The mob has claimed another scalp. This time it’s Howard Donald’s. The Take That star has been found guilty of likecrimes. That is, he liked some ‘problematic’ tweets, including a tweet that said – brace yourselves – ‘Only women have periods’. For this, for giving his approval to a statement of biological fact, he’s been damned as a vile bigot and dumped from July’s Nottingham Pride Festival.

Next time someone tells you cancel culture is a myth, point them to the unpersoning of Howard Donald. For here we have a good bloke, a veteran of the boyband era, being publicly shamed not even for anything he said but simply for using his thumbs to signal agreement with other people’s ideas.

And what were those scandalous ideas? What terrible heresies did he associate himself with? I hope you’re sitting down. He liked a tweet that said: ‘Men cannot menstruate. Transgender “women” cannot menstruate.’ And another that said: ‘No woman has a penis. No man has a vagina.’ He also liked an anti-vax tweet, a tweet about ‘the Great Reset’, and a tweet saying ‘Defund Disney’ next to an image of a banner advertising a Pride-themed Disney event in LA.

This is perverse. It’s sinister. Cancelling a man for his Twitter likes is a ruthless act of thoughtpolicing. Mr Donald made no un-PC utterance. He did not give voice to wrongthink. He simply exhibited a little intellectual curiosity towards gender-critical ideas and vax-sceptical commentary. He’s being punished not for any public pronouncement but for the contents of his heart and mind, which is the truest form of tyranny.

His greatest offence, judging from the crazy media meltdown, was liking the idea that biological sex is real. He was seen consorting with the devil of scientific fact. But it is true that men do not menstruate and women do not have penises. That people can be cast out of polite society for approving of truth itself is a testament to the cloud of unreason that now hangs over our society.

Truth is being rebranded as heresy

Truth is being rebranded as heresy. Biology has been refashioned as bigotry. Just look at the unhinged headlines about Donald’s Twitter crimes. He liked ‘transphobic tweets’, they say. The treatment of factual speech as ‘hate speech’ is one of cancel culture’s most ominous features. Damning certain ideas as ‘phobic’ is the 21st-century equivalent of yesteryear’s treatment of dissent as ‘blasphemy’. Now, as then, shaming labels are attached to those who demur from elite consensus opinion, in order to reduce them to social lepers.

The Donald affair highlights the cruelty and irrationalism of cancel culture. Behold the organiser of Nottingham Pride Festival Groovebox’s statement. ‘We are dealing with this situation as a matter of urgency’, it said in response to the snitches who bombarded it with complaints about Donald’s likes. (‘Please bare with us’, it continued, which I loved.) ‘A matter of urgency’? It was a few Twitter likes. Has everyone gone mad?

The conformism of Pride is now clear for all to see. Pride claims to be about diversity and yet it will ruthlessly exile any sinner who deviates from the correct-think of identity politics, whether that’s a pop star who thinks men don’t menstruate or lesbians who don’t fancy sleeping with anyone who has a penis. See the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks in that velvet rainbow glove.

Mr Donald clearly believed he had no choice but to recant his blasphemous likes. He’s issued a craven mea culpa. ‘I am deeply sorry’, he said. He says he regrets his ‘uneducated actions’ and acknowledges that he has ‘a lot to learn’. He is offering himself up for re-education, for moral correction. It is a chilling echo of Maoism when a hounded man publicly pleads for forgiveness and signals his willingness to have his mind washed of its unholy thoughts. Perhaps he’ll appear in public with a sign hanging round his neck. ‘Transphobe’, it might say.

I really wish he hadn’t apologised. It’s the worst thing you can do when cornered by activists so staggeringly narcissistic that they believe they should have the right to glide through life without ever encountering someone who thinks differently to them. Apology emboldens their juvenile tyranny. Their authoritarianism grows fat from the penitence of their victims. Every time someone says ‘sorry’, the cancellers feel their power expand, their taste for blood intensifies. ‘Who shall we drag down next?’, they gleefully wonder.

Never apologise. Don’t even engage with them. Especially if you’re a member of Take That, a famously gay-friendly band without a ‘phobic’ bone in its body. If anyone should be apologising here, it’s the mob, to Howard Donald, for so flagrantly defaming him.