Not even the sadness and solemnity of a terrorist attack can escape Britain’s raging culture war. As soon as we discovered the hero who apprehended Usman Khan was a Polish chef called Lukasz, liberals celebrated “bloody EU migrants, coming over here battling our terrorists.” Others argued Britain had little problem with Islamist violence before the days of mass migration.

In the heat of an election campaign, the politics of the tragedy soon became fierce. Shortly after the attack, Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey attacked the Tories for cutting police spending. “We’ve got to invest in counter-terrorism measures”, she insisted, not mentioning that counter-terrorism budgets have increased every year since 2010.

About 24 hours had passed when Yvette Cooper, a “moderate” Labour MP campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn, ignited a row about sentencing policy. She pointed out that Khan’s sentence had been changed from one that blocked his release from prison until he was no longer a threat to public safety, to one that meant he would be released automatically after eight years. Showing little understanding of the criminal justice system, she appeared to claim that Khan’s amended sentence was thanks to a change in government policy, rather than a legal judgment made in 2013 by the Court of Appeal.