A FRIEND ON FACEBOOK OBSERVES, “THE PRESS HAS BECOME A PITILESS INQUISITOR THAT CANNOT LIVE UP TO ITS OWN REMORSELESS STANDARDS.” Andrew Marr: I was a fool to grope a colleague… but I was suffering from exhaustion. “The photographs, taken at 2.30am in a Soho street, showed him placing his hand down the back of his companion’s jeans while nuzzling her neck and attempting to move in for a drunken kiss.”

This sort of thing used to be treated as a breach of etiquette, not as a public scandal. #MeToo ensures that nothing is private, nothing is forgivable, and context doesn’t matter. Except, you know, when lefty politics demands otherwise.