Someone sitting opposite me on the train is reading the Daily Express, house journal of paranoid xenophobes. He has that pinch-faced disapproving look that seems to go with reading the Express or the Mail.
I see from the cover that the “World’s Greatest Newspaper” (© Daily Express) has put the Union Jack behind the crusader emblem, and added a subtitle ‘Britain defiant’.
I’m not sure whether this is pathetic or disturbing. One the one hand, the siege mentality of the far right is deeply, deeply contemptible and stupid. On the other, the power of the stupid is not to be underestimated, and I’ve always thought Richard Desmond was a natural for Fascist dictator.