Student activists at Liverpool University have demanded that the Roscoe and Gladstone hall of residence be renamed after newsreader and university alumnus Jon Snow, because Gladstone ‘benefited’ from slavery.

Since most of us alive today – even Snow – have ‘benefited’ from slavery, why not rename every public building, pull down every statue, deface every portrait, burn every book that happens to refer to someone or something in the past? And leave nothing to offend.

But to the selective iconoclasts who inhabit Liverpool University, Britain’s greatest Prime Minister, it seems, was just too white. Not as white as Snow, though.