# Laugh at the black shorts now, they may rule later > Peter Hitchens finds the balaclava brigade ridiculous, then argues that ridiculous movements are the ones inheriting a rotting politics. - Title: Laugh at the black shorts now, they may rule later · Dailymail - Summary: Peter Hitchens finds the balaclava brigade ridiculous, then argues that ridiculous movements are the ones inheriting a rotting politics. The street militias… - Keywords: politics, populism, immigration, grammar schools, media, news, entertainment, Laugh, black, shorts, may, rule - Source: Dailymail — https://dailymail.com/news/article-16126469/PETER-HITCHENS-Tommo-lumpy-stormtroopers-laugh-charge.html?ito=1490&ns_campaign=1490&ns_mchannel=rss - Published: 2026-09-13T00:19:47+00:00 - Read time: 3 min - Topics: politics, populism, immigration, grammar schools, media, news, entertainment ## Hard not to laugh Masked men in black were deployed on British streets last week, including outside the Mail's own offices, by a new national figure known as Tommo. > It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the lumpy stormtroopers deployed on our streets ## Spontaneous, allegedly Kent Police called the carefully-planned Dover turnout last weekend 'spontaneous'. Hitchens finds the word choice as funny as the marchers. ## Who Tommo actually is Real name Daniel Thomas. A retired kidnapper who failed at that trade, and now, we are told, a born-again Christian. ## Waiting for the video Hitchens pictures Thomas singing 'Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam' in whatever church, chapel or tent he uses, and awaits the publicity film with sanctified soundtrack. > I await the moving publicity video with sanctified soundtrack ## Why the shorts The black-clad followers wore shorts rather than proper trousers. For a privately educated man, an odd costume choice to land on by accident. > Did you notice his black-clad followers wear shorts rather than grown-up trousers? ## Wodehouse got there first The Black Shorts were a fictional 1930s fascist militia invented by PG Wodehouse, led by the absurd Roderick Spode. ## A gorilla, nearly Wodehouse wrote that Spode looked as if Nature had set out to make a gorilla and changed its mind at the last moment. > as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla and had changed its mind at the last moment ## Undone by the underwear Spode's glowering menace collapsed because of his secret sideline selling frilly ladies' underwear. The joke is that the strongman is always a bit ridiculous. ## The burqa and the balaclava The same people who demand a burqa ban cover their own faces with balaclava helmets. Hitchens notes the resemblance. > while themselves wearing a garment which is rather like a burqa, the balaclava helmet ## But dare we laugh The joke stops there. As the conventional parties collapse, above all on immigration, people of this sort will get nearer to real power. > But dare we laugh? ## Europe is already moving France's National Rally edges towards office. Germany's AfD does the same, carrying what Hitchens calls creepy connections. ## Trump as warning sign In the USA an increasingly erratic Trump stomps across the country and the planet, in Hitchens's phrase, like a giant with a sore head. > like a giant with a sore head ## Meloni proves the point Giorgia Meloni won office posing as the scourge of migrants and has done almost nothing about it. Mass immigration has already happened. > Mass immigration has already happened ## Miracle cures we discard These movements work like patent remedies. We buy one, it fails, we throw it out for a stronger one, until we admit the cure is worse than the disease. > These movements are like miracle cures which we buy in the hope they will work ## What rot leads to A political system losing confidence makes poverty, disorder and an intolerant strong state likelier by the day. Thirty years of governments earned this. > The governments of the last 30 years have much to answer for ## The coalminer's daughter Diane Reay, now emeritus professor of education at Cambridge, grew up on a Leicestershire council estate and got out through a girls' state grammar school. ## That route is closed Reay's grammar school was abolished in 1972. The ladder she climbed cannot be climbed by anyone else now. > What is not so wonderful is that it can never happen again ## The BBC left it out Reay appeared in a Radio 4 documentary on the comprehensive revolution, and her grammar school story went unmentioned. ## Not a rare case The 1954 Gurney-Dixon report found almost 65 per cent of grammar school pupils came from working class homes. The programme also dated the war on grammars to 1976, not 1965. > almost 65 per cent of grammar school pupils came from working class homes ## No selection supporters asked The programme interviewed plenty of comprehensive supporters, including Fiona Millar, and not one defender of selection at 11. Hitchens has written a book on it and is easy to reach. > But it did not interview a single supporter of selection by ability at 11 ## Key takeaway The street militias and the insurgent parties are both symptoms of collapsing mainstream politics, and neither will fix the thing they promise to fix.