Hey Dana — thanks for taking the time to read the Grenfell piece, and glad to hear that it corrected some of the presumptions you might have derived from this more provocative take published above. The truth is, 99.9% of my political empathy is with people like you, who see a broken system, have suffered at its hands, and feel rightly enraged by the injustices it perpetrates against the most vulnerable members of society.

I am raising two young children in a callous, warped and divided society, and the question of what I can do to reform that society preoccupies me almost as much as the more selfish question of what I can do to shelter them from it.

But I’ve come to realize, increasingly, depressingly, that many of the reactions that feel instinctively correct are having a minimal, even a counter-productive, impact. All the proselytizing on social media, all the railing in the pub — if anything, the anger I feel, however just, only serves to deepen the fault-lines that have led us to where we are today.

You say you don’t want to live angry. No-one does, and that’s just the problem. The left needs to figure out how to channel anger at the right issues at the right time, while also offering an optimistic and positive vision of the future for people to get behind. Until then, the chasm will widen, good people will continue to bury their heads, leaving only the angriest and most polarizing voices screaming at each other across the void.

Once again, thanks for reading, and for challenging me to explain my thesis with more clarity.