CONVENIENTLY for some, Mohamed Al Fayed, erstwhile owner of Harrods (and a Scottish castle) is now dead. Which may have prompted a number of women to come forward to speak ill of him. They allege that they were sexually harassed, in some cases raped, by the very rich tycoon whose late son Dodi, you might recall, was the final beau of Diana, Princess of Wales.

In fact, Al Fayed spent not inconsiderable time and money trying to ingratiate himself with the late Queen and other members of the aristocracy. Like many men from ­different cultures, he seemed to have a need for acceptance from people who were only notionally his “betters”.

And like many rich and powerful men, he abused that potency by allegedly ­forcing himself on young, nubile employees. It is, sadly, a very familiar and utterly ­dispiriting tale. Consider, if you can bear it, the ­notorious, so-called Access Holywood tape which recorded Donald Trump bragging about how you could do whatever you liked with women when you were famous.

He boasted about how he had chased one married woman, how he had behaved like a randy dog, how he kissed women ­whether they were compliant or not, how he grabbed their genitals. In other times, such public admissions would have spelled the end of any political ambitions. But we live, it seems, in Trump times where just about anything goes.

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At the end of last week, the UK Home ­Office said it would pilot two schemes where the police would be advised by ­people with specific expertise in the area of violence against women and girls. This follows a particularly egregious incident where a woman – Raneem Oudeh – and her mother, Khaola Saleem, were ­murdered by her ex-partner despite alerting the ­police to his violent intentions no fewer than 13 times.

You do wonder, given this crime, given that almost two women are murdered every week by an intimate partner past or ­current, why you need to trial this. The argument is that the Home Office wants to find out the best model. Maybe they’d be better advised asking the thousands of abuse survivors. Heaven knows there’s no shortage of them.

Historically, police forces were ­disinclined to investigate what was routinely described as “a domestic”. We have moved on from that fortunately, but hardly at speed, on ­either side of the Border.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (below) said last week that victims needed to know the police would be there for them and that any reports would be treated “with the seriousness and urgency they deserve”. Amen to all of that. But Raneem and her mum were murdered six long years ago.

It’s also a curiosity why the ­Scottish Government felt the need to set up a ­commission under Baroness Helena ­Kennedy in 2021 to examine misogyny in all its unlovely ways. After all, she had ­already written extensively on the ­subject, as books like Eve Was Framed underlined.

She pronounced herself shocked at the evidence brought forward, and this from a woman who by her own admission thought she had seen and heard it all as a barrister. Her commission concluded that there was a need for a standalone law to deal with the avalanche of fear and abuse highlighted since the Hate Crime laws dealt only with minorities. At 52% of the population, that’s not us.

In the event, the Scottish ­Government promised legislation by the end of this ­parliament, ie 2026, which would ­introduce five new offences dealing with everything from misogynistic ­behaviour and harassment to rape and sexual ­assault. They also promised such ­conduct would be subject to a statutory ­aggravation clause to impact on ­sentencing.

The Scottish Government said that the Misogyny Bill will be presented to parliament during the next parliamentary year.

The miserable truth is that pretty well every woman is a misogyny victim to one extent or another. At the sharp end, some are regularly on the wrong end of physical abuse, given the disparity in strength they experience compared to their partner. Less noticeably – but constant – is the way women alter their behaviour to deal with real or imaginary threats.

When this report was first published, honest, decent men were often genuinely shocked. They didn’t think for a moment that walking in the dark a few paces ­behind a solitary woman going home could engender fear and panic. Because they were devoid of malign intent, they assumed other men were too.

A conversation with their wife, sister or mother might have persuaded them otherwise.

A conversation with the women in their lives would have introduced them to a whole series of things women do to try and keep themselves safe, from being careful where and when they walk, to keeping a bunch of keys in their hand to ward off would-be attackers.

The nonsense of it all doesn’t stop in the workplace, as some of the women ­making allegations against Al Fayed (below) make all too clear. Some left their jobs altogether for fear of being molested by their bosses. And posh department stores aren’t the only site of constant misogyny.

Journalists of my generation were only too aware of the casual harassment which took place in environments which were then overwhelmingly male. Young ­women were used to being ­inappropriately touched and groped. And when people asked why we didn’t complain to one of the bosses, it was usually because one of them was the principal perpetrator.

That was replicated throughout the working environment, most especially where a female in the workforce was something of a novelty. Where there were a lot of women, there was a different ­phenomenon. Women huddling together to tell tales of what their menfolk got up to behind closed doors.

The thing is, as a society, we’ve got to stop pretending that all this amounts to isolated cases of badly behaved spouses. Neither is it a matter of class. There’s no shortage of middle and upper-class men who think they can get away with all ­manner of abuse, physical and mental. I’ve met them and so will many of you.

It took a very long time for the law to catch up with the instances of coercive control where husbands kept their wives in a form of domestic imprisonment. ­Often distancing them from friends and ­family; minutely controlling their ­social lives. Though, as poor Raneem was to ­discover, having her mum round to ­comfort her made her a murder victim too.

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Above all, it’s a cultural thing. Some mothers have to take a share of the blame by treating their sons like entitled ­princelings. But there’s two kinds of fear in play here – some of the young women who came out of the woodwork to make allegations about Al Fayed only did so ­after he died.

They were simply too scared, they said, to take him on, even though some had contacted the police. No action was taken. That’s because everyone is ­actually scared to accuse powerful men of bad ­behaviour, not excluding those whose job it is to ensure the law of the land is ­properly prosecuted.

The Trump story is all that writ large. Even those fellow Republicans who ­cowered under their desks when Trump “fans” trashed their seat of government have re-written their personal histories rather than incur the wrath of the bully-in-chief. Somebody posts footage of that riot every day on social media. And a riot it assuredly was. Ask the widows of the police who died trying to stop it.

And wouldn’t it be a wonderful irony if, come November, he was finally brought low by a mere woman. The other fear, of course, is that he won’t go quietly but will still be screaming witch hunt all the way to the penitentiary.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer chap.