For this week came yet another worrying sign that the prejudices of our liberal cultural elite are no less stifling and no less repressive than the taboos they pride themselves on having banished. At the heart of this is the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who resigned on Wednesday after less than two years in the job.

I hold no torch for Mr Farron, who never struck me as an international statesman in waiting. But when I heard him say he could not reconcile his heartfelt Christian principles with his leadership of an avowedly liberal party, I wondered what had happened to our traditions of tolerance and democracy.

At the heart of his dilemma were his views on gay sex, which on several occasions he had failed to say outright was not sinful, as well as his disapproval of abortion (he later claimed to have changed his mind on the issue). But he never tried to impose those views on others. Nor did he propose to outlaw homosexuality, or to recriminalise abortion.

For his liberal critics, however, this was not good enough. As they saw it, he was guilty of what George Orwell called ‘thoughtcrime’. Only a full recantation — and presumably the renunciation of his Christian faith — would have been enough to save him.