Having been asked to speak on a panel with Katie Hopkins, I knew it was a matter of time before LBC parted ways with her

For anyone who watches BBC’s Line of Duty, you’ll be familiar with Superintendent Hastings’ much quoted catchphrase, particularly electrifying in his Northern Irish drawl: “There’s only one thing I’m interested in, and that’s bent coppers.”

There are many reasons why Line of Duty has gripped the nation, but at its core, there is something pleasing, and particularly fist-pump-worthy, about someone who abuses power getting their comeuppance. Which may explain why, this morning, news that Katie Hopkins will no longer have a show on LBC was met with nationwide applause.

At this point, it’s not 100 per cent confirmed why Hopkins is leaving, but we can speculate that it’s probably something to do with her recent tweet about a “final solution” for British Muslims, conjuring up uncomfortable memories of the same phrase once employed by Hitler when talking about exterminating Jewish people. That might have been a step too far.

But it’s not the first time Hopkins’ panto villain has revolted the nation. There was the time she called migrants “cockroaches”, the time she told America that parts of London were “no-go areas” and that whole episode of My Fat Story where she became near-obese apparently just to prove a point.

Katie Hopkins is the “bent copper” of the journalism world. She abuses her position as a national broadcaster, in plain sight. Journalists might not have an obligatory exam or an oath that we take, but we certainly have a code of conduct which Hopkins consistently circumvented. Indeed, she took advantage of our hard-won press freedoms to increase her lot at the cost of what it might do the country, to our communities, and how it might make the world an altogether worse place to live.

A few months ago, I was asked to appear on a panel with Hopkins. The panel was to take place after a piece of performance written by an upcoming theatre director, Stephen Langston, and would discuss the work and the themes of his show. The play is about being gay in the Jewish community.

I thought for some while about doing it, fantasising that maybe I could be the David to her Goliath, and could catch her out in one of the hundreds of misrepresentations she has spewed out unchecked over the years. But in the end I refused, concerned that when people appeal to the most hysterical, fearful parts of the human psyche, reason doesn’t always do the trick. I didn’t trust her not to abuse either the LGBT community or Jewish community present, or to sully the work itself, and I didn’t want to be a part of the Hopkins circus, where everything is collateral damage as long as she’s in the spotlight.

Crucially, I didn’t want to suggest that she is to be taken seriously by having a serious debate with her – I would not, for example, have a debate with Mr Blobby, who similarly makes no sense, and was intriguing at first, but rapidly descended into a nationwide irritant that could make children cry on cue.

If Hopkins was going to have a platform, then I wasn’t going to share it. On that occasion, my decision was enough to get her removed from the panel.

Back to Line of Duty: we’re four seasons in and we’re still no closer to catching the puppetmasters. We know they are bigger than the individual coppers in our sightline, we know their power goes right to the top. And so we also do with Hopkins.

All of the broadcasters and newspapers that have given Hopkins oxygen are equally responsible for the destruction she has wrought. There is a misconception that she speaks truth to power, when in fact she is power: she is the foot-soldier of some of our scariest press barons who influence our Government and country in shady, unseen ways.

Maybe this time, she drew too much attention to herself, or became a liability, but as long as hysteria sells, there will be another Hopkins.

And that’s where we, the British public, come in. We deserve better than the likes of Katie Hopkins, and as this morning’s events prove, we can demand it. This may well be the beginning of a long overdue change of direction we need among the commentariat. In the word of Hastings (“like the battle”): “Now we’re sucking diesel”.