PETER HITCHENS: A British video blogger has misplaced his human rights for criticising Ukraine. Will I be subsequent?

In my unceasing quest to be as unpopular as possible, my greatest ally is a man called Graham Phillips, now living like a 21st century Robinson Crusoe in a wind-blasted, freezing ruin in a warzone.

I do not ask you to like Mr Phillips, or even to sympathise with him – it is hard to do so, even in this season of goodwill.

But you shouldn’t approve of what our Government is doing to him. This winter he is living in a bombed-out, unheated block of flats in the city of Mariupol, seized by Russia from Ukraine.

He has no glass in his windows. If he wishes to take a bath, he builds a wood fire under an abandoned bathtub in the yard, fills it bucket by bucket and waits for the water to become hot enough. He is commendably stoical about the bare conditions of his life.

Mr Phillips set himself up as a sort of journalist when the Ukrainian conflict first got going ten years ago. Some of his early reporting, about visits to prostitutes, is frankly squalid.

He has behaved questionably (I put this mildly) towards a British prisoner-of-war captured by the Russians, and to others in similar fixes. He has been more sympathetic to the Russian cause in Ukraine than is either right or wise for someone who calls himself a journalist.

I don’t sound the alarm about this because I agree with him or approve of him.

He occasionally reproaches me for this, but that is just too bad. I do not take up his case because I like him. Yet there is something impressive about his doggedness.

In a pretty savage article about him in The Critic magazine, the journalist William Fear conceded that Mr Phillips has a dedication to his war reporting.

‘He goes to the front line and records videos from separatist positions, even as Ukrainian shells are impacting the ground close by. Indeed, he seems to be almost unfazed when the shells detonate.

‘He has the same wide-eyed expression as he has in all his other videos. There is truth in Phillips’ coverage, and for that reason alone he’s worth watching, whatever you think of his motives.’

The point of all this is that Mr Phillips seems to be the only British person living who does not have any human rights. He lives under severe legal punishments, yet he has never been charged with or convicted of any crime.

The penalties he suffers are unlimited. No date has ever been set for his release from them. Mr Phillips is legally forbidden (for example) to pay the council tax on his London house.

Yes, that is right, he is legally forbidden to comply with the law. If he tried, the council would be forbidden to accept the money.

Think about this rule for a bit, and how it might affect you, and you will see that it is not unfair to say that these conditions make him a prisoner of the state, perhaps for life.

He cannot receive or make any payment for anything, except with a special licence from His Majesty’s Treasury, which is quite hard to get. Even then his bank does not have to deal with him. It is just allowed to.

It seems that crowdfunding, once his major source of money, is forbidden to him. He is the only citizen of this country who suffers this treatment. No other British-born person is subject to such sanctions. Those who are, are foreign nationals who can laugh at them as long as they stay away from this country.

The reason for this treatment, as supplied by the Foreign Office, is that ‘Graham Phillips [is] a video blogger who has produced and published media content that supports and promotes actions and policies which destabilise Ukraine and undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine’.

Gosh. Talk about a widely drawn charge. Ukraine must be weaker than I thought if the insignificant video blogs of this little-known person threaten its territorial integrity, sovereignty, stability or independence.

My own writing, broadcasting and debating, critical of Ukraine and of British policy towards it, could be cited against me in the same way under a slightly dimmer government than we now have.

A few inches this way or that, and I too could be kindling damp logs under a derelict bathtub, as the snow swirls round me, or just living in a doorway, courtesy of His Majesty’s Government.

And what about someone (there seem to be quite a lot of these) who ‘promotes actions and policies which destabilise’ Israel , another close ally and ‘undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty, or independence’ of Israel? Is anyone sanctioning them?

Mr Phillips, with the aid of some brave independent lawyers, tried and failed to get this arbitrary, medieval punishment lifted. The courts walked straight over them.

It is not wholly clear who took the decision to treat Mr Phillips so, but a punishment which can be imposed without a jury trial, and which has no knowable end, is surely just the sort of thing Vladimir Putin likes.

Do we fight Mr Putin by behaving like him? Surely not. Free the Mariupol One. His treatment is a stain on our justice.

You took a long turn, Gromit

Wallace and Gromit need to take a different turn. They should go back to appearing in short films and stop starring in long ones.

The Wrong Trousers is one of the most perfect works of art ever made – funny, witty, lovely to look at, Northern, affectionate, captivating, enormously English, unmetricated, unspoiled by progress. I can watch it over and over again, and I have.

The same goes for A Grand Day Out. Both are brief but so concentrated they pack the power of much longer films. There were many echoes of both in the BBC special Vengeance Most Fowl, on Christmas Day, but it was just too long. 

My theory is that the painstaking stop-motion method used to make them concentrates so much time into a short space of film that they do not need to be long.

We also need to see more of Wendolene Ramsbottom, star of A Close Shave but sadly retired after she revealed an allergy to cheese.

I think she bears a close resemblance to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, so perhaps it is time for a school drama.