Southampton is seething; some might even suggest that the ‘Tiber is foaming’ – and the average punter has decided to hold the police, the state’s muscle, to account.

Three simple words – ‘I can’t breathe’ – have highlighted a glaring double standard, not just in policing but throughout the entire political class.

The murder and undignified demise of Henry Nowak has been compared to the ‘martyrdom’ of George Floyd. The power of social media has made the comparison irresistible. The symbolism ritualised by progressive elites – ‘taking a knee’ – has now been turned against them. ‘Why won’t you take a knee for Nowak?’ the spontaneous street protesters want to know. They are well aware that it is all theatre, performance art for ideological managers – but the refusal to do so proves a point worth making.

The public is being played by ideologues in high places, and trust no longer exists where it should. Civil society’s foundations are starting to feel as if they are built upon sand.

While it is pleasing to see accountability, one doesn’t want it to crumble into mayhem and uncontrolled civil unrest. This will partly be determined by the maturity and self-control of the aggrieved, but also by accommodation from the Establishment. People this angry need to know they are being heard. At the moment, the Establishment response is one of containment: appeals to treat this as a mere murder and not to make it a political issue – and especially not a racial one. The usual emotional blackmail is being deployed: respect the victim, don’t extrapolate this into an example of the fraying social fabric.

However, what are the ideologues really thinking? In time we will see their more considered analyses. Don’t kid yourself – their immediate concern is to maintain the high moral ground. Once they’re sure they still own it, you’ll see their revolutionary colours plainly. The sharpest edges of Progressive activism are already thinking: ‘Now you know how it feels – the frustration and anger that minorities have felt for centuries’; ‘you only care about injustice now that it is happening to you’; ‘this is but another day in the life of indigenous Australia.’ And so it goes.

While they won’t always verbalise it as such, the Progressive ideologue views the Nowak murder less in terms of justice and more in terms of comeuppance for the group he represents – ‘privileged’ white British males. We get glimpses of this in pop culture, with the near ‘torture porn’ levels of violence inflicted on caricatures of white right-wing males in popular movies.

At the same time as they brand Southampton protesters as ‘far right’ and ‘racists’, taking advantage of a crime to make political points, make no mistake: it is they who will politicise this murder, and it will be all about race for them. Their striving for ‘equality’ will not extend so far as to address two-tier policing. Why not? Because they are utopians who believe they can ‘undo’ history and rewrite what they see as historic grievances.

Those concerned to preserve civilisation need to know the enemy they are facing. Even though it may be hard for them to believe that ideologues can be this misguided, trust me – they are. For an arch-conservative, I get along with a lot of ‘Lefties’. We disagree on many things but maintain civil conversations. I shared a love of books with one such person, and this probably generated a kind of mutual respect, but when it came to politics, that was another story.

I remember running into him at the old ‘Green Iguana’ cafe, an institution at his end of King Street, Newtown. It was days after the story broke about the Skaf gang rapes in Greenacre – my home suburb. He was having brunch with some of his acolytes when the story came up. ‘I think it’s all a media beat-up,’ he claimed. Despite my local knowledge of issues in the neighbourhood, living but a stroll from where the rapes occurred, he would not be told. Utopians love their dream.

So, Conservatives should not lie comatose upon their laurels should concessions from the Establishment start to appear. For the Progressive, the Revolution is never over. We need to lift a maxim from their own book and ‘maintain the rage’.