In the hourly deluge of outrage and nonsense that passes for the national conversation, it was only another fleeting moment. But last Tuesday, as the TalkTV presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer talked to Ben Habib – the Reform UK party’s “co-deputy leader” and its candidate in the recent Wellingborough byelection – about so-called small boats crossing the Channel, their conversation highlighted where the noise around that issue seems to be going: into places so inhuman and ugly that even a populist true believer such as Hartley-Brewer feels a pang of horror. Their 11-minute chat took place the day after five people, including...