Is THIS a warning? In the past few days I have begun to sense a dangerous and dark new intolerance in the air, which I have never experienced before. An unbidden instinct tells me to be careful what I say or write, in case it ends badly for me. How badly? That is the trouble. I am genuinely unsure.

I have been to many countries where free speech is dangerous. But I have always assumed that there was no real risk here.

Now, several nasty trends have come together. The treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, both by politicians and many in the media, for doing what he is paid for and leading the Opposition, seems to me to be downright shocking.

Now, several nasty trends have come together. The treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, both by politicians and many in the media, for doing what he is paid for and leading the Opposition, seems to me to be downright shocking

I disagree with Mr Corbyn about many things and actively loathe the way he has sucked up to Sinn Fein. But he has a better record on foreign policy than almost anyone in Parliament. Above all, when so many MPs scuttled obediently into the lobbies to vote for the Iraq War, he held his ground against it and was vindicated.

Mr Corbyn has earned the right to be listened to, and those who now try to smear him are not just doing something morally wrong. They are hurting the country. Look at our repeated rushes into foolish conflict in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. All have done us lasting damage.

Everyone I meet now thinks they were against the Iraq War (I know most of them weren’t, but never mind). So that’s over.

But Libya remains an unacknowledged disgrace. David Cameron has not suffered for it, and those who cheered it on have yet to admit they were mistaken.

I disagree with Mr Corbyn about many things and actively loathe the way he has sucked up to Sinn Fein. But he has a better record on foreign policy than almost anyone in Parliament

Yet we pay for it, literally, every day. Along with our clinically insane covert intervention on the side of Al Qaeda in Syria, the Libyan adventure created the unending migration crisis across Europe which, in my view, threatens the stability of the whole continent.

Yet I recall a surge of anger from the audience when I doubted some crude war propaganda about mass rapes in Libya on the BBC’s Question Time. War is strangely popular, until it comes to your own doorstep.

I sense an even deeper and more thoughtless frenzy over Russia, a country many seem to enjoy loathing because they know so little about it.

I have already been accused, on a public stage, of justifying Moscow’s crime in Salisbury. This false charge was the penalty I paid for trying to explain the historical and political background to these events. I wonder if the bitterness also has something to do with the extraordinarily deep division over the EU, which has made opponents into enemies in a way not seen since the Suez Crisis.

In any case, the crude accusation, with its implication of treachery, frightened me. I expect, as time goes by, I will be accused of being an ‘appeaser’ and of being against ‘British values’. And then what? An apparatus of thought policing is already in place in this country. By foolishly accepting bans on Muslim ‘extremists’, we have licensed public bodies to decide that other views, too, are ‘extremist’.

Mr Corbyn has earned the right to be listened to, and those who now try to smear him are not just doing something morally wrong

Because the authorities are terrified of upsetting Islam, nothing much will happen to Muslim militants. But conservative and Christian views such as mine will suffer.

Christian and Jewish schools, especially ones which have conservative views on marriage and sex education, increasingly find themselves in trouble. Even mainstream Catholic and C of E schools are under stealthy attack, with attempts made to stop them ‘discriminating’ in favour of pupils from Christian homes.

Ofsted now says that ‘all schools’ have a ‘duty to actively promote fundamental British values’, which sounds totalitarian to me. This includes so-called ‘mutual respect and tolerance of values different from their own’. Actually, there is nothing mutual about it. The sexual revolution fanatics demand submission, and offer no tolerance in return. Now the freedom to educate children at home, always a barometer of liberty, is being seriously threatened for the first time in our history. The pretext for this is supposed fears of child abuse or ‘extremism’. The real reason is that so much home education rejects the so-called ‘British values’ of multiculturalism and sexual liberation.

What next? ‘British values’ over foreign policy, war, immigration? I expect so. TV and the internet have for years been promoting a leaden conformism, whose victims are actually shocked – and often angry – when anyone disagrees.

There’s no real spirit of liberty left in this country.

Yes, I am scared, and I never have been before. And so should you be.

War, or the danger of war, is always an opportunity to silence troublemakers.

It will be a funny old world without Ken Dodd

How I wish I had been to see Ken Dodd before he died. He was a historical monument to a Britain of backyards, milkmen, brown ale, teatime biscuits, rent collectors, town clerks, vicars and mothers-in-law, all now endangered species. When everyone who remembers these things has gone, his humour will become a mystery, like a Cro-Magnon cave painting.

How I wish I had been to see Ken Dodd before he died. He was a historical monument to a Britain of backyards, milkmen, brown ale, teatime biscuits, rent collectors, town clerks, vicars and mothers-in-law, all now endangered species

Nato is the real barrier to peace

If Nato was dissolved tomorrow, you’d be amazed how peaceful Europe would become. The reason for its existence – the USSR – vanished decades ago. We don’t keep up a huge alliance to protect us from the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ottomans, or any other powers that have disappeared. So why this one? It was preserved to save the jobs and pensions of its staff. It was only expanded because American arms manufacturers were afraid they would lose business when the Cold War ended.

So they spent huge piles of cash lobbying the US Senate to back eastward expansion, as the New York Times uncovered. Having survived and expanded, it needed something to do, and began to infuriate the Russians, and so that is where we now are. If you look for trouble, you get it.

Here’s a true story from the days when we were bringing feminism and comprehensive schooling to Afghanistan, or whatever it was we were trying to do by sending troops there.

It is Christmas Day in a forward position. A young, idealistic officer, recently arrived from Sandhurst, says to a grizzled sergeant: ‘It’s jolly quiet today. Surely the Afghans don’t observe Christmas?’ And the sergeant replies: ‘No sir, it’s quiet because we’re not going out there and annoying them.’

I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

I couldn’t care less if they melt down all the hideous one and two cent coins wrongly known as pennies and two pence pieces. Australia and New Zealand got rid of their equivalents nearly 20 years ago, and nobody seems to have suffered much.

I couldn’t care less if they melt down all the hideous one and two cent coins wrongly known as pennies and two pence pieces

I was genuinely sad to see our real coinage go, proper heavy money that was worth something and a history lesson in your pocket. But these cheap, ugly, useless steel discs just remind me of how far we have fallen.

Last week there was a mugging on the secluded, picturesque path I often take on my way home. It wasn’t the first. For me, such places, away from crowds and noise, are one of the great joys of life. And, for all the time since I was born until very recently, it never crossed my mind that seclusion might also mean danger. Now it does. How very dispiriting and sad.

The Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, admitted last week it had been a mistake not to give the late Bishop George Bell a defending counsel at the kangaroo court which wrongly convicted him of child abuse

The Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, admitted last week it had been a mistake not to give the late Bishop George Bell a defending counsel at the kangaroo court which wrongly convicted him of child abuse. When will he admit that he has made a similar mistake by refusing to allow Bell’s niece, Barbara Whitley, to pick a lawyer to defend him against the mysterious second allegation now levelled against him in secret? Too late, for sure.

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