The liberal state and its journalistic and academic outriders fret constantly about the radicalising influence of under-regulated social media, but they are overlooking an even more effective provocateur: themselves. I say this as someone who is in the process of being radicalised by them. With the decision to grant citizenship to Alaa Abd El-Fattah and recently to return him to Britain from Egypt, and for the Prime Minister to express his ‘delight’ at these arrangements, they’re practically force-feeding me red pills.

Not so long ago, I was a happy warrior for liberal multiculturalism. Critical of the indulgence shown to Islamism, sure, and troubled by my fellow pro-immigrationists’ tacit – and not so tacit – approval of illegal immigration, but content that these were flaws that could be repaired by a more hard-headed liberalism. Today, I find myself, unexpectedly and not entirely comfortably, a critic of multiculturalism, a sceptic of mass immigration, and someone increasingly drawn to the idea that the acquisition of British citizenship should be made much, much more onerous.

I haven’t arrived at these once-unthinkable thoughts because Elon Musk brain-zapped me with his far-right algorithm, but because the British state persists in acquitting itself to the detriment of the British and to the benefit of those hostile to them. Conquest’s........

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