I’m not sure I recognise this country any more. Characteristics that I grew up with have been eroded to the point of disappearance. What were those characteristics? I’d say they included a certain doggedness – an indefatigability, a quiet strength and resilience. Where did they go?

We have decided that the men of violence are winning and we must just keep our heads down

A little over two years ago, when Sir David Amess was murdered, I remarked here on the appalling ‘tribute’ that his colleagues paid in the parliamentary session given over to eulogies to their recently butchered colleague. Of course the MPs all spoke warmly of the man, but you might have come away with the idea that he had died of natural causes. Nobody saw fit to mention that his killer – Ali Harbi Ali – was an Islamic extremist. Nobody saw fit to call for the rooting out of this ideology. Instead they wittered on about the ‘Online Safety Bill’, which had absolutely nothing to do with Sir David’s murder.

Of course some people said then – as they always do – that it would be wrong to jeopardise a trial or tar a whole community. This despite the fact that when Jo Cox was also brutally murdered nobody had any problem describing her killer’s foul ideology, or of tarring all Brexit voters with her murder. Anyhow, the killer’s trial came and went and nobody has had anything more to say after it than they did the day after his murder.

Then came the news last week that the Conservative MP Mike Freer was stepping down from politics after threats. The MP listed a number of causes. It turns out that he was one of several MPs Ali Harbi Ali had been thinking of targeting. Freer has also come under repeated harassment because of his support for Israel. He was sent death threats by a group called Muslims Against Crusades and said that an arson attack on his constituency office was ‘the final straw’.

Yet once again his colleagues seemed to have nothing to say. People lamented the sad fact that he was stepping down, but there was no especial outrage. This seems strange to me. It strikes me that had it been far-right extremists who had been targeting Freer, MPs might have had something to say. They might even – rightly – have said that this country should do everything it can to stop far-right extremists attacking MPs. But this was different. The hatred comes from a different direction, so they were silent. Freer himself gave an interview last week in which even he tried to get around the truth of his own situation. He refused to identify the ideology of the people who have been targeting him and even said in one interview that he didn’t know what had motivated Ali Harbi Ali to kill Sir David Amess.

Although I know it is a darn fool position to stand up for someone more than they appear willing to stand up for themselves, let me make an observation. The people targeting Freer are Muslim extremists. It is possible that they include some far-left anti-Israel lunatics. But generally when it comes to the violent bit it’s going to be the Islamists. Yet even now neither Freer nor our political class in general seem willing to make such obvious observations. You get an idea why whenever you see them interviewed.

Last week we also learned of the case of Abdul Ezedi, the 35-year-old suspected of carrying out an alkali attack on a mother and her daughters in Clapham. Newsnight ran a segment on this particular form of cultural enrichment with the Conservative MP Caroline Nokes as a guest. Asked to comment on Ezedi’s asylum status, Nokes announced grandly that she thought it ‘wrong to comment on that’. She proceeded to talk about the risk of ‘microaggressions against women’.

Similarly, in an interview with Trevor Phillips, the Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was asked how it was possible that someone turned down twice for asylum, who had already committed more than one sexual offence, had then been granted refugee status? And what was Keegan’s answer? ‘This is not really about asylum.’

Of course it isn’t. It never is. Just like violence is never about Islamism. We live in a society where people seem utterly incapable of identifying problems in front of them.

I experienced a touch of this myself this week. Last Sunday I was due to speak to a capacity audience at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. The event was a fund-raiser for an Israeli university which lost a number of its students on 7 October. A number of its other students have since re-enlisted in the army and are losing their education. So the fundraiser was to help these students back into education when the war ends.

But word got out that this was an ‘IDF fundraiser’. Various Islamists got active. Theatre staff reported that they were worried about turning up because of threats. Staff from another theatre were drafted in, but somebody leaked their emails and they were threatened in turn. On the morning of the event the theatre pulled out. They had one job – to let the show go on – and they failed. We managed to transfer to the only venue able to be secured, which was a nearby synagogue. But a bunch of Islamists kept trying to find out where the event had relocated to, and meanwhile stood outside the old theatre shouting abuse at me through a megaphone.

I had imagined that in such a situation the Metropolitan Police might be called in. That the authorities might agree that violence and intimidation cannot be rewarded. I’d have thought that in a city where you can openly call for violence against Jews, Jews might be allowed to gather to support other Jews. But no. Chased to the synagogue they were.

As I say, I remember a different Britain. A Britain where Margaret Thatcher stood in Brighton after an attempt on her life and told the world that the men of violence must not be allowed to win. But we don’t live in that society any more. We have decided that the men of violence are winning, and that we must as a result all just keep our heads down. Well that’s not my Britain, and I trust it’s not yours either.