A couple of weeks ago, the Guardian published an article entitled: ‘“I feel like I’m losing her”: the families torn apart by older relatives going far right’. It was full of heart-rending tales from metropolitan liberals about how their dim-witted parents had been duped into believing anti-Muslim conspiracy theories by following people like Rupert Lowe on social media. One particularly exasperated man suggested a course of therapy for his mother, fearing that she might want to join Reform.

But is it really the online radicalisation of elderly parents that’s putting families under pressure in the run-up to the local elections? I suspect it has more to do with their children, particularly their daughters, embracing a toxic strain of identity politics imported from America. A recent poll of 2,000 18- to 30-year-old women in the New Statesman by Merlin Strategy lends weight to that theory.

One man suggested a course of therapy for his mother, fearing she might want to join Reform

One man suggested a course of therapy for his mother, fearing she might want to join Reform

Only half of the women surveyed feel positively towards men, a figure that drops to 35 per cent among the under-25s. A quarter say their partner having........

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