Sometimes stereotypes are true – and that includes the ones about the British

‘No Jews, No Jews!’ the children were told when they attempted to enter the Sports Direct store in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. The two kids were identifiable as Jewish from their school uniforms. They were 11 years old. It was a security guard who refused to let them enter the shop and, as ever when the media reports events such as this, we were not told anything about him, aside from the fact that he has been sacked.

Was he an actual German Nazi, do you suppose, a centenarian former concentration camp guard somehow omitted from Simon Wiesenthal’s list? I have my doubts. A goose-stepping white British Nazi? Or maybe one of the new anti-Semites we’ve been hearing about — a left-wing theatre director doing a spot of moonlighting, or a professor of socio-logy from something we used to call a polytechnic, extending his boycott to the purchase of training shoes and Lycra shorts? Again, I wouldn’t be so sure.