First They Came for the Neo-Nazis

Connoisseurs of fiscal comedy will forever prize the response to the crash of 2008, when the Bullingdon Club, led by its glistening puce Head Boy and abetted by its little orange fags, turned a modest recovery into a three-year depression by, among other things, cutting the police to the tune of some twenty thousand personnel. It remains to be seen whether the Conservatives will respond to the present crash by cutting further or by simply continuing not to bother making up the shortfall; but in the meantime at least two police forces have demonstrated their own robust sense of humour by stealthily undermining the Prevent programme. Originally intended as a low-level denunciation harvester with clip-on Muslim-baiting, and hence as a basic component in the Ministry for Wog Control's transformation of landlords, employers and public servants into thought police and migrant-smellers pursuivants, Prevent has been hijacked by mischievous elements who seem to regard it as an excuse to treat the political mainstream as some sort of troublesome radicals. Even ministerial hints that people may be radicalised by the clannish or tribal influence of a partner or close family member, rather than by the people's will as manifested through the lynch-mob glamour of the Home Office, have not sufficed to control these blithe spirits, whose absorption of history's austere and unforgiving lessons clearly leaves much to be desired. If people who hold the opinions of Lord Rothermere, Winston Churchill and Rupert Murdoch are to be tarred with the racist brush, just imagine where that might leave the legitimate and understandable centre-ground of Britain's present pragmatic politics.