The Luton protest

It is hard not to feel rage when one sees soldiers returning home from serving their country being abused by protestors as they were in Luton yesterday. There are those who are making a free speech argument in defence of the police allowing these Islamists to picket the homecoming parade. But the problem is that there appears to be a double-standard when it comes to free speech. These protests are allowed to go ahead but Geert Wilders, who is a bore but also a member of the legislature of one of our closest allies, is banned from the UK for the fear of the offence he might cause.

The protests also raise another point: there are, as Con Coughlin says, people in this country who are on the other side in the wars that we fight. If they wish to be so passively or symbolically, as these protesters were, there is little the state can do.