What happened to the art of disagreement? In 2017, I addressed this very question in my stand-up show, Thought Crimes, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. My main topic was the aftermath of the Brexit vote and how so many of my friends had developed a strange new determination to reduce all political disputes to a matter of good vs evil, with those who voted to leave the EU falling firmly in the latter camp. I felt there was something inherently amusing about this sudden surge of mass infantilism.

I performed the show every evening during the fringe at The Stand comedy club, and I very much enjoyed working with such a pleasant and professional team. I remember, on one occasion, chatting to a member of staff who completely disagreed with my political views. The conversation was stimulating and, above all, amiable. Had I suggested at the time that, just a few years later, a show at this same venue would be cancelled because members of staff found the opinions of those involved offensive, she would have laughed. I’m confident that nobody at The Stand, either performers or staff, would have considered this a remote possibility. Surely it would be absurd for a comedy club, of all places, to reject the principle of free speech?

Yet this is precisely what happened this week when The Stand cancelled the booking of SNP politician Joanna Cherry, who had been scheduled to appear as part of the club’s ‘In Conversation With’ series. Cherry is a lesbian who campaigned against Section 28, and has recently been vocal about the threat to women’s rights and single-sex spaces posed by the rise of gender-identity ideology. This is her thoughtcrime.