Just a matter of weeks ago, Lord Walney was serving in the heart of Government.

But then he had the disconcerting experience of being sacked by some of his oldest friends.

The peer and former Labour MP, who served for over four years as the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and extremism, was told in February by former party comrades at the Home Office that his job no longer existed.

“I’ve known Yvette [Cooper] and Dan [Jarvis, the security minister] for a long time and count them both as friends and colleagues in the Labour Party. They were pretty open with me. It was clear they were looking to rejig things,” he said.

“The most important thing is not so much whether they wanted to keep me in the role of official adviser but whether they’re going to take my advice. We will see.”

The axe fell less than a year after Lord Walney delivered a report, commissioned by the Conservatives, which recommended much tighter rules on protest after years of disruptive direct action by environmental groups, pro-Gaza protesters and far-Right activists. Now he is keeping a sceptical eye on what the Government does next.

In his first interview since his sacking, he says that Labour’s fundamental problem is that the party is romantically wedded to the idea of protest. He says ministers have too much of a “sceptical mindset” about cracking down on disruptive demonstrations.