I have been reading about the most abysmal place. It is a land where children, red-faced with their own radicalism, march alongside bearded Islamists to make the streets a no-go zone, while nodding-dog liberals curse the Brexiter masses for inflating the cost of their arugula. It boasts an infinite array of pronouns; multimillion-pound townhouses whose residents demand you check your privilege; a thousand rainbow flags, but not a single St George’s cross. It is rife with criminal behaviour, which extends far beyond the prices charged by pub landlords. Hieronymus Bosch, put down your paintbrush: this place truly is Hell.

It also happens to be my home.

I am that increasingly rare thing – an aboriginal Londoner. I was born and raised and still live in what Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak dismiss as “north London”, although their fantasy land of BBC barons and lefty lawyers describes not an inch of my childhood suburb of dead factories and giant retail parks. I have neither country bolthole nor dreams of retreating to a coastal idyll. The rootedness of me and my neighbours, including migrants and children of migrants, doesn’t fit Theresa May’s jibe about being “citizens of nowhere”.

Indeed, were the rightwingers so furious at London actually to examine their punchbag, they’d find a lot to like. A city controlled by Islamists, Lee Anderson? Forty per cent of Londoners describe themselves as Christian, pretty much the same as in your own constituency of Ashfield, while inner London ranks among the most devoutly Catholic regions in the entire country. How about........

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