Why do Ben & Jerry’s want to defund the police?

The radicalisation of the Ben & Jerry’s PR department has been one of the stranger spectacles of recent years. After all, for all its hippyish origins and homespun shtick, Ben & Jerry’s is a corporate giant flogging expensive ice creams with wacky names like Cherry Garcia and Truffle Kerfuffle. And yet it has become remarkably preoccupied with virtue-signalling and moral hectoring. It is hard to tell whether this is a deliberate strategy for attention, or if someone’s pious nephew has simply seized control of the social-media accounts at head office.

Following the killing of George Floyd last year, Ben & Jerry’s made a solemn pledge to help ‘dismantle white supremacy’. ‘Silence is NOT an option’, it thundered. Last summer, it took some shots at the UK home secretary over her handling of the channel crossings. ‘Hey @PritiPatel we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture.