I am a Doomster and a Gloomster, and proud of it. I am always suspicious of anyone, in politics or business, who demands permanent optimism and treats doubt as disloyalty.

If Dooming and Glooming were bad, then the worst offender in British history was one Winston Churchill, supposedly the hero of our new premier, whose warnings of growing German power were models of doom.

Take, for example, his speech of March 24, 1938: ‘I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.’

Or recall what he said on October 5 the same year: ‘I will, therefore, begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing. I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.’

Mr Johnson’s path to power began with his choice of the unlovely Gavin Williamson as his campaign chief. He made it clear to Tory MPs that only immediate and total loyalty would save them from career death (The Prime Minister is pictured outside 10 Downing Street)

To insist on chirpy cheerfulness amid bad times (and I think we will come to remember these as bad times) is a sort of totalitarianism.

Like Al ‘Boris’ Johnson’s face, relentless optimism seems to be smiling and humorous. But catch that face in repose, and you see something altogether grimmer. I wonder how quickly the jolly joshing will turn to anger.

Mr Johnson’s path to power began with his choice of the unlovely Gavin Williamson as his campaign chief. He made it clear to Tory MPs that only immediate and total loyalty would save them from career death.

The appointment of the new Government, with some Ministers clearly axed purely because they had backed Jeremy Hunt, kept that promise. It looked more like a Balkan putsch than a reshuffle.

To insist on chirpy cheerfulness amid bad times (and I think we will come to remember these as bad times) is a sort of totalitarianism (Mr Johnson is pictured giving a speech in Manchester on Saturday)

Loyalty, not quality, was plainly the test. I mean, look at some of these people. I have no great sympathy with anyone involved. I wrote off the Tory Party as a dead loss many years ago.

But I can recognise a ruthless, overweening drive to power when I see it, and it gives me the creeps. As I’ve said before, this is the kind of Nixonian government which has an enemies list, in which case the honourable person really needs to be on that list.

As so often in modern times, especially since the Blair era, people have the whole thing totally wrong. Those who ought to love Mr Johnson, loathe him. Hundreds of socially liberal media metropolitan types are (weirdly) enraged by the coming to power of a man just like them, who, for instance, seeks an amnesty for huge numbers of illegal immigrants and, in theory and practice, regards monogamous marriage as a ‘bourgeois convention’.

Those who might do well to mistrust him, on the other hand, fall at his feet. He is acclaimed (weirdly) as ‘Britain Trump’, whatever that means, by the President of the United States, who seems to think that Mr Johnson and Nigel Farage are more or less the same thing.

Like Al ‘Boris’ Johnson’s face, relentless optimism seems to be smiling and humorous. But catch that face in repose, and you see something altogether grimmer. I wonder how quickly the jolly joshing will turn to anger (The Prime Minister is pictured in Manchester this weekend)

And he is cheered by those who have come to think that leaving the EU is an objective in itself, without any specific purpose, and it will be fine, even if it actually collapses the economy.

Do these people know that he once wrote of them, in The Spectator of July 2, 1994, as ‘Euro-Ultras… these men and women have black, black hearts’. He said they lived in hope that the EU would demand so much of Britain that it would bring about our departure from the then European Community.

It is an interesting article. I do not think its author greatly sympathised with those ‘black-hearted ultras’. Does he now?

Instead of trying to have a war with Iran we can’t win, why don’t we stand up to China? The Peking despots have now hired gangster thugs to intimidate and beat peaceful protesters in Hong Kong. This is a direct breach of the agreement we signed with them. We must insist that they cease this sort of thing, or we cease to be a serious country.

The conviction of the pathetic fantasist Carl Beech (pictured), whose contorted lies damaged so many lives, is a great relief

A chance to save our useless police

The conviction of the pathetic fantasist Carl Beech, whose contorted lies damaged so many lives, is a great relief. This is not because I wanted harsh punishment for Beech. I don’t. His heavy sentence is cruel. Others are far more to blame for the harm done by his crazy lies.

It is because those lies are now officially recognised as such. So I can and will call for retribution and penitence for all those in positions of power and responsibility who chose to believe this swirling pigswill.

These people publicly visited misery and shame on wholly innocent men and their families. Some of them lost homes and jobs. All were wounded to the very heart by being paraded as alleged paedophiles. They trashed the presumption of innocence, one of the most precious possessions of a free society, and assumed guilt without the slightest effort to seek proof.

Think of it. If Field Marshal Edwin Bramall is not safe from the baseless bullying of deluded, self-important police officers so thick and prejudiced that they thought the blatant liar Beech was ‘credible’ and his lies were ‘true’, then who is safe?

You certainly aren’t. The principal politician involved, Tom Watson MP, is protected because he is a valued member of the anti-Corbyn campaign which unites Blairite Labour and Tories in politics and media.

The Beech episode gives us a chance to reverse the absurdities imposed on the police after the Macpherson report (An artists impression shows Carl Beech in the dock at Newcastle Crown Court)

This is a mistake. They should drop him and find another champion. He has demonstrated appalling gullibility and cruelty. He has not shown anything like the necessary contrition. He should never be trusted anywhere near real power.

But the real problem lies in the police, that vast body of men and women, largely absent from the streets we pay them to patrol. In the last week, I have not seen one police officer on foot, anywhere, and I have looked out for them.

They have become a closed society, quite Left-wing, pursuing their own politically correct agendas, uninterested in their main job of deterring crime by being present on the streets.

If we have 20,000 more of them, they will be the same. It is no good just hiring more of them, until they are reformed.

The Beech episode gives us a chance to reverse the absurdities imposed on the police after the Macpherson report.

Our once-great navy is sinking - just like Russia's

The bitter and sad new film about the tragedy of the Russian submarine Kursk portrays the Russian navy, correctly, as decrepit and broke, and so unable to save its own men trapped in the deep.

Britain’s fleet, personified by the reassuring Colin Firth, is shown by contrast as modern, competent and can-do.

Britain’s fleet, personified by the reassuring Colin Firth (pictured), is shown as modern, competent and can-do in the bitter and sad new film about the Russian submarine Kursk

But in the 19 years since the Kursk sank, the Royal Navy – savaged by governments of both parties – has shrunk in power, wealth and competence.

In my view, we should not imagine that what happened to the Russians cannot happen to us.

Soon, we'll all be extremists

I mistrust the word ‘extremism’ and think the phrase ‘Right-wing’ means little. But just at the moment it seems to me that the British State is trying to build the foundations of a secret police force which will devote much of its time to pursuing ‘Right-wing extremism’, and that you might be surprised by what this means.

The Home Office announced last week that risks from ‘Right-wing extremists’ are to be included for the first time in the national system for alerting the public to the scale of the threat from terrorism.

What we also learned was that Al Johnson’s new Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, once told a constituent that he thought Christian teachers who said they were opposed to same- sex marriage should be subject to ‘Extremism Disruption Orders’. Yes, he really did. Who needs Harriet Harman when you have the Tories?

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