Tag Archives: witch

Private Eye bashed over anti-Semitism coverage by accused historian

Private Eye: The Beast certainly seems to have a point when he suggests the Eye’s coverage of anti-Semitism is one-sided.

Fair play – at least Private Eye had the guts to publish this letter from my brother the Beast, in full, without trying to justify itself in any way.

The scan is a bit faint and I know some of you won’t be able to read it, so here are the salient parts:

“I have followed with interest your coverage of the mass accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party and the purges of those accused. I regret to say that I have found this coverage to be almost wholly one-sided.

“You have given little opportunity for the victims of what can only be described as a witch-hunt to speak for themselves.

“Worse, you seem to have blindly followed the media groupthink and automatically assumed that the Labour Party did have a severe antisemitism problem, that Jeremy Corbyn was an antisemite, and that those accused were indeed guilty.

“This left me somewhat perplexed, as your magazine has a strong tradition of criticising Israel and standing up for those who have been falsely accused. I am offering you the opportunity to correct this bias.

“Yesterday I received a message from the Labour Party Complaints Team informing me that I was being investigated for antisemitism based on an article I had published on my blog.

“In this I agreed with another blogger, Tony Greenstein, a proud Jewish critic of Zionism, that Zionism was an internalised Jewish version of antisemitism and that Israel is indeed a racist, colonialist state.

“The argument is supported by solid historical scholarship, quoting reputable historians and the major figures in Zionist history themselves.

“I am not an antisemite, a form of racism that I find particularly abhorrent, and have published very many pieces on my blog attacking it and other forms of racism, as well as its political expressions, Fascism and Nazism.

“I am determined to fight these false accusations and this attempt to suppress reasonable criticism of Israel by automatically equating it with genuine despicable hatred of Jews.

“DAVID SIVIER

“BA (Hons) History, MA History PhD Archaeology”

Please don’t get sidetracked into speculation that my brother is a modern version of Indiana Jones. The relevance of his qualifications is that, when he discusses Israel, Zionism, anti-Semitism, Fascism and Nazism, he knows exactly what he is discussing.

So it will be very interesting to see if his missive receives any responses in subsequent Eye letter columns – and to examine, with the Beast himself, the quality of those responses.

We all know – don’t we? – that none of the arguments matter. Labour has accused Dr Dave and the fact that he knows far more about this subject than his accusers won’t stop them from expelling him from the party as soon as they get the chance.

They’re utterly ignorant, but they have a quota to meet, or masters to obey, or whatever excuse it is today.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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Labour’s anti-Semitism witchhunt is pilloried by politics magazine

On his knees: Keir Starmer adopts the attitude he has taken to any representative of the Israeli government.

Keir Starmer’s Labour – and particularly his appointment of former Israeli ‘spook’ Assaf Kaplan – has come in for (justified) criticism in the pages of parapolitics magazine Lobster.

In its latest issue, the magazine discusses anti-Semitism accusations against a correspondent. The author states:

“I don’t have a problem with political parties policing their membership. In the 1980s I was a member of the Labour Party and was entirely happy to see it trying to purge members of the Militant Tendency. After all, Militant was a classic party-within-a-party.

“The current Labour Party purge is weirder than that. It is a purge of people with the wrong attitude towards Israel.

“This may have something to do with the current leader, Keir Starmer, having a Jewish wife. It certainly has something to do with fear that the Israeli operation to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader might be cranked up again against the current leadership.

“Whatever the motivation, today’s purge, though formally of members accused of being anti-semites, is also of members who are not enthusiastic enough in their support of Israel – or who express support for other expellees.”

The article goes on to discuss the accusations against its correspondent, concluding:

“As you can see, the evidence does not support the charges.

“The key factor here appears to be that my correspondent expresses support for Tony Greenstein, a prominent critic of Israel, who is Jewish, and who was expelled from the Labour Party in 2018. Yes, the Labour Party is not only purging Jews from its ranks in the name of opposing anti-semitism, it is purging those who support them.

“I presume that the Israeli spook hired by Labour, Assaf Kaplan, is involved
in this particular operation, bringing his skills from his previous work, hunting down Palestinians on social media.

“Hunting down Labour Party members who sympathise with Palestinians is but a small sideways step.”

So this magazine correctly identifies the elements of Labour’s witch-hunt:

It is not a purge of anti-Semites but of people whose attitude to the state of Israel diverges from that of Keir Starmer (and Assaf Kaplan, we must conclude).

