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The great thing about having a female Prime Minister is that she wants to criminalise almost everything the Suffragettes did to put her there.

Tomorrow, she's going to announce a new law making it illegal to intimidate anyone in political life.

Iain Duncan Smith will no doubt be delighted, and can be expected to celebrate by bullying the British civil service, the BBC and the 59% of his own constituents who voted to Remain. It's not a proper Monday if the Right Honourable Pillock for Chingford and Woodford Green can't find someone else to blame for the piss-poor state of his beloved Brexit.

But Theresa's latest Daily Mail -pleasing idea is a perfect descriptor for the PM's unfortunate habit of being indelibly thick, thoughtlessly vicious and fatally short-sighted.

In fact the one charming thing about her is that, like a 21st century Frank Spencer's evil twin, her efforts to irritate others always seem to end with her rollerskating face-first into a wall she's only just built.

First, some background. After the appalling murder of MP Jo Cox by a Far Right terrorist in 2016, there has been growing concern about increasingly belligerent post-Brexit behaviour.

No-one mentions the knife attack on Stephen Timms in 2010, or the car bombing of Airey Neave in 1979, or the less-serious powder-filled condoms hurled at Tony Blair in the House of Commons in 2004. To most of us a shotgun killing is a long way from flinging a righteous egg at Nigel Farage, but under Theresa's new law it won't be.

It also follows a report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which temporarily abandoned its job of advising the PM on ethics to tell her that Twitter can be unkind. It detailed everything from atrocious race hate directed at Diane Abbott to the sort of muttered threats which, had your average human overheard them at a bus stop, would not have caused a flicker of concern.

In order to appease the Something Must Be Done Brigade and take everyone's minds off Brexit for 24 hours, the PM announced all intimidation of MPs, their staff and families would be outlawed. She'll make it official in a speech tomorrow, in which she'll fail to mention several salient points.

(Image: REX/Shutterstock)

She won't say where the police officers to enforce this law will be coming from, perhaps because she has cut their numbers by almost 22,000 since 2010 and we already don't have enough to stop all the terror attacks, catch speeding drivers or disclose evidence in rape cases in a timely manner.

She won't mention how she will delineate intimidation, which is a feeling of being frightened or unnerved. I am unnerved by by nightmares, Nutella and Iain Duncan Smith, but don't seek to outlaw them despite the fact it would improve the world no end.

She will also not say how one decides if a threat on social media is serious or not, but perhaps she could ask Twitter Joke Trial martyr Paul Chambers for some advice on that one.

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Theresa's speech, which is supposed to mark 100 years since some women first won the vote, will include her praise for how Suffragettes braved "open hostility and abuse to win their right".

That "hostility" included political prisoners being force-fed through the rectum; sexual abuse at protests by police officers ordered by the Home Secretary of the day, one Winston Churchill, to be extra aggressive; mental and physical torture ordained by the state because the women concerned were fed up of waiting nicely and decided to intimidate politicians with bombs, criminal damage, and burglary instead.

Theresa won't mention that the fact she's PM at all is in part down to the intimidation those women both carried out and endured, without the ability to run to the police wailing that someone had been mean. Perhaps she hasn't noticed.

And she will go on: "In the 21st Century it cannot be acceptable for any woman - or any person - to have to face threats and intimidation simply because she or he has dared to express a political opinion."

She probably won't add that is exactly what has happened to every campaign group and parliament since the dawn of democracy.

(Image: PA)

From foxhunting to the NHS, the Iraq War to Brexit, there have been a thousand marches on Parliament each with the potential to intimidate, if some snowflake politician wishes to call it so. A couple of weeks ago a pro-Brexit rally at Downing Street stole the EU flag from a counter-demonstrating cyclist - if he didn't enjoy it then it was intimidation, no?

Theresa likewise won't say how she will be able to pass a tricky law with a wafer-thin and permanently-rebellious majority, or ask herself whether, if Jo Cox were able to express a view, she would support something so plainly crackers.

The harsh truth is that it's already illegal to shoot, stab, or bomb someone. Racist tweets carry a potential 6 month jail term. If a life sentence didn't deter Jo's killer, it's hard to see how a telling off for sending mean tweets would give him pause for thought.

And it's probably a bad idea to pass a law that will give party members more rights than ordinary citizens. I believe Nicolae Ceaucescu did some experiments in this area, shortly before he was put up against a wall and shot.

(Image: Reuters)

Parliament has form here: it spent the best part of a decade demanding prosecution of peace campaigner Brian Haw for "obstruction", "nuisance", and having a camp in Parliament Square. They even complained about the noise of his megaphone, and had the courts limit the hours he could shout at them with it.

We have arrested people peacefully protesting against the Chinese president, global capitalism, and tree felling in Sheffield. Making it even easier to arrest opponents would seem a little, well... Chinese.

Genuine physical violence aside, when did our politicians become so feeble they cannot defend themselves against, or ignore utterly, someone who wants to pick a fight? It is the sort of thing learned at primary school. Perhaps they had a different playground to the rest of us.

(Image: Carl Court)

Even if a way could be found to get such an asinine law through Parliament, and to adequately define the offence so that it does not include people who are scared of chickens, it's still an appalling idea.

It's appalling to make it illegal to be discomforted, or to be unnerved by another person's strength of feeling. Such things are the first steps towards change.

But it's worse by far to be a PM, much less a female one, who welcomes the centenary of female suffrage by attempting to outlaw the very methods they used to fight for it.

It's stupid, nasty and myopic - and that's why your Brexit is going so badly, Iain. You should have put a Suffragette in charge.