You know, I find it bizarre to read about fascism descending on America, when (as always) it always descends on Europe. Well at least of you consider the UK part of Europe, which the people behind these civil rights monstrosities would like to.

We live in a country where young boys – one was just seven – are taken aside and questioned for trying to knock conkers out of chestnut trees on public ground. Where a grandmother whose neighbour accused her of not returning a ball kicked into her garden was arrested, fingerprinted and required to give her DNA. The police went through every room in her house, even her daughter’s drawers, before letting her go without charge or caution.

Where two sisters can be arrested after a peaceful protest about climate change, held in solitary confinement for 36 hours without being allowed to make a phone call, then told not to talk to each other as a condition of their bail. As this paper reported, their money, keys, computers, discs and phones were confiscated, their homes searched.

There is much more, all of it enabled by Blair’s laws and encouraged by a vindictive and erroneous contention that defendants’ rights must be reduced in the pursuit of more and quicker prosecutions. Our prisons are full, problem teenagers are, by default, exiled to a kind of outlawry and every citizen becomes the subject of an almost hysterical need by the authorities to check up on and chivvy them.