Alt-hate

At the start of the year, a Facebook friend messaged me, telling me that she and a chum had been asked to leave their north London book group (how I hugged myself on reading those words!): she for posting a link on Facebook to a Spectator piece by me — pleasingly and rather reasonably headlined ‘The Brexit divide wasn’t between young and old but Ponces and Non-Ponces’; her friend for liking it. I was naturally fascinated, my curiosity driven by righteous indignation and unrighteous glee. I asked for more information and Judith — my penpal’s suitably heroic name —wrote back: ‘The last line from the email of the man who runs the book group was “I am therefore asking you to resign from the group. This would be the honourable course for you to take.”’ Judith, he claimed, was ‘unable to engage in rational discussion’, an accusation levelled by men at women who dare to disagree since the dawn of time.

Judith’s like-happy chum Jane, a charming, pretty novelist, was so shocked by the book group’s behaviour that she decided to write a play about it. Would I like to be a co-author? I would.

That was January; in April the Prime Minister called a general election; by May our play was written, and in June the people went to the polls and a nation once more woke up, looked at the person sleeping next to them and thought: ‘Who are you?’ To say that these are interesting times is like saying Sarah Vaughan could carry a tune. I’ve always been somewhat sceptical of the phrase ‘The personal is political’, but when Relate relate that one in five of their councillors has worked with couples who have fought over Brexit, we know that times have rarely been more interesting.

Who knew, either, that there was so much hate within the left? Growing up in a communist household, I thought ‘Tory’ was a curse word till I was a teenager.