The Spectator’s Notes | 21 January 2016

Many have rightly attacked the police for their handling of the demented accusations against Field Marshal Lord Bramall, now at last dropped. They ostentatiously descended on his village in huge numbers, chatted about the case in the pub and pointlessly searched his house for ten hours. But one needs to understand that their pursuit of Lord Bramall — though not their exact methods — is the result of the system. Because the doctrine has now been established that all ‘victims’ must be ‘believed’, the police must take seriously every sex abuse accusation made and record the accusation as a reported crime (hence the huge increase in sex abuse figures). Even if you walked in off the street and told the police that you had been sexually abused by the Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, or Sir David Attenborough or the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta (the criminal law seems now to be reaching beyond the grave), they would have to pursue the claim, and would be open to disciplinary action and media obloquy if they did not.