Alexei Navalny, but than the intimidation

gram on Friday wrote of her love and devotion to her partner of 26 years.

“I don’t know how to live without you, but I will try to make sure you will be happy for me and proud of me out there. I don’t know if I can do it but I will try,” she said.

Two close allies of Mr Navalny who hosted a live show on Friday commenting on the broadcast of the funeral visibly struggled with emotion.

“He was a brilliant man. He was so much fun to be around,” Leonid Volkov, his former campaign chief, said. “We’re going to work hard to keep up his work. We’re going to try to do our best”

At the cemetery, Mr Navalny’s parents planted kisses on the pale forehead of the late politician, and his mother covered his face with a burial shroud before the lid was closed and the coffin was lowered into the grave to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s My Way, one of his favourite songs.

The string quartet then played the closing soundtrack from Terminator 2 – his favourite film that his allies said they used to make fun of.

Despite wide-spread fears, police did not interrupt the funeral procession, and crowds of mourners, who often broke into chants “Putin is the killer”, were allowed to proceed peacefully across the bridge from the church.

For at least five hours, a string of supporters, many of whom sobbed and looked visibly distressed, filed through the cemetery gate to bring flowers and a handful of soil to the grave.

Before the grave was filled and closed, the mother of Alexei Navalny’s widow thanked supporters for coming to the funeral.

“They were incredibly in love. They were an amazing couple – I’ve never seen a couple like that,” she said.

“He devoted his life to a big struggle but he did it with a big love and faith in the bright future of Russia.” Mrs Navalnaya’s mother and the politician’s mother then huddled together on plastic chairs by the graveside, sobbing as the grave diggers clanked their metal shovels, filling up the grave.

Ten minutes later they covered the grave with fir-tree branches, planted a large cross and a photo of a smiling Navalny.

Crowds milled around the area for hours, and many mourners who despaired of reaching the cemetery this evening started setting up makeshift memorials in snowdrifts outside nearby buildings, leaving Mr Navalny’s photos, candles and flowers.

Navalny supporters were also gathering in other Russian cities. At least 91 people have been detained across Russia including 19 people in a small village on the Volga River, according to police watchdog OVD Info.

Enough is enough. That was the welcome – albeit belated – sentiment of Rishi Sunak’s address to the nation yesterday afternoon. Drawing on his own experience, the Prime Minister defended the idea of Britain as a “patriotic, liberal, democratic” society, a reasonable country with decent people. But, he warned, that society is being targeted by extremists, who want to pit Briton against Briton and tear this country apart.

The immediate context was George Galloway’s victory in the Rochdale by-election on Thursday. Jewish groups had expressed their alarm at Mr Galloway’s return to Parliament, after a campaign marred by sectarianism and accusations of intimidation. He had successfully turned the by-election into a vote on Gaza, a foreign conflict in which the UK has no direct role. The Prime Minister attacked Mr Galloway’s views on Israel, citing the fact that he was endorsed by the former BNP leader Nick Griffin.

But the Rochdale by-election did not emerge out of nowhere. Week by week, pro-Palestinian protesters have sought to dominate the centres of our cities, chanting extremist and anti-Semitic slogans while the police have just looked on. A new low was reached last week, when the Speaker of the Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was seen to break parliamentary convention out of fear for MPs’ safety, an action condemned as appeasement by many parliamentarians.

The Government has not been on the front foot as these appalling events have unfolded. Now, however, the Prime Minister is promising to “face down the extremists who would tear us apart”, not with pandering but with leadership.

The question is what he proposes to do. It appears that he wishes the police to end their ambivalent attitude to hateful demonstrations, and he called on the marchers to reject radicals in their midst. But if Mr Sunak thinks the protests have become a vehicle for anti-Semitism, some will ask why he does not wish to prevent them entirely, at least in the heart of the capital.

Mr Sunak also pledged to redouble support for the Prevent anti-extremism programme. Last month, however, Sir William Shawcross, who had been commissioned to write a review of the scheme, criticised the Government for not following through on all of his recommendations.

Many will have been cheered to hear the Prime Minister speak with such passion about Britain, and of his determination that the extremists should be defeated. But this is not a battle that will be won in short order. He will need to accompany his fine words with decisive and comprehensive action to defend the British way of life.

We must be prepared

Undaunted by snipers on rooftops and riot police lining the streets, thousands gathered in Moscow yesterday for the funeral of Alexei Navalny. The Russian opposition leader died last month in suspicious circumstances in an Arctic penal colony at the age of 47, in a tragic development that will have shocked few but has galvanised many.

His name was chanted and applause could be heard as the hearse arrived outside the Soothe my Sorrows Church, offering glimmers of hope that the desire for democracy and freedom that Navalny represented has not been completely extinguished in Russia.

But the wider context is Vladimir Putin’s increasingly totalitarian rule. This week, Oleg Orlov, head of the human rights group Memorial, was also jailed for voicing his opposition to the Ukraine war. Even calling the conflict a “war” can lead to a prison sentence.

In recent months, the Russian president has abandoned any remaining pretence of behaving like a rational actor with whom the West can negotiate. Instead, the UK must be prepared for all eventualities. Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, wants defence spending to be increased to 2.5 per cent of GDP. As Britain faces its most hazardous geopolitical situation since the end of the Cold War, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt will surely find it hard to disagree.

History has taught us that the only response to tyranny is to defeat it. Failure to bolster our woefully overstretched Armed Forces could leave us with little choice but to appease.

Punishing drivers

The professed reason for making drivers reduce their maximum speed from 70 to 60mph on stretches of the M1 and M6 was to see if it reduced pollution. The trials, which began in 2021, were supposed to last no more than 15 months. At last National Highways has returned the limit to 70mph, but it is none the wiser about why pollution has decreased. Obviously electric cars (which have also been slowed down) produce no exhaust pollution. Chugging lorries were unaffected by the trial, as their limit was 60mph already. The reprieve for motorists is welcome, but many still suspect an underlying hostility towards them.