Never seen such a concerted effort on the part of established/embedded (and overwhelmingly white) columnists to reduce everything to “identity politics”, “cancel culture” and “opinion”. Both disengenuous and dangerous in my view.

Recent high profile dismissals - Linehan from twitter, that baroness from the booker prize - weren’t actually solely about their “views” or their “opinion”. These were also issues of behaviour.

The baroness is an excellent example of someone hiding behind the idea of “opinion”. The truth is she used her platform to bully prominent members of the literary community. That’s clearly a professional issue.

Linehan repeatedly, deliberately, endangered people, libellously accused them of crimes, and used his huge following to intimidate and upset people. That’s more than just an argument about someone’s views.

Indeed, Linehan’s views that apparently you can’t hold any more because of the thought police and cancel culture or whatever led to him being invited onto newsnight to air them - a point rather conveniently forgotten.

Now it just so happens that I personally find both of their views abhorrent and feel perfectly comfortable with the action taken against them. But even if you don’t, making this solely about their views is a gross reduction.

But in all honesty it’s in keeping with the deeply dishonest terms on which the debate has been conducted by people keen to mask their bigotry and hatred with a thin sheen of professional reason and shallow pleas for decorum.

The whole idea that eg trans rights are an “opinion” or “view” or something we can all just politely agree to disagree on is fundamentally rotten in my view because those rights are human rights and they are not actually up for discussion at all.

All issues have gradually been co-opted under the banner of “opinion” and all opinion has slowly coalesced into a narrow bandwidth of entitled and often venomous consensus policed with increasing fervour by those whose own lives remain unaffected by their views.

Meanwhile everyone else has to live with the consequences of an increasingly risky existence in an increasingly heightened and hostile atmosphere.

Which is ironic because opinionists increasingly write as if they are out there in a war zone putting themselves at risk on behalf of humanity, rather than, say, knocking out a thousand words on an issue they have not directly experienced from their kitchen.