Will the free speech lobby accept Jeremy Corbyn’s right to be a republican?

On Wednesday night, Jeremy Corbyn brought to an end one of the most undignified sagas in recent politics, cobbling together a shuffled compromise on his induction into the Privy Council. The Privy Council, as we’ve been told so often now, is the body of senior politicians that is allowed to receive security briefings. Membership would have required Corbyn – the life-long republican –  to vow ‘not to know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s person, honour, crown, or dignity royal’. Did he kneel, bob, or grab the royal paw in an firm egalitarian handshake? Does it matter? Meanwhile, America’s college campuses remain the epicentre of a febrile national debate: what price free speech, when it threatens to uproot the very foundations of a society? And who on God’s green earth is entitled to police it?

Over in the States, much clucking – much of it well founded – about students who can’t handle challenging ideas.