YOU what? I said to my team in Number Ten, as they explained the origins of Covid. What did you say they were doing?

SO now we know. Frankly, I could have told you months if not years ago that this would be the answer - but at least we now have it from the mouth of the Russian tyrant himself.

BUT how can Trump do such a thing? How can he switch off military support for Ukraine - and then look those ­casualties in the face?

WELL, folks, it has been a bad few days for the truth. But yesterday we reached clinical levels of insanity. As I write, the US State Department is demanding that we sandpaper the G7 communique on the third anniversary of the Ukraine war.

ZUT alors! Gott im Himmel! To listen to the wailing here at the Munich Security Conference you would think that Donald Trump has pulled out of Nato and cravenly capitulated to the Kremlin.

IN THE past three years, this ghastly war has taught us one thing - never, ever under-estimate the Ukrainians. Their audacity is undimmed. Their heroism puts doubters to shame.

IT IS five years since that ­glorious moment when I stood in the pillared room in Downing Street as a ­cheering crowd counted down the seconds to midnight - and BONG!

ONE of the joys of zooming around the world is to see our country through the eyes of others and to pick up the ­gossip around the global campfire.

MOST readers will remember the horror inflicted on this country by the IRA. We grew up in semi-permanent fear of their outrages, not just in Northern Ireland but on the mainland as well.

(Or stay in China where they’re almost as commie as she is...)

THERE are many ­reasons for despising Keir Starmer’s botched attempt to sell out our sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, and thereby to prejudice the future of a vital US airbase.

WELL, folks, since this is the final ­column of the year I feel obliged to make at least one prediction. So here goes. I make this forecast with some sadness, but with a conviction that has mounted over the past few months.

I HAVE been struggling all morning to find reasons to be cheerful. I wanted to write one of those jolly, holly-sprigged columns about why it’s a wonderful world, and why Britain is a wonderful country.

WHEN Bashar al-­Assad last week scuttled to Moscow he finally exploded the myth of Vladimir Putin’s strategic genius. He showed how comically wrong it is of so many in the West to believe that the Russian leader ­possesses some invincible ­martial prowess.

WE don’t know who killed Brian Thompson, 50, on Wednesday morning in New York, brutally shooting him in the back with a long-barrelled handgun.

WE ARE very kindly and forgiving sort of people, so I expect there were some readers who looked at defenestrated Transport Secretary Louise Haigh and felt the faintest stirrings of sympathy.

IT was only last month that Keir Starmer declaimed a Commons statement on the worst massacre the Jewish people have experienced since World War II. He seemed perfectly sincere.

WHEN I was growing up during the Cold War, we all knew the main reason why Britain was a particularly marvellous place to live. It was a ‘free country’, we used to tell each other, and we all knew roughly what that meant.

I HAD the great privilege of spending US election night with Emily Maitlis as she began her gradual descent into madness.

THIS Labour Budget has made me so angry that I scarcely know where to begin. But let’s start with the duplicity.

TODAY I want us to ­consider two great crimes against humanity. Each of them has consigned millions of people to horrible deaths. Each of them has deprived whole populations of their liberty - brutally incarcerating men, women and children; and, in both cases, lives and hopes have been ­shattered across the planet.

YOU have to admire the sheer cojones of the guy.

ON MY last full day as Prime Minister I went down to Lambeth in South London to thank a very brave group of men and women who had made my job possible. They were the heroes of the Special Escort Group of the ­Metropolitan Police.

SO THE great fraud unravels. When Keir Starmer presented ­himself for election, we had the vague impression that he was dull but straight. He might be a bit lawyerly and nit-picking, but he was going to govern this country with a puritan hostility to sleaze.

THE vaccine race: it was Brexit and Bingham what won it.

...with a dramatic canal raid to snatch our 5 million stolen vaccines back from Brussels’ clutches

IN THE days and weeks that ­followed my bout of Covid there was quite a lot of indignant ­internet chatter about the exact severity of my illness. Some said that I was shamming; others that I was indeed ill but that I never needed to go into hospital, let alone occupy an intensive care bed.

GOOD Lord’ I said to my wife, as I prepared to fall asleep in the now ­traditional British way, with the laptop open on the bed, and some film news ­burbling away. ‘Is there a new Bridget Jones coming out?’

LIKE a great murmuration of migratory birds, the millionaires of Britain are massing in the departure lounges. They are revving their private jets.

I WANT you to think about the children. I want you to remember those children dying in the English ­Channel just four days ago, because we are in danger of getting ­hardened to the horror.

SO, in case you have forgotten, here is what Sir Keir Starmer was saying about Margaret Thatcher only a few short months ago.

FOR the first time ever I am becoming seriously worried about free speech in this country.

IT was the look on Putin’s face that said it all - the sudden lip-twitching indignation of the autocrat hearing the truth.