The kindest way to treat your enemies is to hate them. Hate them and you don’t understand them or their appeal. Hate them and you cannot see their own doubts and divisions.
The opponents of Conservatives see them as greed-driven monsters, concerned only with helping the rich and middle-class. They are so tawdry, so lacking in idealism, they make you hate your own country.
‘There has been so little that has happened to England since the 1980s that I have been happy about or felt able to endorse,’ sighed Alan Bennett recently, before going on to accuse the Tories of creating a one-party state (a charge which astonished everyone who 1) knew that the Tories had not had a majority from 1997 to 2015 and barely have one now; and 2) all of us who have visited an actual one party state.)
For their part, conservatives see leftists as dangerously stupid, faddish and above all corrupt.
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