Another defining feature of the Blair government – like so many others in Europe – is its unease over free speech. It shouldn’t be necessary to repeat this obvious fact but the impact of free speech can sometimes be uncomfortable, disquieting and downright dangerous. And that’s fine. That’s the price we pay for a free society. Unfortunately, that’s no longer acceptable to Tony Blair. In an attempt to appease the Muslim voters who rejected him so thoroughly at the last election he’s reintroducing a nasty little bill that purports to ban incitement to religious hatred. Needless to say, quite what those words actually mean is not defined with any real precision.

Blair, a charlatan whose dishonesty is equaled only by his disingenuousness, is saying that there will only be very few prosecutions brought under this law, a ‘justification’ that rather begs the question as to why it is being introduced in the first place.

But – as Blair knows – this is to miss the point. I’m sure that there will indeed be very few actual prosecutions, but the mere threat of investigation or prosecution (and its associated legal costs) will be enough to chill free speech. That’s what Britain’s Islamic extremists want, and that’s what Blair wants to give them.

He is a disgrace to his party, his office and his country. He should go.