The government has decided, once again, that we all need saving from ourselves, because we are unpleasant or stupid and thus cannot be trusted. So it has devised the Online Safety Bill, which will regulate what we can and cannot say to one another. One of the most important adjudicators will be Nick Clegg, vice-president of global affairs at Facebook. You remember Nick. The only man I have ever known to be simultaneously smug and gullible.

Trust me, I am not overstating the case when I say that this new bill is a grotesque assault upon freedom of speech. A “censor’s charter”, as the Conservative MP David Davis put it. The crux of the issue is that under this proposed legislation the tech giants will