On Remembrance Sunday, Essex Police visited the journalist Allison Pearson, to inform her that — in Pearson’s telling — she was the subject of a non-crime hate incident report. Allegedly this concerned something she posted on X a year ago, and subsequently deleted. But the police would not specify what. Nor would they disclose who had made the report. In a subsequent statement, it transpired that the “non-crime hate incident” was in fact a criminal investigation for “inciting racial hatred”.

The row has since escalated. Elon Musk got involved. Tories have denounced Essex Police for “policing thought”. And Starmer has declared that police should focus on actual crimes rather than mean tweets.