It is – or at least may be – prompted by fear that Israel’s successful operation to remove Jeremy Corbyn from the party leadership may be revived to remove Starmer. (And after the Shai Masot conspiracy to remove Alan Duncan from the government was revealed in 2017, can anybody doubt that there was an Israeli operation to achieve this?)

Far from attacking anti-Semites, this purge attacks Jews and those who support them – in the name of opposing anti-Semitism. The slant of the article makes it clear that the author (rightly) considers this to be perverse.

And it seems Kaplan was hired to hunt down – on the social media – party members, including Jews, who sympathise with the plight of Palestinians – a slight sideways step from his previous job hunting down Palestinians on the social media.

It must come as no surprise to you that the ‘correspondent’ to whom the Lobster article refers is This Writer’s brother, the author of Beastrabban\’s Weblog.

“I think I’ve heard elsewhere that Israeli spook Assaf Kaplan has been hired by Starmer to weed out critics of Israel,” he writes.

“This is another case of Israel interfering where it has absolutely no right, just like it did when discussing who should be in Tweezer’s cabinet. I suspect that anyone mentioning this, however, will be accused of using conspiracy theory tropes and thus being anti-Semitic in order to silence them.”

This makes sense. I was so accused when I wrote about the Shai Masot conspiracy – despite the fact that everybody could plainly see that a conspiracy to influence the UK government was exactly what it was. It seems Labour has been more vulnerable to Israeli influence than the Conservatives.

“Starmer is a disgrace and agents of the Israeli or any other foreign state have no place in the Labour party deciding who should or should not be a member.”

Absolutely right. But with Labour policing itself, how can honest, right-thinking people rid it of the influence of this foreign government?

And if such influence cannot be removed, how can the UK electorate allow Labour – the puppet of a foreign state – into government?

Listen to the vile hypocrisy of the anti-Semitism witch-hunters

Jenny Manson: The chair of Jewish Voice for Labour has received vile abuse because she supports Jeremy Corbyn.

Isn’t it strange how the witch-hunters who accuse the innocent of anti-Semitism have a cloth ear when it comes to their own abuse?

They twist the words of their political enemies to make it seem they have directed hatred toward Jewish people.

But if a Jewish person opposes their nonsense, they see nothing wrong with comparing them with Nazis or suggesting they should be gassed.

Consider the case of Jenny Manson, chairperson of Jewish Voice for Labour – the organisation of Jewish Labour Party members (as opposed to the Jewish Labour Movement, which accepts people who aren’t Jewish and aren’t in the Labour Party, as long as they support Zionism).

She appeared on the BBC’s Newsnight last week to discuss the Labour anti-Semitism row and defend party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

It seems one of the witch-hunt supporters stalked her – at least inasmuch as he found out her home telephone number – and left a message on her answering machine.

It is utterly vile.

He called her “Nazi scum”. He said she should “burn in the gas oven” and “burn in acid”.

If you have the stomach for it, you can listen to the full message here.

Ms Manson has also received an abusive email, and says she is regularly stopped in the street by people who act aggressively towards her in response to her support of Labour.

It seems clear, to me at least, that this is what the witch-hunters want.

Jeremy Corbyn was recently punched in the head by a man who, it seems, was misled about Labour’s policy toward Brexit.

It’s only a matter of time until someone is assaulted – or worse – by supporters of the witch-hunt.

What excuse will they give for doing it? Who will they say enticed them into it?

We could all mention names, no doubt.

Perhaps it is time to hold them to account.

Next time they make unfounded accusations, perhaps we should lodge complaints against them under the Public Order Act – fear or provocation of violence.


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Weird tactics by wannabe witch-hunters: When did This Writer start leading Jewish Voice For Labour?

Wannabes: The fakes who are accusing decent people of anti-Semitism are like cartoon witch-hunters. They’d be funny if they weren’t trying so hard to harm decent people.

These obsessives get stranger by the day.

For the record, I am not Jewish, nor am I currently in the Labour Party, therefore I am not allowed to be a member of Jewish Voice for Labour. It only admits as full members people in the Labour Party who are Jewish.

