Leader writers, those callow redbrick graddies who cut their not-yet-yellow journalist’s teeth on a few hundred words of thunderous pointlessness every day, are not normally the controversial sort.  They can’t afford to be.  Careers ahead of them, editors to impress, ghastly blunders to avoid ... you know how it is.  But one of this morning’s two offerings by the Telegraph’s leader writer ever so slightly cracked the mould.

His or, just possibly, her first paragraph was a standard Telegraph rant at the dishonesty of the BBC.  Read it many a time.  But then our young hopeful warmed to his (or just possibly her) task, displaying a knowledge of Genghis Khan’s liberal social policy that, as they say, rocked: When he conquered a new tribe, it was his custom to liquidate the aristocracy and assimilate the lower orders: “providing opportunities for the many and not the few”, as it were.  Where modern socialists are sometimes accused of cutting high achievers down to size, Genghis did this literally, ordering the execution of all Tatars over a certain height.  He was a great believer in state power, replacing Mongolia’s clan system with a rudimentary bureaucracy.  He was even an early decimaliser, organising his forces in units of 10.

It was a laugh, that was all.  But I stopped smiling and started thinking when I read the penultimate sentence: Above all, he was a supra-nationalist, deliberately mingling subject populations to destroy their sense of national identity.

Suddenly, forbidden knowledge hove into view.  You won’t hear Michael Howard say anything like that about Labour - never mind Genghis - on his shirt-sleeved tour of the marginals.  You won’t hear him roaring at Blair & Co for the utterly deliberate damage being done to the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish - but most especially the English.  You won’t hear any Tory rail at Labour’s transnationalism, or rip apart its blank slate racial egalitarianism.  It’s not part of the electoral discourse.  It’s too complicated.  Too dangerous.  Not polite.  And, accordingly, our heroic young journalist finishes off his (or just possibly her) effort blandly and therefore safely career-wise, “Step forward Genghis Khan, father of European integration.”  But that was a clear after-thought of no significance.  The other words, those ones about the deliberate mingling of populations to destroy national identity, were burnt onto the page.

It’s good to know that this sort of seminal critique of liberalism is received “out there”, beyond the internet badlands of right-wing cyber-bastards like us.  It’s good to know that it’s not completely self-censored as the left dictates, too.  Perhaps it’s all worth saying again ... and again.