“Prominent barrister beats fox to death wearing a kimono.”

This, believe it or not, is the biggest news story in Britain today. It was prompted by a barrister’s arguably ill-advised announcement on Twitter that, while dressed in a kimono, he had beaten to death with a baseball bat a fox that was trying to eat the chickens in his London garden.

Normally, I would be the first to leap to this poor chap’s defence: foxes, though handsome, are vicious predators; an Englishman’s home is his castle; chickens have rights too; the circumstances – the fox was trapped in a net and it may have been dangerous to free it – were extenuating; why shouldn’t a chap wear a kimono if the mood takes him?

Unfortunately I can’t because I’m far too busy wetting myself laughing.

That’s because the barrister in question is none other than our old friend Jolyon Maugham, QC – one of that cabal of excruciatingly politically correct lawyers who did their damnedest to stop Brexit happening; one, also, who has shown no mercy to his enemies on the right – as he demonstrated especially in his vicious persecution of young Brexit activist Darren Grimes.

Maugham is so incorrigibly woke that when he first tweeted out about having bludgeoned to death a fox, I thought it was some kind of feeble liberal-lefty joke aimed at all those splendid chaps and chapesses who have gone out riding to hounds today – that is, pursuing foxes on horseback. (Boxing Day is one of the most important days in the fox hunting calendar – a show of strength and pageantry by rural folk to show that the townies have not yet won).

But no, Jolyon was for real – and Twitter bayed for his blood. #JolyonTheFoxKiller is the day’s top-trending tag.

This Jolyon Maugham Christmas special is entertaining, I suppose he needed to vent his anger over all the court cases he lost this year in some way or another. pic.twitter.com/HOCjS5GvCu — The People’s Chris Rose (@ArchRose90) December 26, 2019

Its 10:20am on Boxing day and we are already up to our knees in shitposting and blood thanks to #JolyonTheFoxKiller This is what Twitter is for. pic.twitter.com/P3ViicQp1a — Herbert Brubanter (@brubanter) December 26, 2019

#JolyonTheFoxKiller Lets not rule out the possibility that the fox pleaded for death, rather than listen to Jolyon Maugham bitching for three hours about Brexit. — Adjacent Possible (@Sage_Opinion) December 26, 2019

🎶Jolyon QC looked out

On the feast of Stephen

Heard a tangled foxy shout

(Trying to be leavin'!) Did he pause and take a breath?

Call for backup? Oh no!

But beat it to a bloody death

Wearing a kimooooonooooo#JolyonTheFoxKiller — DeeDee (@OddLittleOrange) December 26, 2019

One or two tweets, no doubt, were from people genuinely upset by Maugham’s act of blunt-instrument vulpicide. (He has even been reported to the leftist animal rights charity, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), which has a long track record of bringing prosecution cases against people found to have broken any of Britain’s increasingly draconian animal rights laws).

But most, I suspect, were from Twitter humorists simply having a laugh. They scented blood and spotted a golden opportunity to expose to ridicule one of the most irritating, pompous and self-righteous lefties on social media.

The hounding of Jolyon Maugham is, I believe, yet another perfect example of that phenomenon I described yesterday: the turning of the tide in the culture wars. Prominent figures on the liberal-left who, for years, have been abusing their power and influence to make life miserable for people of a conservative persuasion – blighting their reputations and destroying their careers for the most trivial of mostly imaginary offences – are now getting a taste of their own medicine.

“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules,” advised Saul Alinsky.

This is precisely what the right is now doing to the left: using its own rules against it.

Something similar happened the other day when another of key figure in the leftist Twitter mafia, arch-corbynistas Owen Jones, posted a picture of himself with a young woman wearing a t-shirt saying: “I suck dicks for Socialism”.

Jones described the Twitter furore that followed as ‘confected outrage’ and insisted that the woman in the t-shirt was ‘obviously joking.’

Yes, quite possibly. But that’s not really the point here, is it?

The key point here is that Jolyon Maugham, Owen Jones and their fellow woke celebrities bear a good deal of responsibility for creating the moral universe which is now destroying them.

It’s not right wing people, on the whole, who think that Twitter hate mobs and left-wing animal rights charities ought to have the power to terrorise private individuals for the ‘crime’ of despatching vermin on their own land.

It’s not right wing people, on the whole, who see someone with a risqué slogan on their t-shirt and who, rather than grinning at the joke – or ignoring it, as is also their prerogative – choose to harass and immiserate and persecute and shame anyone associated with such poor taste humour.

No, this kind of puritanism and Nanny State bullying are largely a left-wing invention.

So it seems entirely appropriate that having erected the gigantic cross of wokeness which has brought so much terror and misery and caution to our world, these kill-joys should now be crucified on it.

James Delingpole is the host of the Delingpod podcast, whose joyous Christmas Special can be viewed here.