But that didn’t stop troll “David Simon” (@DavidSimonSPG) from making that suggestion as part of a bizarre attempt to smear JVL for taking an interest in Islamophobia in Poland. Apparently this person reckons Jewish people thinking about Poland should only be able to think about the Holocaust:

There’s a case for suggesting that this is an anti-Semitic attitude in itself – denying Jewish people the right to self-determination.

But then he went one worse:

We’ll take these in order. Here’s JVL talking about anti-Semitism in Poland:

This addresses the issue that “David Simon” addressed initially – anti-Semitism in Poland being discussed by JVL. He had modified this to “anti-Semitic violence” but we may discard this.

I’ve already discussed why I can’t be a member of JVL, let alone leader of it. As for that hackneyed lie about me, here’s proof that I never said anything of the sort:

I think it was a clumsy attempt at guilt-by-association, and also at extending a false and disproved claim by repeating it until someone believes it again.

There was an attempt to double-down, with a claim that I must be a member of JVL because I used the word “let’s”. It’s very silly – look:

That’s right; we were discussing someone like “David Simon”, who was likely to be a paid troll or a bot. I had written “Let’s move on” – meaning everybody else in the conversation.

But “David Simon” wanted people to believe it meant I was a member of JVL.

That is the silliness of the fake “anti-Semitism” witch-hunters.

Fortunately this smear didn’t get very far, despite a second, flailing attempt at it:

Oh wait – there was another bit, to do with the leaflet that led to the claim that I was a Holocaust denier. Marvel at the silliness here:

Complete misrepresentation. I never had anything to do with the leaflet. I was challenged about it by a commenter on This Site and my comment was pointing out that there wasn’t enough information to make an educated response on the reasons it was written the way it was.

So that’s guilt by association, misrepresentation, anti-Semitism, and an attempt at “the big lie” (repeating a lie until people believe it) – which was, I believe, a Nazi tactic.

What a nasty person – if it is a person. And what a shining example of the people he represents. Next time you see anyone like “David Simon” making unevidenced accusations like these, the advice is clear: Ignore and block.


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Is this how we beat the Labour witch-hunt?

Chris Williamson brandishes his Morning Star.

Two interesting developments in the Labour anti-Semitism witch-hunt story have crossed my desk today.

The first is an appeal from Jews For Justice For Palestinians, which is almost certainly a group of what the pro-Israeli-government, pro-Zionist lobby might call “the wrong kind of Jews”. It runs as follows:

Protect Labour’s reputation. Protect its ability to speak up for Palestinians

The misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) has stated that its goal is the eviction of Jeremy Corbyn from public life.

To this end, the CAA has referred the Labour Party to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) alleging ‘institutional antisemitism’.

The Chief Executive of the EHRC already stated in 2017 that Labour ‘must do more to establish that it is not a racist party’. She did so on the basis of hearsay that had not been investigated and in fact was false.

Notwithstanding its reckless and cavalier record on this issue, the EHRC’s judgement is likely to carry weight in public discussion.

The CAA is now soliciting testimonies from Labour Party members in support of its complaint.

The time Is now for the silent majority of labour Jews to stand up and be counted! 

Resist the cynical attack on the Labour Party! 

Resist the trivialisation and instrumentalisation of antisemitism!

Defend the Labor Party’s ability to support Palestinian rights 

If you believe Labour is being misrepresented and traduced, now is the time to speak up.

We need your testimonies about your experiences in the Labour Party to submit to the EHRC.

Send them ASAP to: [email protected] by Friday 31 August 2018.

Now the Morning Star has published comments by Labour backbencher Chris Williamson, calling for the backstabbers in the party – those who have attempted to undermine Mr Corbyn’s leadership by supporting the witch-hunt, despite its absurd lack of evidence – to get back in line or be removed.

The article states:

“Any MP not prepared to work for a Labour victory should resign and, if they won’t, grassroots members should replace them,” Mr Williamson argued.

“That’s why I hope conference will back Labour International’s motion to introduce open selections to make it easier for members to hold their MPs to account.”

The motion backed by Mr Williamson is one of four proposals to reform the way MPs are selected that could be discussed by delegates at conference.

It calls for a list of candidates to be presented to all members of a constituency party by a shortlisting committee before each election and guarantees the sitting MP’s right to be on the shortlist.

If passed, it would end the current model where sitting MPs are automatically reselected unless they cannot muster the support of half of all party and affiliated branches in a trigger ballot.

