Off The Street?

Some people belong on it.

Squealing in the usual quarters about the decision of the Charities Commission to register Soldiers off the Street as charity number 1137594. For once, they have a point. Its trustees are a gruesome bunch of BNP and EDL stalwarts. (Nor is there any apparent need for this initiative? Have the Charities Commissioners never heard of the Royal British Legion?)

So, how about deregistering those charities whose trustees are gruesome bunches of old Stalinist, Trotskyist and fellow-travelling stalwarts from the Seventies? Or of old Eighties Radical Rightists? Or of Likudniks and worse? There has already been action against Atlantic Bridge, so things are looking up, even if that, like the exposure of Policy Exchange as a forgers' den, would have cost Liam Fox and Michael Gove their respective jobs in better days than these.

Off the street? Some people belong on it. Including the BNP and the EDL. But by no means restricted to them.