See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER Published: 22:14 BST, 8 June 2026 | Updated: 00:14 BST, 9 June 2026
Bristol North East’s Damien Egan, one of life’s worriers, was anxious about ‘extremism’. It was, he told the Commons, ‘growing at an unprecedented rate’. He continued: ‘Extreme-Left and extreme-Right ideologies alongside growing Islamist extremism are being fuelled by increasingly brazen interference from foreign states.’Mr Egan (Lab) had been to a ‘summit’ at Wilton Park where he heard that Norway treats extremism as a national security priority. He urged security minister Dan Jarvis to ‘designate extremist groups’.Mr Jarvis is that former soldier who squints at the world through narrowed eyes. When you first come across him you think ‘gosh, he must be shrewd’. As months pass you realise his eyes are always half-closed. Even in the canteen. When I espy gooey pudding, my eyeballs swell with relish but Mr Jarvis will peer at a spotted dick with that same, suspicious gaze, a sniper sizing up a target. Maybe that’s why he’s so damn skinny.Through peepers opened no wider than your average mollusc shell – you almost expect him to squirt water like a threatened mussel – he thanked delicate Damien for raising ‘these important matters’. Mr Jarvis was also much concerned about ‘countering extremism and enhancing social cohesion’. The police had ‘a range of tools’. Well, that is certainly one way of describing our constabulary.Mr Jarvis added that the Government intended to ‘fast-track’ the designation of extremists. The mind boggles.Is scary Bridget Phillipson, Education Secretary, not something of an extremist, not least about Harrovians? Is Ed Miliband not a ranting ayatollah in his climate-change views? Sir Keir Starmer and scheming Lord Hermer? On the matter of international law might their enthusiasm not be somewhere up there near Wodehouse’s brown-shorted man of mustard action, Roderick Spode?Who or what is extreme? Mr Egan mentioned extremism on the Left and Right. What about extremism in and of the Centre? What about extremism in the police, with its two tiers to races? Has that not, to use Mr Egan’s words, ‘fuelled’ public unhappiness about the murder of Henry Nowak?Mr Egan sounded terribly pleased with himself to have attended Wilton Park. For the innocent I should explain that Wilton Park organises shindigs for urbane Centrists. The gatherings are held at an opulent pad set in 6,000 acres of Sussex countryside. Mr Egan, pictured, had been to a ‘summit’ at Wilton Park where he heard that Norway treats extremism as a national security priorityImpressionable bods are asked to come and stay for ‘non-attributable’ (ie secret) discussions that may include dinner, wine and even the odd sticky. To get on the Wilton Park guest list it helps if you are a Europhile big-stater who loves positive discrimination, Net Zero, welfarism and vegan barbecues.Wilton Park is a madrasah of moderation. Recruits go there to learn how better to promote the glorious victory of the mighty Blob. This may need checking but I am told that while you take your scented bath before dinner the in-suite sound system pipes a stirring choral version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. It is surely only a matter of time before BBC’s Panorama films a fly-on-the-wall expose of Wilton Park and its fanatical Centrists.After Mr Egan’s sally at Home Office questions yesterday there was a complaint, from the Tories’ Chris Philp, about a Nigerian immigrant who was convicted of rape but could not be deported because a judge ruled it would offend his human rights.A Lib Dem frontbencher claimed, furthermore, that the small-boats crisis had been caused by Brexit. And that noted intellectual Peregrine Moon (Lab, Camborne & Redruth), sometime second-hand car salesman, demanded that it be made easier for his Cornish constituents to accommodate Syrians and Afghan migrants. See what I mean? Extremism is flourishing in the Centre.The day also brought our new victims minister, Natalie Fleet, to the despatch box for the first time. She tried to speak of a police operation called Project Vigilant but it popped out as Project Viligant. She paused, looking sideways, wondering if anyone had noticed. The House, likewise, tensed.It was okay. No one had laughed. Extreme Centrists seldom do.
