As the Government has set up an extremism unit under Lord Ahmed to root out the ideologues who are turning nice Muslim boys and girls into willing killers -by the way, nobody asks what turns nice British boys and girls into people who will kill when a superior officer orders them to do so – but yes, to root out ideologues of extremism, then we should try to work out some definition of extreme ideology.

At present that’s an easy enough question to answer: it’s the sort of thing Jeremy Corbyn stands for. This perverse and dangerous contender for the leadership of the British Labour Party is considered by all reasonable people, as well as the slightly unreasonable majority of his colleagues, to be disseminating extreme views that are so different from the view held by most rich people living in South of England, that he ought to be silenced, possibly for ever.

His views are these, as far as I can determine:

1. Britain should get rid of its nuclear deterrent, because its immoral, useless and expensive.

2. The richer two thirds of citizens ought to be taxed a bit more to provide better infrastructure, public services and adequate benefits for the one third who are poor.

3. Essential public services should be under public ownership e.g. rail transport

4. The Government should be aware of the destructive aspects of the capitalism under which we live, and should act to ameliorate these as far as is possible.

Clearly this man is off his trolley. If such proposals, God forbid, were ever implemented, Britain would cease to be a playground for rich persons of diminished humanity and become the grim. grey, socialist state it was before the advent of the Blessed Margaret Thatcher.

Mmn.. yes… I remember that Britain, it’s the one in which I spent half my life, created by the Labour Party after the war, but maintained by other extremists like Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Ted Heath. It was a country where patriotism was not limited to smacking Johnny Foreigner, but included ideals of public service, education for all and the abolition of poverty. It meant that, for example, it was a good deal easier for me to go to University than it is for any young person today. It meant that there were large amounts of affordable housing for people who couldn’t afford mortgages. It meant that I gladly paid National Insurance so that I could have free access to the best health care in the world. So …maybe …I’m an extremist too, namely, a person who regrets his children live in a state that is less just than the one he grew up in.

But when I think of it, maybe, just maybe, all those smart young women and men who have no place for justice in their lives, maybe they are the extremists, supporters of a triumphant commercialisation of human life, which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Maybe, just maybe, in spite of their high salaries, chic houses, cool clothing and honours degrees in business management from the best universities, they are nothing more than empty suits, zombies in whose perfectly ordered teeth we see the grin of Conspicuous Consumption, the true God of our time.

So let me drop all irony and invite my readers to refuse the definition of extremism which is being imposed by the pimps of Capital. Judged by any of the world’s great religions or by the best wisdom of its humanists, contemporary liberal economics is an extreme religion that deifies Greed and persecutes those who will not bow down to their God. That well-known extremist, Jesus of Nazareth, said that it’s impossible to worship God and Wealth; and that the careless rich are going to end up in the place without pity, of which they are the true creators.