This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column





Politicians react to terrorism much as parents might respond when their lisping tiny offspring come home from sex-ed classes and ask them to explain what lesbians do. They panic.

They have no idea what to say and they are terrified of committing themselves, rightly suspecting that their answers will be stored up and embarrassingly remembered years later.

But they have to pretend to know. And so they talk drivel.

I have watched this for years, with growing, grim amusement. But last week they outdid themselves, churning out gallons of swirling hogwash.

The most ridiculous of all was (as usual) the comically unqualified Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan. Attempting to explain the latest goofy, futile plan to root out extremism in the classroom, she groped for an example.

How could teachers spot a potential fanatic, who was in danger of rejecting British values and might end up waving an AK-47? You could almost hear the poor woman’s brain flapping wildly from side to side.

Then she reached for the one thing that absolutely everyone is now compelled to agree on, if they don’t want the thought police and everyone on Twitter to think they are an extremist.

‘Sadly, Isis are extremely intolerant of homosexuality,’ she gabbled.

Alas, until quite recently, Ms Morgan took a position which could, in these days of sexual liberation, be viewed as ‘extremely intolerant’ of homosexuality.

‘Marriage, to me, is between a man and a woman,’ she said in February 2013, after voting against same-sex weddings. This view, she argued, tied in with her Christian faith.