Easy divorce has been catastrophic for British children (and I say this as a divorcee)

Would you find it difficult to remain friends with someone if he or she suddenly revealed that they intended to vote Ukip in the next election? Or perhaps it is the case that you yourself have told friends that you intend to vote Ukip and have seen those dinner-party invitations drying up, or have been shunned by acquaintances in the queue to order your Christmas turkey at Waitrose. A new survey suggests that Ukip is a ‘toxic’ party, with almost a quarter of people (24 per cent) reporting that we would find it hard to remain friends with someone who felt warmth and fellowship towards Nigel Farage.

The implication was that the party itself was at fault for this in some way; that it is full of horrible, vile, people who wish to repatriate the ethnics and then invade Poland. But it is more revelatory about that 24 per cent — they were almost all absolutist, whining liberal lefties, whose capacity for intolerance is unbounded. Dare to gainsay their fatuous world-view and you will find yourself hounded, bullied, ostracised. You may even find your children taken away from you (as happened to a couple of Ukip members not so long ago) — because that 24 per cent has its hands on the levers of state power.

Another survey, a year or two back, suggested you were also likely to be ‘defriended’ on Facebook by lefties if you disagree with something they say — far more likely than you are to be defriended by a right-winger for daring to suggest that, say, slavery perhaps had its downsides, all things considered. These people have the tolerance of the ADHD toddler, pre the administering of several thousand ccs of Ritalin. In essence, they are as flexible of mind and as democratic of spirit as the Islamists to whom they are habituated to offer sympathy and even solidarity.