Who decides the limits of tolerance?

That problem, he said, could be addressed by giving them a sum of money to encourage them all to move out from their homes.

Under his plan these problem people, with a heritage going back many generations, would then all be expected to relocate elsewhere, allowing another ethnic and cultural group, which the MP considered to have a better right to the land, to move in to where the first group had lived, and solve the problem.

It was a policy of ethnic cleansing. By bribery, rather than force, yes, but ethnic cleansing all the same.

You will remember it well because there was widespread outrage and protests. This appalling case of naked discrimination and prejudice made headlines for weeks.

There were calls for the MP to apologise or be dismissed.

You don't remember any of this? That is not surprising. Because I've made it up. Not the bit about the MP calling for an ethnic and cultural group to be bribed to move out, because that is all true, but about the protests which followed the comments.

Because there was not a ripple. I've even tried to find a mention on the internet, without success.

But I know it happened. Because I watched that show, and heard what Tony Banks said.

It was a demonstration that in politics what you say does not matter quite so much as who you are and where you are coming from.

Banks was a Left-wing Labour MP. The problem people he was talking about were the Protestant community in Northern Ireland - the majority of the population in that part of the United Kingdom.

The lack of any protests to his comments, made on a Sky political talk show hosted by ex-Labour MP Austin Mitchell, must indicate that others felt that they fell within acceptable bounds of political discourse.

Also, the late Tony Banks was considered to be a bit of a clown, so nobody would have treated him that seriously. Indeed, he made his comments in a rather jokey way.

Being a "cheeky chappy" Left-winger gave him licence to say these things, and he had a free pass so long as he said them about the Protestant community.

Let us imagine, for a moment, that it was not Banks speaking about the Protestants in Northern Ireland, but a similarly outspoken and flamboyant Conservative MP talking about the Catholics in Northern Ireland, suggesting that the Catholics should all be given a sum of money to encourage them to move to the Republic of Ireland, and like Banks he also made those comments in a jokey way.

No protests? No outrage?

I mention the above as something to be borne in mind in the current arrangement being forged between the Conservative and Unionist Party, to give it its official full title, and the Democratic Unionist Party, and the dynamics of the arguments surrounding it.

During the election campaign Jeremy Corbyn was accused of being a supporter of terrorism, due to his past hobnobbing with the leadership of Sinn Fein, which is the IRA in smart suits.

He did not support terrorism, he explained. He was a humble seeker of peace.

Why, then, did he not also hobnob with the leaders of the Ulster Defence Association?

The reason is that he was not impartial. The aspiration historically of the IRA and Sinn Fein was not just a united Ireland, but a united Marxist Ireland.

All this, after a fashion, brings me on to the subject of Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, or rather ex-leader.

Because the underlying point is that those who award themselves the status of being standard bearers for the enlightened path can, like Tony Banks, more or less say anything about anybody, because they are coming from a more enlightened place.

The case of Mr Farron is rich in irony. He did not step down for any political reason - say, the obvious contradiction between declaring he respected the EU referendum result and then doing all he could to overturn it. He resigned, in his own eyes, because of his religious faith.

A modern martyr then. When did a major British political leader last resign on a faith issue? (I'd tell you, but I don't know).

Farron was put on the spot over views he may or may not have held privately on homosexuality. To liberal opinion, he was suspected of being a secret heretic. He was described as a practising Christian, as if a code for him being a weirdo.

“I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in. In which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society,” he said.

More irony. Because to those calling on Mr Farron to explain himself, he was the one exhibiting intolerance - or at least suspected of doing so.

And it is the intolerant who cannot be tolerated, because in the words of the philosopher Karl Popper: "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

The rallying cry is then a 21st century conundrum. We must all be more tolerant. And we must all be less tolerant of intolerance.