Maybe MI5 should try putting this threat the other way round: Why isn’t the state more worried about the risk to British people posed by undocumented asylum seekers? Sick of government demonising the population who have voted against this madness.

Since Jason Arday, I’ve been thinking about getting into Cambridge, and what it meant. The culmination of years of headbanging hard work. Being a “swot” at school because I handed in homework instead of being popular. Yes, in a comprehensive the choice was that stark. Carrying Tesco’s bags full of books home from the library on the bus for weeks. Piling the books high to create a rampart around my single bed. Telling myself, “If you read all those books you’ll be good enough to get in.” Some of the books I read - all of Graham Greene - were not considered “literature”. Not of the first rank, dear. I didn’t know. As much Shakespeare as I could pack in - the big 4 Tragedies, all of the comedies. All of Austen, Forster (even Maurice FFS), lots of Dickens, Anna Karenina (devastating, wonderful). I stopped going to school because I needed to read more, much much more. To be good enough to get in. The Head of Sixth Form summoned me and said, “If you carry on like this you’ll fail your A levels.” Ha! She hadn’t got a clue. I was working so far beyond A levels. Besides, I had to finish all the books in the rampart. Time was running out. So hard, the entrance papers. Translating Proust into English. How? Then, a passage of George Eliot I recognised - thank you God! Then pretending that I’d read Oliver Twist when I’d only seen the film. I called it Oliver! in my essay. With an exclamation mark - how crass. But the dons didn’t know the musical, maybe. I don’t know. The only lie I told to get into Cambridge. Oliver! “All we ever get is groo-ell!” A really small, forgivable lie, I think, because the work of becoming good enough was so immense, so lonely. But the surge of pride when I made it. Good enough to get into that unattainable place. And now, we know that same Cambridge let in someone with two GCSEs - PE and textiles. A man who lied and lied and lied. They didn’t just let Jason Arday in, they made him a Professor, one of those scholars kids like me revered. We were in awe - imagine being taught by those great minds. Christ, Cambridge. What a betrayal of all of us who strove so hard to be good enough to deserve you. Who put you on a pedestal, who really truly thought reading hundreds of books was the price of admission, a price you willingly paid. So much for the brightest and the best. It’s so disgusting on every level, waving in someone utterly unworthy, barely literate for crying out loud. A man at the mercy of the English language, not its master and commander. A know-nothing Professor, a vacuous, fashionable fraudster hired to give lectures to kids like me. So Cambridge could look “diverse” and, in so doing, renounced its ancient power which made so many like me strive to be good enough.