Why are the police arresting a kid for calling someone a ‘rent boy’?

You can get away with nearly anything in lawless Britain. You can shoplift, deal drugs or launder money, safe in the knowledge that the police will let it slide. Some crimes – like breaking into the country – they will even assist you with. But there is one thing you absolutely cannot do. You cannot say the ‘wrong’ thing on social media.

The latest victim of Britain’s simultaneously impotent and authoritarian police is a 15-year-old named Alex. On the morning of 3 August, he was fast asleep at his home in Walsall. Suddenly, four officers from West Midlands Police stormed into his bedroom. They confiscated his laptop and phone and demanded his PIN. The teenager was searched, placed under arrest and driven to the local station. There, he was shoved into a cell before having his fingerprints and mugshot taken. While all of this was happening, two officers remained behind to search his bedroom.

What heinous crime was this young lad suspected of committing? He had called a local councillor ‘a rent boy’.

For some reason, the police investigation remains ongoing. For more than two months, police resources have been spent analysing the Facebook posts of a 15-year-old. And there is another sinister twist. Alex is a Reform UK activist, while the man who alerted police to his ‘activity’ is a Conservative member of Wolverhampton council.

According to the Telegraph, Alex’s ‘hate crime’ was committed in the course of his attendance at Wolverhampton council meetings, where he had taken a particular interest in Simon Bennett, the leader of the council’s Conservative faction. In one Facebook post, Alex criticised Bennett’s attire. ‘Why do some councillors rock up at a scrutiny committee [meeting] in shorts and t-shirt [and] trainers? So unprofessional’, he wrote. Bennett wore a suit at a subsequent meeting, prompting Alex to write that at least the councillor was ‘not looking like a rent boy’. This, according to West Midlands Police, ‘could be considered a hate-crime offence’.

By now, most of us have run out of expletives when it comes to describing our attitude towards the police. They appear to be completely indifferent to the concerns of the public. Yet they regularly wet themselves with excitement over some pointless comment made on social media, or even in private communications. Their priorities are completely out of whack with those they’re meant to serve.

The police have been getting away with this for far too long now. They need to get back to policing the streets rather than our tweets, before we lose even more confidence in them. If that’s even possible.