Tiers of Laughter

The marchers for a Gaza ceasefire might have been arrested if they had set fire to a police car, never mind to an hotel. They have never done anything remotely of the sort. The recent rioters have been given far lighter sentences than were handed down to the Just Stop Oil nuisances, who should certainly have been given something but who had not attempted to kill anyone, and to those who pilfered single items of ice cream or of bottled water in 2011. The problem is not two-tier policing, but two-tier sentencing.

Still, we may now begin to enjoy the absurdity of these people. According to the BBC, in court Derek Drummond "sat there fidgeting, trying to compose himself". Still a cokehead at 58. Only on a Far Right riot or in Parliament. A few hours ago in Burnley, a grand total of two people turned up, and they went home because it was raining. Expect a lot more of these stories to come out. Such fun.

Watch out for stolen valour, such as medals that their wearers were the wrong ages to have won, or the insignia of two or more units in which the same man could not have served. There is always that sort of thing with this lot. Mind you, both realistic candidates for Vice President of the United States are in the same position. J.D. Vance was deployed to Iraq as a "combat correspondent", which might very politely have been called a journalist, but which was really just a public relations man for the Marine Corps. In his career-making book, he gloated about having "evaded combat". Meanwhile, Tim Walz seems to have been demoted for his failure to complete coursework, and therefore to have retired with a lower rank than he claims. He undoubtedly retired from the Army National Guard after 24 years, and while still aged only 41, just as his unit was about to be sent to Iraq.

So American centrists are much like British centrists, and in the same way in which American Far Rightists are much like British Far Rightists. More left-wingers than you may imagine have a military record. Some, though no means all, play it down. But no one on the Left ever fakes it. That is just not something that we do. In the other two tribes, however, it is endemic. At least for those of us with no valour to steal, the best thing to do is to laugh.

That is also the best thing to do at the fact that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has either used his EU passport to breeze through the airport in Cyprus, or he has been too thick to do so and he has had to queue as a Briton when he could have been wafted in as an Irishman. It must be one or the other, and either is amusing. As is the fact that he is abroad at all in this of all weeks.

Successive Home Secretaries have merely opined that Shamima Begum would be eligible for another nationality, although the nation in question is adamant that she is not. She would be a Bangladeshi, and Keir Starmer wants to send those back in general. But in civic terms, she is not one, whereas Yaxley-Lennon is an Irish citizen. The Home Secretary ought not to have the power to revoke British citizenship. But she does, and it is clear from the Begum case that she has no plan to give it up. Over, then, to Yvette Cooper. Since the United Kingdom wrongly has two-tier citizenship, those from whom it can be revoked and those of us from whom it cannot, then "Tommy Robinson" should be left in no doubt which tier was his.