Jacob Rees-Mogg was harassed by a group of Leftists on Tuesday. Or to be more accurate Jacob Rees-Mogg, his kids and their nanny were harassed by a group of Leftists.
Guido Fawkes has the video here. An elderly man loudly told the children: ‘Your daddy is not very nice’, and ‘People hate your daddy’.
It should be noted that this comes a few months after an article in the New Statesman encouraged readers to harass people such as Piers Morgan, Donald Trump and Jacob Rees-Mogg in ‘a safe and legal way’.
Becca Harrison said: ‘I would encourage anyone who can safely and legally dissent to make Piers and his comrades uncomfortable.
‘Nigel Farage partaking his Full English Brexit at your greasy spoon? Put him off his Danish bacon. Jacob Rees-Mogg taking cream tea at the local members’ club for Dickensian villains? Boo and hiss every time he reaches for the jam. Boris Johnson attending the Sunday carvery? Make sure he’s the one being roasted. You might not change the world, but you can ensure that these people know their politics is deeply damaging.’
Now I am not pinning this entire unpleasant incident on Harrison. I will give her the benefit of the doubt and say she would not approve of harassing politicians while their kids are around. However, this idea that it is perfectly reasonable to ‘make politicians feel uncomfortable’, a conveniently vague term, is dangerous. It does not take much encouragement for people to make politicians or indeed their families a lot more than uncomfortable.
Finally, many of the twitterati were saying these Lefties should have been arrested. This is the danger of divisive politics: the Lefties want anyone who disagrees with them arrested, the Right say any form of idiotic protest should also be an arrestable offence. This is a very good way to trash the political and civil culture.
I have watched the video twice and I do not think what was said warrants arrest – even for one of the many stupid public order offences we have on the books.
We should not have to rely on the police to enforce basic levels of civility and good manners. If we go down this road we will be in a police state before you can say ‘trans women are not women’.
