Terrorists, exalting their murderous deeds, raged against the infidel in the open air. The movement had standout villains, most notably Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire who seemed pathologically obsessed with Whitney Houston and yet so despised American consumerism that he refused to use a fridge.

In recent decades it has bought into strategic infrastructure in industry and energy, from Heathrow Airport to Hinkley Point. Beijing has also effectively co-opted large parts of British academia, much of which is now financially reliant on Chinese donations and students. And there are suspicions that it has extended its tentacles into the heart of our democracy, with alleged spies in Parliament.

Can't believe we outsourced and sold off our country and now other people own it. Now let me just turn off this James Bond Marathon running on the BBC and express shock at another country spying.

What started out as a naivety about the price of Chinese money has ossified into a maniacal defiance; the attitude at the top of the Government seems to be that Britain is in too deep to row back. The Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, recently visited Beijing, and has boasted about securing £600 million of licences to launch fund management companies there. At the same time, he lectures the British media that disengaging with China is not “credible”.

Lolz. Lmao, even.

From the country which strived to be America’s most loyal partner in the War on Terror, such defeatism is quite something.

You can't make this shit up.

As China proved at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, authoritarian states can formidably crush certain threats. But, ultimately, humanity has not survived and progressed over hundreds of thousands of years because of its ability to anticipate every risk around the corner. We are not prey animals with eyes on the sides of our heads; we are large-brained, autonomous languaging beings who thrive in collaborative, creative communities that can tolerate a level of novelty and heretical thinking.

What our elites, who are so lacking in both imaginative range and intellectual depth, have failed to comprehend is that a Beijing-dominated world, defined by a yearning for certainty rather than a striving for freedom, will be a dead end for human progress. It would be a world both claustrophobic and stagnant.

Oi! Its shit. Its supposed to be shit. An' if you don like it dere's da door.

Whether our confidence and the self-knowledge required to prevent such a future lies buried somewhere, or has been traded away in one too many grubby business deals, is up for debate. What is clear is that we are running out of time to remember what we stand for.