Whose fight is it anyway?

Something very sad has happened to our country over the last 15 months or so and I think it's time we thought about it rather seriously. We seem to have experienced a major character-change in the way we relate to each other. Known traditionally for our welcoming and tolerant outlook, we are suddenly a nation of critics, arguing with each other, name-calling and suspicious of anyone and everyone with a different background or political opinion.

Earlier this week, I had cause to stop and wonder about that shift. I attended a funeral for someone I had never met or known – something I do quite often in my capacity as a singer. I found myself deeply moved by the love expressed for the deceased and the grief felt by those left behind. It's always the same – hearing someone remembered and mourned in the words of those who loved them and seeing the tears of the bereft is a powerful reminder that we are all eminently and overwhelmingly loving and loveable.

From what I picked up I suspect that our politics would not have aligned, yet I found myself wishing I had known the gentleman who had died, and that I had been in his circle of friends. “Generous, loving, kind, patient” were among the adjectives used to describe him. The fact that similar words are usually deployed at most funerals should not, I think, be dismissed as meaningless cliché; rather they indicate that we are all capable of living up to our human potential and that when we do, we all touch other lives.

That's the greatest tragedy of the current political scene – we have lost touch with the knowledge that everyone is loved and precious to another. The person to whom we direct insults is the same person who lights up the room for someone else. We have forgotten how to respect difference. We, the public, have been sucked into a battle which was never our's. In-fighting between members of the Conservative Party has been allowed to spill out into the country as a whole. Suddenly, everyone we meet is to be judged as to whether they support Leave or Remain. Should they turn out to be on the opposite bench from our own, we attack, patronise, jeer or pass insults. Or maybe we ignore them but make a mental note of their clear intellectual deficiencies. More and more people on social media are boasting or bemoaning mass de-friendings since the referendum. This segmenting of society is in addition to the terribly divisive rhetoric that has sprung up between UK-born citizens and immigrants. Indeed whether one resists this corrosive and hurtful behaviour or endorses it has itself become a further source of disunity in the country.

How did this happen? I repeat - this is not our battle. My “enemy” was never my next-door neighbour, nor were the voters in another city at the other end of the country. The immigrants to this country were never out to harm me or anyone else. We, the ordinary residents of this country, should be able to look to each other as friends, team-mates even. We have been gulled into picking fights with each other and seeing ourselves in one of two diametrically-opposed camps, which serves simply to distract us from what should be our real concerns – social justice and respect and equality for all. In the case of Brexit, big-money has perverted a democratic event for its own tax-avoiding ends and an astoundingly bold power-grab is underway by the executive. Too often we miss this narrative and instead attack each other.

If only we didn't have this distorting prism pressed upon us. If only we were free to look at everyone we encounter simply as a human being, frail and insecure as ourselves. Only five years ago we were proud in Britain to be a nation of historical and global significance, celebrating our diversity and welcoming The World to London for the Olympic Games. How tragic that we have been persuaded to make such a dramatic change of outlook. I am not arguing for cessation of democratic debate or protest – far from it. But I do think we need to remember that we are not the enemy to each other and to conduct ourselves in the ways that are traditionally British – polite, patient, all-embracing, multi-cultural, generous, funny and generally allergic to political extremism.

Abrupt or jagged personality changes are rarely permanent and I doubt this will last. I am reminded of a well-known spiritual exercise – to write the eulogy you would want to hear at your own funeral. Articulating how you wish to be remembered can be a very powerful way of revealing to yourself how you want to lead your life. I wonder whether if as a nation we were to indulge in something similar, it might drag us away from behaviours that, with hindsight, will undoubtedly shame us.