THEY sit around all day in their big houses quaffing champagne, eating lobster, counting and plotting ways to screw over the proletariat, don’t they? And to top it off, they’re nasty to children and animals. Who am I talking about? Tories, of course!

This is just the sort of thing I might have said as a teenager. Even then I would have known it was a caricature, however, since my father, a working-class factory worker who most certainly did not “quaff” anything (and was always kind to children and animals), always voted Conservative.

Such ridiculous black and white political posturing can be just about bearable in young people who do not yet have the life experience to realise that folk are often awful regardless, not because of, their political views. In other words, those of all ideological persuasions can be numpties. Or indeed wonderful people. To paraphrase Sting in his admittedly crass song from 1985 about the Cold War, Russians love their children too.

You’d think MPs of all people should know this. That’s why it was so downright cringeworthy to hear Labour politician Laura Pidcock, who is 29 and worked as a mental health support worker before entering parliament, declare with pride recently that she would never dream of being friends with a Tory. In an interview with leftist website Skwakbox – a publication that seems to throw around “mainstream media” as liberally as Donald Trump namechecks “fake news” - Ms Pidcock said she would not “hang out with Tory women” as they were “no friends of mine” and “an enemy to lots of women”.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, her comments inspired the Guardian to commission an article headlined – I kid you not - “Is it OK to be friends with a Tory?”, in which two left-leaning columnists argued the toss. The resulting piece could have been written by satirist Armando Ianucci, though I fear he would have thought the concept too silly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly no fan of Tory policy; indeed, I still can’t decide whether the current Government is chaotic or just plain malicious (I suspect it’s a bit of both). But that doesn’t mean to say I wouldn’t have a pint with David Davis or Anna Soubry. Policies are and should be fair game for attack, but surely by and large people should not be. It’s understandable that folk generally gravitate towards those who hold similar views and values where personal relationships are concerned, but to categorically state you could not possibly be friends with anyone of with an opposing political viewpoint seems both childish and worryingly closed-minded.

Indeed, even the youngest MP in the Commons, SNP left-winger Mhairi Black, is mature enough to have worked out by the age of 22 that your political opponents aren’t necessary evil monsters. She is, after all, a good pal of Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is about as far-right on the Tory spectrum as it is possible to be.

Ms Black, through her excellent contributions to the Work and Pensions Committee alongside said Mr Rees-Mogg, has also highlighted that election as an MP means being willing and able to work with colleagues from all political parties to achieve results. It also means having the sense to put your tribal allegiances to one side when necessary to work towards what’s best for all your constituents - even the ones who didn’t vote for you. Ms Pidcock clearly has much to learn.

But perhaps she is simply reflecting the wider societal shift towards echo chamber thinking that our embrace of social media continues to highlight. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook offer wonderful and endless opportunities to debate issues like never before, to link up with like-minded friends and peers, to criticise and, if we feel strongly enough, organise movements that reflect our concerns.

But it also creates silos and echo chambers where people only hear, consort with and repeat views they already agree with. They avoid even hearing views they disagree with, never mind engaging with them. This, of course, can lead to polarisation and even paranoia; if you’re not with me, you’re against me; all Tories/lefties/Yes-ers/No-ers are horrible people and their views are “offensive”.

I genuinely worry that such self-imposed apartheid will not only kill off our ability to think critically and work through complex questions, but stop us mixing with others even casually. I’m sorry to say I’ve seen many online threads over the years where folk from one side of the Scottish independence debate say they couldn’t or wouldn’t be friends with someone from the opposing side. I’d like to think this is just online banter, that people are just getting a bit carried away. But comments like Ms Pidcock’s show that such attitudes are becoming not only more prevalent, but acceptable.

We like to think the sort of scenes witnessed in Charlottesville a couple of weeks ago, where white supremacists spat hate and violence at those protesting against them, where a young woman was killed, would never happen here in the UK. But when division is so deeply sown, and when language is used to separate “us” from “them”, there is no easy way back.