She's "Got A Little List" (She Never Would Be Missed)

Until yesterday I am not sure that I had heard of Michael Alan Weiner. I had heard of Fred Phelps, because Louis Theroux made a television programme about him called The Most Hated Family in America. I imagine that we'll be hearing more of both of them, though, because the UK government has determined that there was some slender political advantage in naming them as people not welcome here.

Where is the Minister for Stop & Think when you need her?

It goes without saying that the policy of naming these undesirables has been placed in the safe keeping of Jacqui Smith, a politician of whom no news would be good news indeed. Instead of sitting in a corner crying (as any normal human being would with her recent record of catastrophe), the Home Secretary has popped her head above the parapets long enough to champion this list, and someone has even given it the name of "UK's Least Wanted." This suggests that someone in government thought that the idea was good enough to merit a snappy title.

So, of course, the news today is that Michael Alan Weiner is threatening to sue someone for defamation. Given that he has a hugely successful radio show and lives in a country with no shortage of lawyers, I favour his chances of dipping his hands into the pockets of British taxpayers at some point in the near future with a rapacious enthusiasm previously reserved for members of our own parliament.

Even should he fail (perhaps the case will never be brought, perhaps the lawyers for the Crown will be so greased by our money as to slip through his fingers) the net result of all this will be that Britain will extend its reputation as a country where the government is so terrified of dissenting views that it would rather ennoble them with an arbitrary and incompetent ban than expose them to the light of day. Personally, I never heard of a country that banned entrance to a campaigner of any sort without thinking that it was dictatorial and cowardly.

Louis Theroux made Fred Phelps look sinister and unbearable; Jacqui Smith has made him look like a martyr for freedom of speech.

The most worrying element in this, however, is the views for which Weiner has been banned. He is opposed to gay marriage but not apparently to homosexuality in general: a fairly bland view for an American right-winger. He has said some pretty ignorant things about autism, but hardly the sort of thing that posed a risk to public order more grave than a rowdy protest. He is opposed to immigration, which should surely put him and Jacqui on the same page.

He is reputedly anti-Arab and anti-Islamic.

Bingo.

The suspicion dawns that Weiner was not on the list for any especially grave or worrying views that he might hold, but in order to establish that the list of the UK's Least Wanted was not missing a final word: Muslims. Most of those on the list with viable militant credentials are indeed Muslims (not you, Mike Guzofsky) and there is a strong sense that the raison d'etre of the list is an attack on Islamic extremism to which some other names have been scraped up in the interests of apparent balance.

The only potential upside of this list, then, is the publication of a photograph of Jacqui Smith alongside the headline "UK's Least Wanted". With any luck it will be a photograph of the entire cabinet.