When some otherwise reasonable and contented men approach middle age, they embark on a final desperate attempt to drink from the elixir of their rapidly disappearing youth. This is a well-known social phenomenon, yet it retains the capacity to startle.

At the milder end of the scale this is manifest merely in dodgy apparel, facial diamanté or cycling to work. At the more extreme end, they’ve been known to get on that TikTok where they’ll post pictures of themselves sweating up Munros in the hope, perhaps, of impressing younger women.

In the 21st century, though, these men’s (and it is mainly men) desire to feel relevant in a world rapidly spinning away from them can have darker consequences. These were spelled out by Dr Sara Wilford at the weekend in a thought-provoking interview with my esteemed and gifted colleague, Neil Mackay.

Dr Wilford is a public policy expert and an associate professor at De Montfort University who has been observing the increasing attraction of far-right ideology for middle-aged people. Among the many compelling reasons Dr Wilford attributes to this phenomenon is the disappointment, rage and bewilderment that some of them experience when they realise that their lives haven’t, perhaps, proceeded in the direction they’d intended them to.

The academic has thus embarked on the SMIDGE Project: Social Media Narratives Addressing Extremism in Middle Age. In recent years, I’ve seen some of this manifest in angry, white middle-aged men gathering outside asylum hotels and hostels shouting abuse and threats.

Rise of middle-aged extremists: Is Gen X the radicalised generation?

Scotland betrayed........

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