The Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

By this time last week, the Russian Army was supposed to have encircled Kiev. Instead, we have an "invasion" that necessitates recasting last week's "Russian-backed separatists" as plucky Ukrainians who are resisting occupation. Although not by putting up any actual resistance. Funny, that.

Our own response is practically nil, as well it might be. Those who would wish it otherwise are lining up with the Blairities and the SNP. I hope that they are exactly as proud of that as they ought to be.

Did Russia invade the Baltic States during the 13 years between their independence from the Soviet Union and their accession to NATO? Has Russia invaded Finland lately? Finland has never been part of NATO. And so on. Grow up. And read Peter Hitchens, who, as so often, is far more right than wrong.

No, of course this would not be "the first change to Europe's borders by force since 1945",  a line that the same people have already used about Crimea. Have they really never heard of the Yugoslav Wars? They had plenty to say about them at the time. Indeed, the dissolution of Yugoslavia is still going on, and not always peacefully.

Boris Johnson has done exactly what Jeremy Corbyn would have done. The disappointed Conservative hawks could always join the Labour Party. Someone still has to. When Corbyn used to advocate these sorts of responses to international incidents that, like this one, were undeniably illegal, then he was screamed down as a loony, and a traitor, and what not.

But the first rule of British politics is that everything is lunacy and treason until the Conservatives do it, at which point it becomes common sense and patriotic duty. If you want to get anything done, then you just need to take over the Conservative Party. That is much easier to do than taking over Labour would be, since Labour pretends to be a democracy, it has affiliates, and so on.

"Sanction a few middling banks and a couple of Putin's mates" would have been precisely Corbyn's response to this if he had been the Leader of the Opposition this week. He might also have called for corresponding sanctions on the Ukrainian side, but those may very well be on the way, albeit with less publicity.

It is no wonder that Keir Starmer, David Lammy, Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood are furious. Liz Truss and Ben Wallace are still in office only because they are too thick to have understood what has happened. Not unimportantly, those are all Remainers.

This is the age of self-identification in defiance of factual reality, and just as some men self-identify as women even though they are not, they never will be, and they never can be, so Ukraine and Georgia self-identity as NATO and EU member states even though they are not, they never will be, and they never can be.

The mere existence of a separate Ministry of Defence reserves a Cabinet seat for a creature of Wallace's vulgar species. While it notoriously treats serving and previous rank and file in an abysmal manner, the MoD, as such, exists to lobby on behalf of the arms companies that go on to employ its former Ministers and senior staff. War is a racket.

Nor are we very good at it. Only six months ago, and after 20 years, we were kicked out of Afghanistan by a scratch militia from the Pashtun hills. Russia's Armed Forces do not quake at the mention of our name.

If footballers are to be expected to boycott Russia, then are being asked to do more than the Government itself is doing, and I seem to recall that they were supposed to stay out of politics when Marcus Rashford was feeding hungry children here at home.

Revoking RT's licence would lead to the immediate expulsion of the BBC and other British broadcasters from Russia, and quite possibly from the growing number of countries that were under Russian influence, an example of which was the recent coup in Mali. In any case, if no one in Britain watches RT, then what threat does it pose?

Look who this week's hawks are. Old Cameron and May courtiers, Theresa May herself, David Cameron's erstwhile Coalition partners, the people who are back in charge of the Labour Party, and the person and dependants of Nicola Sturgeon. Those will stop at nothing to silence the Right that coalesced around Brexit, the Left that at least initially coalesced around Corbyn, and the vindicated Alex Salmond, together with those who stood by him.

Consider the interviewees on Sputnik, Going Underground, The Alex Salmond Show and Keiser Report. The ones from or about abroad are objectionable enough to our betters, but the ones from and about real life in the real Britain are intolerable to them. And after RT, then they would come for GB News. Nor would they stop there. They are far more ruthlessly expansionist than Vladimir Putin.

Donetsk was originally named Yuzivka, after its founder, John James Hughes, a Welsh engineer and businessman. Hughes was born in 1814, but it was not until 1914 that Wales acquired a defined border, in order to disestablish the former dioceses of the Church of England there. Until then, Wales had been the land of the Welsh, historically defined as the people who spoke Welsh. You knew it when you heard it.

The border between Wales and England was never designed to be an international frontier, and it would never work as one. There would be chaos. Likewise, almost all of the internal borders of the Soviet Union, including the border between Ukraine and Russia, were never designed to be international frontiers. There is chaos, and since that Union is never coming back, there always will be.

Like it or not, we all know where this particular flareup ends, with one or more Russian satellite states in the Donbas as there already are in practice, with Russian sovereignty over Crimea recognised by some face-saving formula because the facts of life are the facts of life, and with an otherwise unaltered Ukraine never let into NATO or the EU, as it never would have been, anyway.

None of this would affect Britain in the least. But on the wider principle, as someone once said, "These things always end with a political settlement, so why not start with one?" Especially when everyone already knows what it is going to be.