between two rivals who both claim to have won the general election and so have the right to be prime minister. Neither looks like giving way, which is the classic setting for the resort to force.

And worse still, within the last week, a suicide bomber attacked an army recruiting office, killing some 40 young men and wounding over 100 more. Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranians are certain to be preparing for whatever level of violence they calculate will give them a hold on the political process. Plenty of evidence exists about Iran’s surreptitious arming of proxies in Iraq. The senior Iraqi general, no less, has just made a statement that he would like American forces to remain in the country until 2020.

In the circumstances, President Obama is running the highly dangerous risk of unleashing free-for-all civil strife in which the winner will be whoever is the most ruthless, indeed a new-model Saddam Hussein. That would undo all the good work of the past long and often difficult seven years. Obama’s legacy already looks shaky enough without that. 

President Obama’s speech on the occasion of the Ramadan dinner in the White House presents difficulties that are becoming his trademark. Why does he find it necessary to be an apologist for Islam? He started it in his speech in Cairo a couple of years back, which also had elements that were downright creepy. Now he justifies the building of a mosque at Ground Zero because Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else. This is obviously true, but a mosque in this site of mass murder committed by Muslims is not about freedom of worship, it is a statement of supremacy and conquest. Non-Muslims are not allowed any place of worship in Saudi Arabia, and they cannot even approach within miles of the cities of Medina and Mecca. Imagine the outcry if Muslims were prevented entering, say, St Peter’s or Westminster Abbey. Yet Obama makes no mention of reciprocity, he passes over the insult and the abuse. Besides, there are plenty of instances when people do have a legal right for something but not the moral right to proceed, so that it is wise to abstain. If this mosque goes ahead, it will prove a constant source of division.

Obama also says in this speech that al-Qaeda’s cause is not Islam — “it is a gross distortion of Islam.” Why this defensiveness? There are plenty of passages in the Koran and the Hadith that al-Qaeda’s theologians can and do quote to give them religious justification for their violence. What Obama calls terror they consider faith, and this can’t be glossed over by the weasel word “distortion.” And he goes on that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. Try telling that to those condemned to death for converting to some other faith. Just as strange, he says that Islam has always been part of America — a line he used before, for instance in the Cairo speech. The evidence he gives for this is that Jefferson received the Tunisian ambassador of his day. That makes Islam part of America?

Finally he admits we are in a fight and says the reason we’ll win “is not simply the strength of our arms — it is the strength of our values, the democracy we uphold.” This in the week he’s just been rejoicing about imminently removing the strength of arms from Iraq, with Afghanistan to follow as soon as possible. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Iranians going nuclear — are we to meet them with approval for a mosque at Ground Zero and babbling about upholding democracy? This speech sent a shiver of fear down my spine.

President Obama’s speech on the occasion of the Ramadan dinner in the White House presents difficulties that are becoming his trademark. Why does he find it necessary to be an apologist for Islam? He started it in his speech in Cairo a couple of years back, which also had elements that were downright creepy. Now he justifies the building of a mosque at Ground Zero because Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else. This is obviously true, but a mosque in this site of mass murder committed by Muslims is not about freedom of worship, it is a statement of supremacy and conquest. Non-Muslims are not allowed any place of worship in Saudi Arabia, they cannot even approach within miles of the cities of Medina and Mecca. Imagine the outcry if Muslims were prevented entering, say, St. Peter’s or Westminster Abbey. Yet Obama makes no mention of reciprocity, he passes over the insult and the abuse. Besides, there are plenty of instances when people do have a legal right for something but not the moral right to proceed, so that it is wise to abstain. If this mosque goes ahead, it will prove a constant source of division.

Obama also says in this speech that al-Qaeda’s cause is not Islam –“it is a gross distortion of Islam.” Why this defensiveness? There are plenty of passages in the Koran and the Hadith which al-Qaeda can and does quote to give them religious justification for their violence. What Obama calls terror they consider faith, and this can’t be glossed over by the weasel word “distortion.” And he goes on that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. Try telling that to those condemned to death for converting to some other faith. Just as strange, he says that Islam has always been part of America — a line he used before, for instance in the Cairo speech. The evidence he gives for this is that Jefferson received the Tunisian ambassador of his day. That makes Islam part of America?

Finally he admits we are in a fight and the reason we’ll win “is not simply the strength of our arms — it is the strength of our values. The democracy we uphold.” This in the week he’s just been rejoicing about imminently in Cairo removing the strength of arms from Iraq, with Afghanistan to follow as soon as possible. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Iranians going nuclear — and we are to meet them with approval for a mosque at Ground Zero and babbling about upholding democracy? This speech sent a shiver of fear down my spine.

A year has now passed since the Lockerbie bomber, Abdulbaset Al-Megrahi, was released from prison in Scotland. The Scottish authorities responsible for his release told the world that Megrahi was suffering from cancer, and had a life expectancy of no more than three months. The release, they claimed, was purely on the grounds of compassion.

It is a fairly recent development that authorities in Britain lie to the public as a matter of course — up till about 1970 this was not the case. At the time of Megrahi’s release, the politicians were even more shifty than usual, trying to pass the buck. So it was obvious that we were being lied to, and that Megrahi would not die of cancer within three months, maybe not within years, and then only from old age. I said so on David Calling.

