The politics of the incident aside for a moment, there is something heavily ironic about this legal sabre rattling. Take a step back for a second – the Home Secretary wields somewhat authoritrian powers over a select group of individuals for what they have said in public by banning them from entering the country and then gets sued for defamation for what she has essentially said in public about one of them. (Ok we know it’s not quite as simple as all that but giving it the broad brush, you get the picture).

At best it appears that our Home Secretary has exercised rather clumsy judgement in this episode; Savage or Michael Alan Weiner as he is properly known has apparently been accused of racism and homophobia in the past and once wished that a critical caller would die of Aids but, in his defence, he responded to the ban by saying: “She has painted a target on my back . . . this is lunatic, she is linking me up with Nazi skinheads who are killing people in Russia . . . She’s putting me in a league with Hamas murderers who kill Jews on buses… I have never advocated violence. I’ve been on the air 15 years. My views may be inflammatory, but they’re not violent in any way.” And now he has decided to sue for defamation. So not a particularly nice chap but not as bad as the Nazis he reckons.

In response the the legal threats, the Home Office has announced that it would staunchly fight any proceedings and said: "He was excluded for engaging in unacceptable behaviour by making comments that might provoke others to serious criminal acts and foster hatred that might lead to inter-community violence… Any legal proceedings would be robustly defended; we stand by our decision to exclude this individual. Coming to the UK is a privilege that we refuse to extend to those who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life."

So as the lawyers are lined up, the question that surely arises from this cocktail of irony is wether we really need to arbitrarily (it seems – is there a due process here?) ban people like this to stop population GB from falling prey to hard line right-wingers and turning into an authoritarian state? Or do we need to stop GB from becoming an authoritarian state by questioning Home Secretaries that ban anything they deem unpleasant? Conundrum for the law/politics brigade.