I ’m already feeling a little sorry for Emily Dawes, the 21-year-old president of Southampton University’s students’ union, who sparked widespread fury with her tweet: “Mark my words — we’re taking down the mural of white men in the uni Senate room, even if I have to paint over it myself.” Her choice of target was woefully misplaced: the mural was painted in 1916 by Sir William Rothenstein to commemorate members of British universities who fought in the First World War. Many of them died in water-logged trenches having barely attained adulthood.

It was a silly tweet — and not the only silly one in Dawes’s Twitter timeline. She has already apologised for “the offence and upset” and said that “upon reflection I have realised