The system is open to abuse as branches and affiliates all count the same regardless of size and members can only choose between being happy or unhappy with the sitting MP, while alternative candidates don’t get a look-in.

The Derby North MP said the left should mobilise behind the Labour International motion, pointing out that “there are several motions and we could end up losing the lot if we don’t get behind one.

“In my opinion the Labour International one is by far the best.”

This Writer will certainly try to send information to the EHRC before the deadline.

However, as my Labour Party membership is currently suspended due to false claims of anti-Semitism by – among others – the Campaign Against Antisemitism, I must rely on my colleagues in the party to support Mr Williamson’s call to action.

Visit our JustGiving page to help Vox Political’s Mike Sivier fight anti-Semitism libels in court


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‘Growing witch hunt mentality’ complaint by Tory MP who looks increasingly like a hunted witch

Michael Fabricant.

Is “witch hunt” being used as a “safe phrase” by Conservatives when discussing the sexual harassment scandal currently engulfing the minority Tory government?

Michael Fabricant spoke out about the situation earlier, but does this sound convincing to you?

Many commenters think not:

https://twitter.com/IanPounder1/status/925285240213557248

Is Mr Fabricant listed on the sexual harassment spreadsheet that is currently causing such a stir in Westminster? This Writer really couldn’t say, but – as the document is now available on the social media – I don’t have to. Anybody with an interest can look it up for themselves.

But his outburst does clarify this:

Drawing attention to claims that a witch hunt is happening can make a person look like a hunted witch.


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Accusation games: It’s all falling apart for the knee-jerk “anti-Semitism” accusers

Momentum’s former vice-chair, Jackie Walker: Does she look like an anti-Semite now? [Image: Andy Hall for the Observer].

Isn’t it funny how these people are starting to be pulled into the light, when they thought they could play their dirty little accusation games from the shadows.

It’s like a game of aggressive-Zionist join-the-dots now; Shai Masot leads to Labour Friends of Israel, and from there on to the Jewish Labour Movement and who knows where.

This Writer has to wonder whether this conspiracy – and it is a conspiracy, have no doubt about that – would have been rumbled if, for example, people like myself hadn’t objected to the claims of anti-Semitism when they were levelled at Naz Shah, Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn last summer.

I was warned off, you know. Good friends told me to be very careful of what I was saying, because the people I was accusing are “very dangerous indeed”.

Maybe they are, but facts have a habit of getting out. And while my articles back then produced a strong opposing – verbal – reaction from certain of our favourite figures and organisations (including a few of the kind of ad hominem claims mentioned below) there have been no bullets or bombs (yet).

They also seem to have got people thinking.

When Jackie Walker (mentioned in the Mondoweiss article quoted below) was accused at the Labour Party Conference, it seems more alarm bells started ringing.

And now we have the Al-Jazeera investigation (why not BBC? Why not ITV? Why not Channel 4 or the British mainstream print media?) that revealed Shai Masot and his little network of … I think they’re being called “infiltrators”.

It is time to root out every last one of these operators.

Anybody who has been involved in the anti-Semitism witch-hunt within the Labour Party last summer needs to be pulled in and checked out. That includes Paul Staines of the Guido Fawkes blog. It includes John Mann, who accused Ken Livingstone. Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who gave evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee when it was accusing Mr Corbyn, would be worth questioning – as would every member of the committee itself, as their performances in the evidence sessions made it clear that they had already made up their minds before asking a single question.

Some of them might have nothing to do with it – perhaps all of them. But that has yet to be demonstrated.

What about Jackie Walker’s accusers in the Jewish Labour Movement – and, for that matter, in Momentum?

What about the national newspaper writers and editors who reported each story?

The list of possible suspects gets ever-larger, and is likely to grow even further, if these people are contacted and questioned in a thorough manner.

The issues here are serious. We are being told that agents of a foreign country have infiltrated our institutions and undermined our foreign policy with false accusations against our politicians and political figures.

As the extract below shows, the trail leads back at least as far as Mark Regev – and he is Israel’s ambassador to the UK.

At the very least, this is a major diplomatic incident.

So why is the Conservative Government refusing to take the necessary investigative steps?

While an Israeli operative’s efforts  to “take down” Britain’s Deputy Foreign Minister, may appear to be the biggest scandal to arise out of Al Jazeera’s investigative documentary The Lobby, what became clear to me throughout the four-part series was that the primary function of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and other pro Israel groups in the UK working with the Israeli embassy was smearing Palestinians and their supporters with charges of anti Semitism and other nefarious ad hominem claims.

