The Labour Party’s indignation with Amber Rudd’s sensible decision not to order an inquiry into the so-called Battle of Orgreave is as phoney as it is disproportionate. Andy Burnham called it “an Establishment stitch-up”. So why did the government of which Mr Burnham was a prominent member fail to order an inquiry when in office for 13 years?

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, fulminated about the “shameful” failure to offer the miners who fought with police at Orgreave the “same justice” received by the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.

Yet the only connection between the two events was the presence of South Yorkshire officers. We are asked to believe that because the police made crowd control mistakes at Hillsborough, which they then tried to cover up, they have a case to answer in the completely different circumstances of Orgreave.

The really shameful behaviour is to try to link the deaths of 96 innocent people attending a football match with the activities of Arthur Scargill’s flying pickets during the miners’ strike five years earlier. No one died at Orgreave – though, given the ferocity of the fighting, that was miraculous. Moreover, few of those demanding an inquiry ever make any reference to the way the miners behaved or to the fact that the police were at the coke works in numbers in order to uphold the law.