Right, so British universities have been insisting for almost three years now, that their Gaza protest crackdowns are all about safety, order and the sacred rulebook, because nothing quite says “academic freedom” like a security guard with a clipboard and a list of forbidden chants.

Universities love to micromanage demonstrations: whether you report in advance, whether you are blocking a door and all of this is very sensible, they say; it’s just campus management. You have to remember that in these places ‘freedom of expression’ apparently comes with a twelve-page risk assessment.

But the real fun starts when ‘disruption’ turns out to mean making a private partner blush, and ‘safety’ stretches to cover spying on anybody who dares to criticise the local arms dealer.

And then, right on schedule, the emails crashed in like a brick  ...