“THE louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons,” was one of the many memorable lines penned by the 19th-century essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It reminds me of 21st-century politicians self-righteously pronouncing the superiority of British values. When they talk about tolerance and decency, that’s usually to cover up their bigotry and inhumanity.

Back in the early days of devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Tony Blair made a keynote speech designed to warn the Celtic fringes not to get above their station.

He called for a new patriotism based on a modern British identity. The man who would go on to deregulate banks, falsify intelligence dossiers, annihilate cities and collude in torture assured us that Britishness was all about tolerance, hard work, fair play, and taking responsibility for others.

His unspoken implication was that the likes of the Danes, the French, the Germans and the Spaniards were intolerant, lazy, unfair, and irresponsible.

It was pompous, arrogant and patronising. But the right-wing tabloids loved it. And his speech has since been adapted and delivered many times over to denigrate Scottish independence, justify Brexit, or defend racist immigration measures.

We heard it during the independence referendum campaign, from Gordon Brown, Michael Gove and countless others.

Then we heard it from Theresa May when she was Home Secretary. The key values that underline British society, she said, are “things like democracy, a belief in the rule of law, a belief in tolerance for other people, equality, an acceptance of other people’s faiths and religion.”

Not long afterwards the Brexit campaign got into full flow, parading its ugly, xenophobic, racial and religious hatred to the rest of the world while the pious Theresa sat on the sidelines, nodding approvingly.

The most recent to get in on the act is Dame Louise Casey. As Tony Blair’s "homelessness tsar" she attacked the Big Issue magazine for supposedly perpetuating the problem. Then she became his ‘"respect tsar" in charge of eradicating anti-social behaviour. Undeterred by these spectacular failures, the Tories put her in charge of social integration – "coercion tsar", you might call it.

Last month she complained to a committee of MPs that most immigrants don’t know when to put the rubbish out, how to form a queue or how to be nice. Schoolchildren, she concluded, should be taught the British values of tolerance, democracy and respect.

The Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Express loved it. Well they would, wouldn’t they? After all, every day these great British values of tolerance and respect for other people’s religions ooze from their pages, don’t they?

Across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, there are millions of decent, tolerant, people who believe in equality and respect other people’s faiths. But their voices are increasingly drowned out by the fanatical xenophobes who see jihadists creeping out of every crevice, whipped up by star columnists like Katy Hopkins, Richard Littlejohn, Jeremy Clarkson and Melanie Phillips.

These are the people who love British values almost as much as they hate children fleeing violent war zones. Katie Hopkins is "tired of hearing gushing sympathy” for child refugees. Richard Littlejohn in the Mail says they’re “put to shame by the boy soldiers of the Somme”. Melanie Phillips in The Sun says they should be locked out because they’re not about to be herded into the gas chambers.

Maybe not – but this is the biggest humanitarian catastrophe since World War Two. Millions of terrified children from war zones have been forced from their homes. Tonight, just 20 miles from Britian’s shores, thousands of children will sleep in freezing warehouses, or paper-thin tents, suffering hunger pangs, fearful of what the morning will bring, vulnerable to disease and easy prey for human traffickers.

And in response, the UK Government bolts its doors, like the pub landlords who used to display signs saying "No Blacks, No Irish, No Gypsies". The idea that Britain is morally superior to the rest of the world is a self-righteous fraud. This government and its media fan club are not tolerant, or responsible, or respectful, or compassionate. They are heartless, selfish, negligent, hypocritical and shameless. More than any of these, even, they are cowardly. The politicians are running scared of the press. The press are running scared of the public. And the public are running scared of their own feverish imaginations.

That cowardice was perhaps most tellingly expressed this week by Jeremy Clarkson. In The Sun he expressed some sympathy with Gary Lineker's views on child refugees before putting in the boot. Allowing them into the UK might be the right thing to do, he said – “but doing the right thing would be the wrong thing to do.” Why? Because they might end up blowing us up. It turns out petrol head macho man Clarkson lies awake at night frightened of ragged ,starving children.

Yes, the actions of British governments across the Middle East, cheered on by the Clarksons and Littlejohns and Phillips and Hopkins of this world, have turned the UK into a potential target.

But how many have actually died over the past decade inside the UK at the hands of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists? The answer is one. Lee Rigby. It was a shocking, brutal attack. But a one-off.

And how many have died on our roads, Mr Clarkson? The answer is 21,610. So while we’re waiting for the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Express to launch a campaign against cars, let’s get a grip on reality.

Britain is relatively cocooned from the seriously dangerous world inhabited by billions. This week I saw the film Lion, which tells the true story of a five-year-old Indian boy, wandering lost in the streets of Calcutta, thousands of miles from home. The scenes of adults stepping over children sleeping in the street are truly shocking.

Saroo’s heart-wrenching story punctures our cocoon and forces us to think of all the children lost and uncared for in this world. Saroo is an adult now but there are millions of children like him now – desperate and alone. And the British Government are cynically stepping over them all. Maybe some Tory politicians or tabloid journalists will watch the film, and possibly shed a few tears. But they will return to their cosseted little worlds and justify the actions – and inactions – that condemn boys and girls like Saroo to a life of scavenging, abuse and exploitation.

British values? You can keep them.