THIS current period is one of the few occasions in the whole of history in which it would be perfectly reasonable for almost anyone of any political disposition, or none, to observe that they don’t recognise their own country any more.

Let’s face it, it’s not normal to be prohibited from having your hair cut, to be questioned by the rozzers on how many times you’ve been out for a walk today, or to face arrest if you invite the neighbours over for a barbecue.

Those bizarre conditions may have played a factor in the deplorable scenes of unrest, vandalism and sporadic violence over the past couple of weeks. There’s at least the possibility that some people, having been cooped up too long, were longing for the chance to get into a crowd, and also to find some subject other than coronavirus to get worked up about.

That’s not to belittle the perfectly reasonable and well-founded concerns of those protesting against racism, only a very small minority of whom used it as an excuse for vandalism and assaults on the police.

Mass gatherings in the middle of a pandemic, to complain about the repulsive behaviour of foreign policemen thousands of miles away, may not be the greatest idea, but the motivation for them seems a lot more solid than staging a counter-demonstration based on identifying the country’s most racist statues, and then, in the name of defending them, throwing things at the police.

I suspect the literally and metaphorically febrile atmosphere created by lockdown has artificially amplified this story, though it is clearly a significant one, as has the media’s understandable eagerness to cover an issue unrelated to coronavirus. At any rate, it seems more likely than the claims of some commentators that it marks an all-out culture war.

Those who subscribe unreservedly to identity politics and critical race theory, and whose idea of political engagement is constantly to search for something to be offended by, and then to persecute and condemn those who fail to agree with them, are still a small minority, though it often doesn’t seem like it because they are so vocal. Thankfully, the number of boneheaded racists desperate for a ‘protest’ whose sudden interest in statues is expressed by drinking 16 pints and urinating on a memorial to a murdered policeman seems to be an even smaller minority.

In fact, Ipsos Mori’s new survey on attitudes towards race suggests not only that most people aren’t openly racist, but that they are getting more liberal on the subject; two-thirds thought that the UK would be more diverse and tolerant in the next 10 years (up from 50 per cent a decade ago) and 84 per cent (up from 55 per cent) strongly disagreed with the notion that someone had to be white to be properly British.

Shame the numbers aren’t even higher, but – along with polls that suggest opposition to immigration has fallen (from 64 per cent to under 25 per cent in the last decade) – it’s surely a good sign. You don’t have to be a progressive to see it as progress.

Of course racism exists and, sadly, probably always will; and, of course, it should be robustly challenged, confronted and condemned. But, contrary to the line presented by the advocates of identity politics, the UK is by every standard one of the world’s most tolerant and liberal societies. If there is something which threatens the country’s general move towards a yet more tolerant and liberal atmosphere, it is not so much racism or xenophobia as alienation. That is the position of many people who no longer recognise their country for reasons that have nothing to do with race, immigration or prejudice.

The corrosive aspect of much identity politics is that, in the name of liberalism, it elevates membership of one or other group, marked out by its perceived vulnerability or victimhood and thereby deprived of “privilege” enjoyed by others, over other ideas of belonging which are not only more natural but likelier, given demographic trends, to become more tolerant and diverse.

Those spontaneous forms of identity might be rooted in geography, faith, dialect, cookery or some other shared cultural base – anything from brass bands to morris dancing, or from landscape to a sense of “working class values”. Once upon a time they would have included economic class interests, or an industry. But what marked them out, and distinguishes them from groups competing over their minority status, was that they formed organically.

By contrast, attempts to impose tolerance and diversity by dictat are destined to fail, because they are about identifying difference (and those differing interests often compete) rather than shared qualities. Tolerant liberalism, though, is in the widest sense naturally conservative, because it relies on common values, rituals, traditions and priorities.

It’s not a common trait amongst modern Conservatives, who are mostly radical Whigs, and seem uninterested in conserving anything, except the interests of big business. It’s probably strongest amongst old-fashioned Labour voters, actually, especially those in the north of England, those strongly tied to the cultural aspects of Scottish nationalism, or people who think of themselves as rural, rather than urban.

The bad news for these people is that all the institutions of government, business, education and media are populated – no matter what their politics are – by those who are not at all conservative in that sense. This is the division that the writer David Goodhart makes between “somewheres” – people rooted in communities of some kind – and “anywheres”, overwhelmingly progressive, metropolitan in outlook (and almost certainly geographically) and graduates.

Almost by definition, practically no one in any branch of the establishment belongs to the former group or speaks for them. At best, they get – so far ineffectual – lip service from government; at worst, opportunistic populists, or genuinely divisive racists, posture as their representatives – often while undermining their interests. The almost universal consensus among those who govern is that the “somewheres” are ill-informed, probably bigoted and certainly on the wrong side of history; because they are convinced of their own superiority, they can cheerfully ignore them or overrule them for their own good. That’s the real dividing faultline in society now.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.

Read more: Why can’t we have a Hong Kong in the Firth of Clyde?