Still in denial, then. The liberal left, having first tried to ignore the massed sex attacks in Cologne (and in many other places across Europe), in the hope that the rest of us might not have noticed, are now attempting to explain it away. Prize for the most stupid contribution so far goes to the reliable Deborah Orr:

“ “how could anyone possibly imagine that among a million people from anywhere there wouldn’t be some proportion of nasty, sleazy misogynists? A British legal history that includes the withholding of all manner of basic rights from women suggests that there’s nothing racially or religiously inherent in chauvinism. People tend to believe what they’re taught to believe, and the unreliable evidence of what they see around them, until free thinkers and visionary leaders call them out on it.”

Supposed refugees no different in their attitudes towards women, then. We’re all the same. Could have been Germans carrying out those attacks – but just by chance, it wasn’t.

Deborah’s piece appeared in the Guardian a day after a similarly dumb article from a woman called Gaby Hinsliff.

Gaby admitted that she found it difficult, as a liberal, to talk about the attacks - but thought that we probably ought to do so, at some point. In other words, she (and the rest) didn’t want to talk about it because it directly contradicted one of their core beliefs.

Incidentally, I find “Hinsliff” a deeply unsatisfying surname. It sounds as if she wanted to be called Hinchcliffe but didn’t quite have the commitment to see it through.

Onwards and upwards.