As a million Britons marched through London in 2003 against war with Iraq, William Rees-Mogg gazed on from outside the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall. In the Times, he sniffed at the protesters’ outfits (“they dressed as they might for a football match”) and scowled at their arguments. However well-intentioned, their very presence helped “maintain the torture chambers of Baghdad”. They were, he said, “Saddam’s useful idiots”.
Those protesters were as British as the former Times editor, but that didn’t matter. The country was at war against an “axis of evil”. It was us versus them, and those who objected or worried or wanted more evidence were little more than traitors.
