I have no problem fining people who don’t bother to wear a mask without good reason

Some people are genuinely putting their fellow citizens at risk by refusing a request that is no more of an imposition than wearing a seatbelt

Fear not mask-phobes. If you’re one of those right-wingers who are suddenly concerned for the civil liberties you’ve previously claimed only “Islingtonian liberals” are bothered about when you’re crying “string ‘em up”, you’re OK. The Met’s not going to jump on you if you throw a hissy fit outside of Tesco when the security guard politely requests that you show some consideration towards their fellow staff members and your fellow shoppers.

Chances are you’ll get away with thumbing your nose at obeying the law on wearing masks in shops, before going home to hypocritically cheer the latest nasty, authoritarian move from the home secretary, Priti Patel.

It might be different if you get violent, but even then there are no guarantees.

The Metropolitan Police commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, told LBC Radio that if store managers were concerned and had "tried everything else", her officers would try to assist, but "calling the police should be a last resort for dealing with a mask issue”.

Similar messages have been issued by other forces.

An innocent black teenager needs only to step outside of their front door in a hoodie to get pushed against the wall and searched. But Alexander Tottington-Tool, middle-aged chairman of the local golf club, spreading their coronavirus particles up and down the aisles? It seems they’ll be OK with the plod.

Dame Cressida expressed hopes that people will be shamed into compliance with the new rules.

I don’t want to rain on the parade of Britain’s top copper, but that’s a big ask given the behaviour of the numpties in government for whom shame is an entirely alien concept. Remember Dominic Cummings shuttling up the M1 to his Durham pad while everyone else stayed home because as a fully paid-up member of the Whitehall elite the rules didn’t apply to him?

The excuses made for his behaviour, and Boris Johnson’s insistence on defending his indefensible conduct, is a message that appears to have hit home.

The mass wearing of masks could play an important role in containing the spread of a virus that is still with us and has shown a disturbing tendency to roar back even in places where they’ve done a far better job of handling the pandemic than Johnson’s tin-pot administration.

When you don a mask, you’re protecting others as much as yourself. They are a very visible symbol of safety, and that matters.

I was struck this week by some disturbing results from a survey conducted by Scope, the disability charity. It found that 56 per cent of disabled people will only leave home for essentials or medical appointments over the next month. One in five won’t leave home at all.

Small wonder. The virus has taken a brutal toll on those with long-term medical conditions. The use of masks could help to change that, while also reassuring able-bodied people who may be concerned about the risks of going out. In other words, it could help restore confidence, which is something our battered economy badly needs.

But it’s just as important to remember that mask-wearing in shops is now the law of the land, with a few important exceptions such as people with respiratory conditions, or autism, to whom due regard absolutely should be paid.

Excepting them, if we're going to threaten to jail people for 10 years for defacing statues of historical douchebags, and if the Met and other forces are going to (spuriously) claim that harassing innocent young black men and women is necessary on the grounds of public safety, then the law should also be applied to people who are actually breaking it – people who are genuinely putting their fellow citizens at risk by refusing a request that is no more of an imposition than wearing a seatbelt (as I’ve written previously).

We’ve barely emerged from a public health crisis that has killed nearly 60,000 Britons and sent the economy into a tailspin not seen since the great depression.

So yes, it’s time to hand out some fines.