For many people reading this, the analogy will seem ludicrous, but hear me out: if the Conservative party was one of your friends, you’d be very worried about them.
You can maybe imagine it: a privately educated pal from university, perhaps, who seems to have fallen on hard times and bad company. Ten or 15 years ago, they seemed urbane, clever and super-confident. Even if some of it went only skin deep, they professed to be green, socially liberal and culturally switched on. Now, though, they tend to look dishevelled and saggy-eyed. After a few drinks – and sometimes before – they speak an increasingly hysterical language of conspiracy theory and political paranoia. They also seem to be furtively spending some of their time with thugs and bigots: the kind of people whom that great English social commentator Paul Weller once associated with the smell of “pubs, and Wormwood Scrubs, and too many rightwing meetings”.
