Home Office legislation, he added, meant that universities were now encouraged to block even non-violent extremists from sharing their opinion, in a definition that could include some of the world’s leading thinkers of centuries past.

He told an audience: “Some of you may know that in the new counter-terrorism legislation, the securocrats in the Home Office are trying to impose on universities a so-called prevent duty, which would call on us to prevent event non-violent extremists speaking on campus.

“Now non-violent extremists? That’s Karl Marx, Rousseau, Charles Darwin, Hegel, and most clearly Jesus Christ, who was definitely a non-violent extremists. The Home Office wouldn’t want him preaching on campus.