What’s worse: kicking a cat or racism?

The best football teams are adept at turning defence into attack. After a video of centre back Kurt Zouma practising his distribution with a pet cat led to calls for his prosecution, teammate Michael Antonio responded to the press with a question of his own: ‘Do you think what he’s done is worse than racism?’

While we could dismiss this as a fairly blatant piece of whataboutery, it’s also quite an interesting question. The response you’d probably get by asking people is ‘no, obviously not’. The response you’d get from their revealed preferences is that this is a country that donates £43 million annually to The Donkey Sanctuary.

If you were to learn about Britain’s moral hierarchy by watching public behaviour, you’d end up with the general impression that cruelty towards animals ranks slightly above murder, arson, and fraudulent parliamentary expenses in the list of issues likely to ignite the fury of the public.