Met Police finally get the memo that woke grievance culture isn't their job

Piers Morgan's new book, The End Of Woke, celebrates the return of common sense to many of our institutions that have become infected in recent years by a kind of mad conformity and what we used to call "political correctness". The latest to see the light is the Metropolitan Police. Yup, the Met, benighted and obsessed for so long with weird wokeish targets, systems, policies and beliefs, this week announced that it will no longer investigate so-called non-crime hate incidents to allow its officers to "focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations".

In other words, it's going to stop fannying about and harassing innocent, law-abiding folk who've had the temerity to speak their minds online, make an edgy joke, or - perish the thought - post something that some might find a wee bit offensive. (Or pretend that they do, simply in order to make trouble for someone they don't like or whose views they disapprove of). Anyway, what is a "non-crime hate incident" when it's at home?

The approved definition tells you all you need to know. It's "any incident where a crime has NOT been committed, but where it is perceived by a reporting person (or any other person) that the incident was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender".

Right. So presumably if non-hate crimes had been an obsession in the more distant past they'd have gone after whoever coined the expression "perfidious Albion" to categorise the English as a lying, treacherous bunch.

Or whoever it was who first referred to the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". No room for jibes, jokes, generalities or waspish exaggerations on planet Non-Crime Hate Incident!

The Met's return to sanity came as it confirmed it was dropping a probe into Father Ted creator Graham Linehan after he was arrested by five gun-toting coppers at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence in posts on X (formerly Twitter).

What had Linehan written? "If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

That last line was obviously meant to be a joke, albeit a crude one, even an offensive one, but a genuine, literal incitement to commit a violent act?

Obviously not. (Linehan is now suing police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment).

Free speech and fair comment. Even if whatever's being said is rude, crude, nonsensical, or even blatantly unfair, the freedom to say it is the cornerstone of democracy.

Our police have better things to do than chase down loud-mouthed, stroppy TV scriptwriters.