Jackie Walker, former vice-chair of Momentum, the left wing of the Labour party, called this “a constructed crisis for political ends”.

Evidence of this runs throughout the four-part series. Mark Regev, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, at a private meeting held during the annual Labour Party Conference in Liverpool last September, advises key activist leaders of Labour’s pro-Israel contingent on strategy and talking points:

“Why are people who consider themselves progressive in Britain, supporting reactionaries like Hamas and Hezbollah?  We’ve gotta say in the language of social democracy, I think, these people are misogynistic, they are homophobic, they are racist, they are anti-Semitic, they are reactionary. I think that’s what we need to say, it’s an important message.”

Jennifer Gerber, director of Labour Friends of Israel, is captured saying in conversation at Labour’s annual conference that anti-Semitism is “the defining narrative actually now”. Defining narrative of what? The Labour party? Or the LFI’s strategy of taking down the leftwing branch of the party?

[Ella Rose] reveals a trajectory of what could be perceived as a strategy of accusation (of anti semitism), a gotcha focus with the objective of trapping people, as a means of one-upsmanship so as to advance the profile of the Jewish Labour Movement on the right flank of Labour, aligned with the faction of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The suggestion by critics that anything untoward is taking place is angrily rebuffed. Labour’s right flank postures itself as the real victims– for being accused of falsely accusing! For example, Michael Foster, a generous Jewish donor (£700,000) to Labour, last summer accused Corbyn supporters of behaving like “Nazi stormtroopers”, and was suspended by the party for the abuse, leading to yet more glaring Blame-Corbyn headlines in the British press.

As for those targeted, the bigger fish the better, beginning with Jeremy Corbin, of course, and his supporters in Momentum, like Walker. Labour party members are targeted for re-education programs through Labour Party trainings on anti-Semitism, and if you slip up you’re subject to an inquisition with the threat of being thrown out of the party, loudly and publicly with the press cheering it on.

Source: ‘Constructed crisis for political ends’: anti-Semitism claims are prime weapon for UK Israel lobby, Al Jazeera shows

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Sufferers with progressive and mental illnesses have benefits cut by the DWP

The figures cover a period beginning under David Cameron and ending with Theresa May [Image: PA].

The Department for Work and Pensions’ current system of assessing the sick and disabled for benefits is on a par with medieval tests for witchcraft*.

Back in the day, people accused of being witches were submerged in the nearest river using a ducking stool, on the expectation that their evil powers would allow them to survive. When they died, the conclusion was that they weren’t witches after all. This was, of course, no comfort to the dead suspect or their bereaved family.

Now, people with illnesses that are expected to end their lives in the near future are being deprived of Personal Independence Payments because “they were expected to live beyond six months”.

What if they don’t?

The DWP will conclude that they were terminally ill after all – but you can bet there will be no comfort for the dead claimant or even their bereaved family as the DWP will not even offer a back-payment of benefit.

This is despite the possibility that deprivation of benefit may contribute to the deaths of claimants.

It is a sick, sick system.

This Writer would advise anybody who has lost benefits to start going through the appeal process. If the DWP’s treatment of you affects your mental health in such a way that you consider self-harm, or even suicide – write a letter to them, spelling it out, and give a copy to a near family member or friend. And keep a diary of ways your health is affected because of the DWP’s decision.

The government gets away with this treatment of innocent people because it has been able to deny responsibility for what happens to them. If you make this denial implausible, these people will have to think again – possibly while facing criminal charges.

Thousands of people with progressive diseases and mental illness have lost their disability benefits in a cruel Tory cut.

Charities sounded the alarm tonight over a “devastating” shake-up which has axed or reduced 230,000 people’s Personal Independence Payments (PIP).

Around 110,000 DLA claimants who were reassessed for the new benefit – 21% of the total – have been rejected since PIP launched in 2013.

Another 121,000 – 23% of those reassessed – were given PIP but at a lower rate than their previous benefit.

Those who lost out include many with progressive diseases – around 450 Parkinson’s sufferers, 3,069 people with multiple sclerosis and 4,450 suffering unspecified ‘malignant diseases’.

