Picture the scene: a Bentley Bentayga, price tag somewhere north of what most people owe in student loans, idling in the Folkestone tunnel terminal, preparing to whisk its driver, one of the nation's most prominent political activists and political migraine for Keir Starmer's government, Tommy Robinson, off to sunny Spain.

You'd expect smugglers of luxury goods, maybe. Or a footballer.

Instead, it's Robinson, who found himself staring down the barrel of Britain's counter-terrorism laws, not because he had explosives or an AK-47 stashed under the seat, but because he refused to give the police his iPhone passcode.

Yes, that's right. In a country where burglary barely gets a police visit unless the thief leaves behind a business card and a selfie, Kent's finest deployed the full blunt force of the Terrorism Act 2000…because a man in designer sunglasses said "not a chance, bruv" when they asked for his PIN.

Let's take a moment to appreciate the absurdity here. The legislation in question, Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, was born in the year 2000, when Tony Blair was still selling Cool Britannia to the world and convincing Parliament to make temporary wartime powers a permanent lifestyle choice.

Back then, the idea was to keep Britain safe from people who blow up buses, not from activists in SUVs who are going on a trip to Benidorm.

Schedule 7 gave police the right to stop, interrogate, and detain anyone crossing a UK border, without needing so much as a whiff of suspicion.

Naturally, civil liberties groups kicked off, warning this kind of power would eventually be used not to stop terrorists, but to hassle people for thinking the wrong thoughts.

Now, to be clear, Robinson wasn't being stopped because he had so much as a suspicious sandwich on him. Police claimed he gave "vague replies" about his travel plans and then demanded his phone PIN.

Robinson declined, in his own unique style, replying: "Not a chance, bruv…You look like cunts so you ain't having it."

He argued that his phone contained journalistic material and confidential information about grooming gang victims, an argument you'd think would be worth, at minimum, some caution from officers supposedly trained in the nuances of press freedom and data protection.

But no, out came the terrorism laws.

In the courtroom, things got even more farcical. Prosecutor Jo Morris stood up in court and did her best to give this house of cards some scaffolding.

According to her, the officers had grown "concerned" by Robinson's "demeanor" the moment he wandered into the inspection area alone. This, apparently, was clue number one in the national security sudoku.