As good citizens, we are told, we should report extremism to the authorities. It hasn’t always been clear what this term means, so we should be grateful to Michael Gove’s levelling up department, which has proposed a new definition. “Extremism is the promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values.” As a responsible member of society, I would like to report a gang of malcontents whose behaviour clearly fits this description.
For several years, this extremist organisation has been undermining the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy. It has blocked access to voting, deterring perhaps some hundreds of thousands of people from participating in the most recent local elections. One member of the extremist gang freely admitted that this attack on democracy was deliberate, describing it as “gerrymandering”.