Others with progressive conditions who saw benefits axed or reduced were around 294 cystic fibrosis sufferers, 36 people with motor neurone disease and 1,617 people classed as “terminally ill”.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said those in the last group were found to no longer be “terminally ill” because they were expected to live beyond six months.

Mental health charity Mind warned 74,580 former DLA claimants with four key psychiatric disorders lost some or all of their benefits – 55% of all those who were reassessed.

PIP was denied or cut back for around 2,525 blind people, 570 people with AIDS, 128 haemophiliacs and 19 double amputees.

Also hit were around 20,050 people with back pain, 34,545 with arthritis, 8,084 with chronic pain syndromes and 10,725 with learning difficulties.

All figures are approximate because the DWP rounded the total number of claims for each condition to the nearest hundred.

The figures, covering April 2013 to October 2016 and compiled by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), were slipped out without fanfare on the government’s website.

Source: Thousands with progressive and mental illnesses lose their disability benefits in cruel Tory cut

*Don’t congratulate me on the comparison; I’m simply quoting somebody else.

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Why is David Cameron tarring gay people with the same brush as paedophiles?

Controversial: Philip Schofield prepares to hand his list of alleged Tory paedophiles to David Cameron on today’s This Morning, watched by co-presenter Holly Willoughby. Concerns over whether he should have done it are totally outweighed by the Prime Minister’s inappropriate reference to “gay people”.

It’s what they say when they’re caught off-guard that really defines a politician.

Today, comedy Prime Minister David Cameron was caught off-guard by Philip Schofield (of all people) – and the result was not funny at all. In a This Morning interview, Schofe handed over a piece of paper with three names on it, of Conservatives accused of being involved in child abuse.

The presenter said there were many allegations online about people who might have carried out abuse, and he had been able to find the names on the list after searching for about three minutes. He said they were people Mr Cameron knew, and asked if the PM would be talking to them.

Cameron’s response: “There is a danger that this could turn into a sort of witch-hunt, particularly against people who are gay.”

Gay? What, gay in general? Everyone else is talking about paedophiles, David; why did you just broaden it into a debate about homosexuality?

We don’t want to know about your prejudices, David. Paedophiles do not have to be, by definition, gay.

If a responsible adult wants to engage in a same-sex relationship with another consenting adult, that is none of my business, nor yours, nor the State’s.

It is a world away from what is under discussion. Paedophilia is the action of an irresponsible adult, engaging in an inappropriate physical relationship with a minor – of either sex – who is therefore legally unable to give consent to it. That is our business, and I suggest you concentrate on it, starting with the allegations against the members of your party.

Mr Cameron went on with a personal warning to Schofe: “I’m worred about the sort of thing you are doing right now – giving me a list of names that you’ve taken off the internet.”

On one level, that was never going to work. Public sympathy will always be on the side of Philip Schofield when a politician tries to intimidate him (as I think Mr Cameron was trying to do). And there is an argument that it is in the public interest for Schofe to put evidence before the Prime Minister that accusations are being made in a public forum and that he needs to do something about it.

Having said that, I should add a few words of caution, because the PM was absolutely right to warn against a witch-hunt.

Back in 17th century America, witchcraft was the taboo; in 1950s America, it was Communism. Now, here, it’s paedophilia. The link between them is that an accusation automatically led to the belief that the named person was guilty of the crime, whether they had committed it or not.

I know a man who is in prison at the moment after being convicted of abusing a child. I was at the trial and heard all the evidence and I am convinced that he did not do it. It’s my opinion that the accusation was enough to sway the jury. The gentleman concerned won an appeal against an intial conviction, at which the presiding judge overturned the verdict after asking for the factual evidence on which the defendant had been convicted and being told there was none. He sent it back for retrial and the jury convicted him again – as I say – because in my opinion he was accused of the modern version of witchcraft. Or Communism.

No organisation exists to represent the interests of a person who has been wrongly convicted of paedophilia. Once a person has been tarred with that brush, it sticks to them for life.

The whole issue of paedophilia is therefore surrounded by abuse. Abuse of children. Abuse of the system by people who accuse the innocent (for purposes of their own). Abuse of the system by police officers who refuse to investigate legitimate allegations (as we’ve heard in the Jimmy Savile affair). Abuse of the system by politicians who want to cover up the involvement of their colleagues in a scandal (as it has been alleged).

But, Mr Cameron, you can’t judge that a person is a paedophile according to whether or not they are gay.