BY FRANK HAVILAND

Back in the 90’s it was still considered racy to show a lesbian kiss pre-watershed. Twenty years on and homosexuality is so mainstream, your best chance of being controversial is to do the unthinkable and put a straight, white couple on. In fact, if the latest Disney princess isn’t a pink-haired, non-binary, transgender activist for Antifa, what is the point?

Gender it seems has become the Pokemon Go of causes célèbres – and the younger generation are certainly trying to catch them all. This week alone, one of Brighton’s ‘coolest’ schools was celebrating its 76 pupils with ‘gender identity issues’ – which begs the question, where are they going wrong with the other students on the register?

The liberal urge to give everything a progressive makeover is frighteningly meticulous. The past has already been destroyed by the toppling of western statues, the depiction of British monarchs as people of colour, and the insistence that every western figure from Cecil Rhodes to Churchill was essentially Hitler.

Not content with the destruction of everything tangible, the Left has now turned its inclusive gaze to fiction. While of course household institutions such as James Bond and Harry Potter have been found wanting in the gay department, you might have thought traditional fiction would be left alone; you’d have been wrong.

Given his busy schedule, Father Christmas was hoping to avoid a summons from the LGBT committee, but alas no. Santa is now not only gay, but black with a white husband for a wife – inclusive enough for you? Nowadays our children can’t even have a five minute respite to enjoy a traditional Christmas.

Meanwhile God, the original patriarch, is also more questioning than he used to be. ‘God is gender neutral’ recently proclaimed the world’s most senior man in a dress, Justin Welby. I dread to think what they’ve got in store for the Tooth Fairy.

The culture war wages on, but only one side is enjoying success. While the right bravely attempts to defend the boundaries of free speech, the left simply deploy their trump card: victimhood.

The Liberal solution to Conservatism is to eradicate valid arguments by use of the victim card; and here, they take no prisoners. As the law currently stands, the bounds of acceptable discourse have morphed into an Owen Jones Twitter feed: anything insufficiently inclusive gets blocked.

It’s a great game: illegal aliens are marketed as Dreamers. Muslim terrorists become child refugees. Paedophiles get rebranded as ‘minor attracted persons’, attempting to latch themselves onto the never-ending LGBT-qwerty list of the oppressed.

The victim umbrella has been so successful however, the left has forgotten how to use anything else. Cracks are beginning to show. Grooming gang rapists are now being granted access to their ‘children’. Attempted murder with a zombie knife in London is treated with a suspended sentence, and to cap it off Asia Bibi is not being granted asylum in the UK, because it might upset the people who want to behead her. (Even Liberals are raising the odd eyebrow over that).

The trouble is when everyone’s a victim no one is a victim, which ironically makes the left victims of their own success. Tragically flailing around trying to find new avenues of victimhood, the causes they support appear increasingly desperate.

Presumably someone at Guardian HQ is already working on a contingency plan (in-between ethically-sourced, soy lattes naturally). They’d better come up with something, because the adherents of the victim narrative are beginning to look silly.

Here for instance is Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott, concerned that moped gangs might injure their voting hands if the police actually do their job:

Yesterday it was Owen Jones, apoplectic with rage that malfeasant, council house abusing, nepotistic and lying MPs were not given carte blanche, simply because they happened to be black and female:

To the left, everyone’s a victim except real victims, which is why the current opposition must never be placed in charge of crime.

It’s going to be interesting watching this one play out. Are we going to come full circle, and finally declare that Hitler was a victim of moustachophobia? Or perhaps like the car number plates used to, go round again and get back to judging people by their actions alone, irrespective of how many victim badges they have? If the left continues with the victim narrative, they might just run out of road.