I have spent a small portion of the past week wondering what I would do if I thought communists were about to take over our country. At the more civil end of things, I could see myself going on an anti-communist protest, though I would shrink away if I noticed that my fellow marchers were flying swastikas. I don’t exactly know what I would do next. Perhaps I would hope for another election soon, and do what I could to unite other anti-communists.

One thing I am fairly sure I would not do would be to dance. In fact, were this country facing the prospect of Stalinism coming at us full force, the last thing I would do would be to get a DJ, book a stage in Trafalgar Square, hire some go-go dancers and rave it up.

If I thought the far left was about to take over, gyrating to Marvin Gaye would not be among my priorities

The point only needs noting because last weekend in London there was a large protest to oppose the ‘far right’. The organisers (called the ‘Together Alliance’) claimed that 500,000 people turned out. The police said the numbers were more like 50,000.

‘Your Party’ was in attendance, as was the Green party. Various Labour MPs also attended, as did a range of celebrities. These included Sir Lenny Henry, who seems to be increasingly aggrieved of late at how little this country has done for him and how much it apparently still owes him.

The usual trade unions were there, as were the Palestinian flag wavers and a host of people waving the hammer and sickle. One attendee – interviewed by the BBC – was Steve Tribble, who had apparently travelled from Stroud to stand up to fascism. Tribble arrived at the march with what he called a ‘radical left-wing band’ of musicians. He said that he had felt duty-bound to attend because ‘I understand that populism is spreading all over the world and that people are trying to look for scapegoats. They’re angry. But we’re worried. That’s why we’re here.’

If he was worried about populists looking for scapegoats, Tribble must have been disturbed by what happened on the main stage. Because all these people eventually congregated in Trafalgar Square, where they were treated to a video message from the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Also an appearance by Green party leader Zack Polanski and his newest MP, Hannah Spencer. Among other things the latter two characters led chants against that great bogeyman of the Green party: ‘billionaires’.

After her by-election win in February, Ms Spencer told her audience that there is presently a big problem for the British people. ‘Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry.’

I don’t know which billionaires Spencer thinks she and the rest of us are all working for, or quite how they are ‘bleeding us dry’. That sounds like some pretty ‘populist’ rhetoric right there. But if Spencer had eyes to see or ears to hear she might have noticed that the creation and retention of billionaires is not something that Britain has lately excelled at. In fact the Labour government has developed a very clever policy of chasing any remaining billionaires out of the country. Yet Spencer once again whipped up the crowd of largely white, middle-class leftists into a chant against this great bogeyman, as well as against that greatest bogeyman of all: the far right.

Still, it was the dancing that has stuck with me. Because the culmination of the afternoon’s proceedings saw Polanski and Spencer jiving onstage to a DJ, surrounded bydrag queens and a couple of go-go boys wearing leather jockstraps. Spencer and Polanski made a big shout-out not just against the ‘far right’ and billionaires but in support of the ‘LGBTQ’ community.

Perhaps by this hour the Palestine marchers had decided this wasn’t quite their vibe. Certainly it was hard to spot a mullah or big bearded Islamist grinding onstage alongside the chaps in chaps. I don’t know why that is. Maybe their train was leaving Charing Cross slightly earlier than the others.

Meanwhile, the Labour MP Stella Creasy seemed to be among those who thought that dancing was the best response to the rise of Reform. She posted on social media that the fact the crowd in Trafalgar Square was at one point dancing to Marvin Gaye was a particular poke in the eye to Rupert Lowe MP.

Later that evening Creasy – who has the remarkable ability to be superficial and supercilious at the same time – posted another video of her dancing. This time on her own at a silent disco. ‘Heh we just keep dancing in London,’ she wrote on X, followed by a laughing face emoji.

I’m not sure whom Creasy thinks she is ‘owning’ with such gestures. She, Polanski and others seem to be under the impression that everybody to their political right loathes music or any act of bodily swaying. Perhaps they imagine that, during the looming Reich, music and dancing will be verboten. In truth, the only people for whom such things may be genuinely haram are some of the Palestine supporters who had been with them in the earlier part of the day. If Creasy thinks Nigel Farage and Lowe are against women dancing, wait till she meets the Wahhabis.

Unserious people should probably just not be treated seriously. As I have mentioned, if there were a looming threat of totalitarian fascism in this country, this is not the way any serious person would behave. If I thought that a movement far to Labour’s left was about to take over British politics, I would do many things. But again, gyrating to Marvin Gaye, and then bopping around to ‘I keep dancing on my own’, would not be among my priorities.

So I suppose there is a question that must be posed to Khan, Creasy, Polanski and co. If the threat they pretend to oppose were real, would they behave like this? Or, to pose the question in the words of Marvin Gaye: ‘What’s going on?’