Allison Pearson, the highly respectable Daily Telegraph middlebrow columnist, was naturally startled when, on Remembrance Sunday morning, two police presented themselves at her door to tell her that she was under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in connection with a social media post on X and invited her for a voluntary interview. She was not allowed to know which post, exactly, was being investigated nor who was her accuser.
I have to say when I first heard the news my first reaction was that the world has actually gone mad; my second: how brilliant for Allison Pearson. As a columnist, can there be anything better calculated to promote your standing than being investigated by the police on this utterly fatuous basis? If the Essex police were in a benign conspiracy to promote her brand, really they couldn’t do better than present her as a martyr for free speech. If, on the other hand, there was a malign conspiracy to discredit the force as being dumb and dangerous to common liberties, they couldn’t do better either.
