Marieha Hussain

Marieha Hussain was charged with a crime for calling some Tory ministers "coconuts".

Ms Hussain is right that the thug department should make up for the harm it did to her with this evidently unjust charge. Criticizing politicians by calling them "coconuts" must not be a crime.

That criticism is, however, an example of a morally misguided assumption: that people of a certain demographic group have an obligation to hold certain political views, and are somehow betraying that group if they do not.

People are members of demographic groups, but thoughts are not. No one has an obligation to hold the views of the group perse was descended from.

The Tories Richi Sunak and Suella Braverman are very wrong to stand for plutocratist and repressive policies, and they are responsible for personally (as ministers of state) helping to impose those views on Britain. But that has nothing to do with their ethnicity. Those views are wrong no matter who holds them.

An additional reason to reject the "coconuts" approach of criticizing people's views as "betrayal of their demographic group" is that it tends to legitimize those views for people of other groups.