Had Reform merely announced its intention to suspend the asylum system for an entire parliamentary term, I’d have just ignored it. Even to dignify its policy platform with a response is to enter its alternate universe, in which it’s preparing for government. I prefer, if only fractionally, this universe we’re in, where the party hangs by a thread on the results of a parliamentary inquiry into Nigel Farage’s £5m gift from a disinterested well-wisher.

Had Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, gone on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme merely promising a British version of ICE, I still would have ignored it, not due to complacency, more due to a bone-penetrating despair that anyone, even he, would look at the US’s shadow militia, performing staged acts of unfettered violence and inhumanity, and think: “That looks cool – I bet I could get some political capital out of that.”

However, as Yusuf laid out his arguments, they were so dumb, so random, disconnected, hammy and cliche-riddled, just so unremittingly stupid, that it turned out to be impossible not to react. I cannot let his nonsense slide. It would be an insult to........

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