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I was going through my paces in Hyde Park, sweating out the booze, raising the heartbeat with short wind sprints, keeping my mind off the weekend’s debauchery and the ensuing Karamazovian hangover. I then sat down on a bench and took off my sweaty polo shirt, opened The Daily Telegraph, and took in some rays. That is when a police officer approached me, but with a smile: “Are you by any chance Taki?” “Guilty as charged, constable, but this time I’m clean.” A broader smile and a “May I sit down?”

Well, Constable Hackworth turned out to be straight out of The Blue Lamp, a Spectator reader who somehow recognized my 80-year-old countenance and complimented me on my training. His beat was Hyde Park on that given day, and it got his undivided attention but he remained elusive, like a good policeman should. American tourists kept asking him for photos, and he was generous to a fault, but he was also eagle-eyed and taking everything in. I’d hate to be on the run with Constable Hackworth on the lookout. I haven’t had my picture in a newspaper in twenty-odd years, but he spotted me among hundreds. We didn’t discuss politics, just how loved coppers used to be, say, under Attlee, and how the lefty press and media, and scummy people like McDonnell, have slowly but surely turned the young and spoiled against the blue line that protects us from the mob.

The left romanticizes street thugs, but I learned to love the fuzz early on. I was around 7 when I saw policemen, whose salary hardly fed them and their families, die right in our doorstep defending us from commie guerrillas bent on cutting our throats. Yes, men who ate bread and a little cheese as a main meal gave their lives defending a couple of spoiled little rich kids. That is all I said to Constable Hackworth, who asked me about Rod Liddle, whom he greatly admires: “He’s even nicer than he looks,” was all I said. The constable went on his way and I on mine, but I kept thinking of him the rest of the morning, and what life would be like without cops—and Hamburg hadn’t yet taken place. Two hundred officers injured by professional anarchist scumbags, and the mayor of New York among the scum, peacocking and chest-puffing and leading them on. This is what trendy lefty politics have led us to.

Let’s face it. There is a concentrated drive by the left to gain power by intimidation, and certain British “institutions” are in cahoots. Jeremy Corbyn has been a loser all his life, and now “our” young are clamoring for him to become top banana. As the duchess who stepped into a brothel by mistake said, “Er…something’s very wrong here.” Like when there’s more outrage over an accident (Grenfell) than a deliberate act of multiple murders (Manchester). And by the way, last week I attended the Goldsmith-Birley bash at 5 Hertfort Street, where 250 swells celebrated until very late. What I wonder is, how much outrage would there have been if a fire had roasted all of us alive? Not even 5 percent of that expressed over Grenfell, where most gestures of grief and outrage were stage-managed in order to show Britain’s lack of caring for illegal African immigrants.