We shall probably never know whether the authorities lied because they were cooking up oil contracts with Libya, or because they knew that an appeal pending from Megrahi would reveal that a miscarriage of justice had occurred in sentencing him, and they hoped to save face by hurrying him out of the way and so making the appeal redundant. Moreover, we have only lately discovered that the doctor who gave Megrahi the prognosis of three months was in the pay of Libya.

In the first instance, justice to the Lockerbie victims is at issue. Beyond that, however, the case shows that Libya, an insignificant country under the erratic and destructive dictatorship of Moammar Qaddafi these 40 years, has the power to set the agenda for Britain. Lockerbie is only one of several murderous coups inflicted on Britain by Islamist terrorists, and only intelligence work and policing has prevented a number of others.

An Islamist terrorist now planning to murder more British people is able to conclude that if he is captured before or after his attack, he too can expect to be lightly punished: Some friendly doctor has only to diagnose a medical reason for his compassionate release. The handling of Megrahi illustrates the Islamification now spreading everywhere, and the incapacity throughout the democracies, and most markedly in Britain, to understand the implications, let alone confront them. It seems an omen that the proposed mosque at Ground Zero passed its last official hurdle on the very day that Megrahi celebrated his first year spent in the comfortable villa allotted to him by Qaddafi.

The European Investigation Order, a term with the genuine ring of totalitarianism, is the latest project to be adopted by the Eurocrats in charge of the Brussels Empire. In essence, it is a measure to place the entire continent of Europe under a system of policing superior to every country’s police force. Prosecutors from any and every country will be granted extraordinary powers, enabling them to bug communications wherever they please, have access to bank accounts and to DNA records, even in matters that are not a crime in the country concerned. The national police forces will be powerless to do anything about these demands; they will merely have to comply.

What this means is that Britain and the other countries agree to be policed by outsiders. These outsiders are not answerable to representative processes, and they cannot be brought to account or fired. Put simply, anyone who allows such a thing to happen is consenting to be colonized.

A number of previously consolidated nation-states are accepting that in fact they are turning into failed states — moreover, in peace-time. Such a voluntary abdication of independence has never before occurred anywhere in the world.

The Conservatives are now the major party in the coalition governing Britain. In the run-up to the recent general election, David Cameron promised to hold a referendum that would determine Britain’s relationship to the Brussels Empire. He then reneged, on the flimsy grounds that the moment for questioning that relationship had passed. During the electoral campaign, he promised to regain powers already ceded to the Brussels Empire. That was the reason why many people voted Conservative. If now the Conservatives renege on that promise as well, and pass to the Brussels Empire extra powers such as the European Investigation Order, they will be seen to be as shifty and untruthful as the other political parties.

The bulk of the party is actually nationalist in spirit, and a betrayal as flagrant as this will cause a major row, probably leading to a real divide and even the collapse of the coalition. Cameron is making the huge mistake of putting the interests of his coalition government above those of the nation.

The whole story of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, is evidence of the shifty conduct of those supposed to represent us but who in reality disgrace themselves and their offices. Megrahi was released from prison in Scotland on the grounds that he had terminal cancer and would die within three months. Here he is a year later, at home and apparently thriving. A cancer specialist, Dr. Karol Sikora, examined him and is the one who gave him three months. It turns out that the Libyan authorities paid him, and he says now that Megrahi might live ten or even twenty years (and, of course, that he’s been quoted out of context). Never believe a word that man says.

The Scottish authorities who took the decision to return Megrahi say they had no contact with BP about commercial advantages of doing so but refuse to attend inquiries in Washington. Kenny MacAskill, Scottish minister of justice (there’s glory for you), says he is not accountable to the United States, i.e., the families of the dead are no concern of his. Never believe a word these Scottish politicians say.

Lawyers had been appealing for a retrial, allegedly with evidence that Megrahi was not the Lockerbie bomber. Because of these proceedings, Megrahi could not be released. A deal was struck whereby the appeal was dropped in return for release. Jack Straw, the British minister overseeing this and a prisoner transfer agreement that might or might not include Megrahi, also refuses to go to Washington. Never believe a word he says. Tony Blair claims to have no commercial dealings with Gaddhafi, yet the prime minister led a tour to Libya and goes there as an advisor, apparently paid. Never believe a word he says.

BP claims that the release of Megrahi had nothing to do with oil contracts signed immediately afterwards. Never believe a word of it. The Sunday Telegraph reveals that a week after hearing that Megrahi’s release was imminent, the Libyans opened a London investment office called Dalia Advisory, a front for the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Coincidence? Never believe a word they say.

It turns out, according to the Sunday Times, that Richard Lebaron, deputy head of the U.S. embassy in London, wrote a letter recommending Megrahi’s release as a better alternative than his death in prison. So, when Obama speaks about all Americans being “surprised, disappointed, and angry” to learn of the release, he is expecting us to believe that he had no idea what his officials were doing. Unbelievable.

What a crew. Either they were all afraid that the proposed appeal would reveal a miscarriage of justice in which Megrahi was set up as a fall guy, or behind closed doors a deal was struck whereby immense oil contracts were dependent on Megrahi’s return to Libya. It was a bad decision to release him, admits David Cameron, and that at last is something we can believe.

Everyone involved in this affair has adopted the practices and values of the Middle East, with the added hypocrisy of pretending to innocence and legality. At least in the Middle East they glory in the use of power to break others to their will. Everything from the blowing up of the plane over Lockerbie to the lies and prevarications about Megrahi on the part of politicians, businessmen, and even doctors, is a reflection of the shameful times we are living.