It is fashionable – on both the right and on the left – to preach impending societal collapse. Last summer, the French newspaper Le Figaro described a “whiff of civil war” in the air in Britain. Elon Musk went a step further, suggesting civil war “was inevitable”. Through an unsustainable combination of low growth, poor infrastructure and high immigration, the right in Britain, Ireland and America see a powder keg.

Meanwhile, the left looks on and sees a world recaptured by racists and people they glibly refer to as fascists. They see the mainstreaming of Nigel Farage and wonder if Britain is heading further to the right of him. They watch Maga run amok in America, so much worse in Donald Trump’s second term than his first, and wonder if that energy – with the ICE raids and disregard for tradition – is setting the broader weather. These are cross-border feelings, fomented on social media channels that have little concern for the peculiarities of each nation state.

All of these lingering tensions found their way to central London last Saturday, as upwards of 150,000 people came out for

© The Irish Times