Most Britons are - apparently - in favour of hanging.

Politics isn't Family Fortunes though. There are plenty of things Most Britons may or may not be in favour of at one point or another. Foreign food. People 'not from around here'. People are always telling me that what most people are in favour of is common sense - or rather, Commons sense, because what most people are in favour of often becomes de facto policy of whatever party desperately needs votes.

• Most Britons love the NHS
• Most Britons would prefer lower taxes
• Most Britons want better public services
• Most Britons want mostly incompatible things

Here's the thing about large numbers versus small numbers. Remember those episodes of The Apprentice where one team sells to amazon and the other sells to a boutique greengrocer and one number is many many times bigger than the other number?

Big numbers crush smaller numbers.

That's the natural way of it.

However in business you have to think about both. It may seem attractive to follow the big numbers, but then you have a monoculture of big numbers, a stupefying straightjacket of mediocrity that has no fallback plan or appeal to the minority. Magic may well be the worlds number one TCG, but if you only run Magic you probably alienate 90% of gamers. 90% is a much bigger number than 10%, but its fragmented and un-pollable.

In the Polis of course we have to be ever mindful of those smaller numbers. Because we have protected their rights to exist, their rights to self expression. Society once ruled only by the dictat of the majority. History is littered with examples of how that worked out.

(We killed them)

Supporters of hanging say it was only a few that got killed when they were innocent. One of two oddballs and freaks, people other people suspected of crimes because they Were Not Like Them. Loners. People who are easy for a mob to kill and feel good about it later.

Everyone high five, normalcy has triumphed even if justice has not.

So no, I do not support hanging. I don't support sacrificing people for things they didn't do, for crimes they didn't commit, for imagined crimes imaginary people who looked like them might feasibly commit. And sure, society would be safer if we expunged people we didn't like the look of. Who offended our sense of normalcy while we painted on our disguises to hide the freak inside.

Everyone IS like us - that's the sad, horrid truth nobody wants to face. And we share more with Shamima Begum than we do with Lee Anderson.