You’re right, there.

I’ve found it remarkably easy to bring up our politics recently. Almost everyone I come across is feeling the squeeze in some way. Whether it’s energy, food, general inflation, interest / mortgage rates, house prices, rent, stagnating wages, redundancies. I can’t think of anyone I talk to regularly who isn’t worrying about at least one of these things. And they bring it up!

This time five years ago, or even last year, pre- and "mid-"pandemic (I don’t believe it’s over), I’d struggle to find a common issue to bring up. Seriously struggling to pay the bills was only something that happened to the poorest, the laziest, and to people in other countries (in bourgeois eyes, anyway; we know better). If I spoke then about capitalism, I’d often get rebuffed. Not anymore. Well, not so much anymore.

Although now the challenge is pointing out where the real blame lies (i.e. not Ukraine / Russia, Brexit, this or that party, ‘Chinese’ / ‘Russian’ investment (of course, it’s only ever the Russians and Chinese who would use investments to influence other countries)).