Novak Djokovic v Australia is a grudge match for our polarised age

First they came for the multi-millionaire tennis players with pictures of border form infractions on their Instagram page. And I did not speak out.

Actually, no, it’s not quite that. The decision to re-cancel Novak Djokovic’s visa, thereby imperilling his ability to compete at next week’s Australian Open is not an act of war on the Serbian people, or an executive order from the lizard-lords of Project Deplete The Sheeple. Or indeed anything to be celebrated with any real relish, unless the spectacle of enforced deportations rings your bell.

Perhaps the people most directly concerned by the intervention of the Australian government on Friday are those detained in the kind of immigration detention from which Djokovic escaped last week. Those same harsh border policies will remain once the current celebrity edition has faded out of the news cycle. And none of those unfortunates still resident in Melbourne’s Park Hotel will be cheering with any great warmth.

For now it is worth noting that the court decision on the procedural fairness of Djokovic’s summary visa-justice at Melbourne airport has not been overturned. Immigration minister Alex Hawke has used a separate statutory power to rule that Djokovic is not entitled to stay, whether on grounds of the public good, or for reasons of bad character and bad conduct. That decision will be reviewed on appeal over the weekend, but only with regard to its procedural correctnesses, not the content of the minister’s views.

And so we go again. For all the noise, the scarcely credible cut-through as a global news event of one Serbian tennis player’s weirdness about mainstream medicine, there was something reassuring on Friday evening in the sight of this inferno coming to rest on the