After adding to his framed collection of banknotes of nasty, 20-century tyrants, Theodore Dalrymple opines on the modern, liberal, virtue-signalling Anglo-Saxon politicians that he cannot bring himself to look at in his latest Takimag column.

What in practice compassion in political leaders boils down to in our democracies is the advocacy of greater forced contributions by some parts of the population to the incomes of, or expenditure on, others, administered by a class of officialdom that soon develops interests of its own.