‘I try not to get into it with him,’ said Michael, snipping away. ‘He’s still the same guy when we talk about music and Arsenal, still a great uncle to the kids. What do I know anyway? I haven’t read half as much as he has.’

Tony is a handsome and stylish man. He wears his hair in an Afro, wears long coats and colourful scarves, a natty funk-musician from the 1970s. When I was looking for a new football game after university, Michael had introduced me to Tony. He was one of my first London mates who I hadn’t met through university or the bookshop. We’d go for pints after the game and talk about music, go to gigs at Cafe Oto or Village Underground. He worked as a train inspector back and forth into Essex from Liverpool Street every day. And he had become so angry. I watched the videos he posted on Facebook of Tommy Robinson charging into the offices of think tanks to confront people who had labelled him racist, flustered men who would refuse to back up their statements with evidence. I could see how someone could be convinced if this was all they saw of him: how effective a tactic it was to find and confront people who had condemned him on received opinion, who couldn’t precisely point out the incidents in which he’d proved himself to be racist. (Any who could would have been cut from the edit.) People who liked him might have liked him more because of the middle-class people he embarrassed than because of the Muslims he hated. Trails of thumbs-up and lovehearts moved across the videos in animated graphics from left to right across the screen, like immigrants heading back to their own countries.

‘Hey, look, Tony,’ I said, a few days later, while we were walking back to the bike rack in our replica shirts, Arsenal and Fleetwood, swigging from our water bottles.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ve been following those links you’ve been posting on Facebook.’

‘Good.’

‘But, you know, you don’t really believe that all Muslims support terrorism and want to take over the country, do you?’

‘Bruv. Don’t patronise me. It’s more complicated than that. That’s not what we’re saying. Course not all of them. Not most. But are they doing enough to condemn it? Nah, they’re not doing that either. We’re funding their schools for them to teach children what’s wrong with our society. It’s our society, man.’

‘And Corbyn being a terrorist too? He’s not a terrorist.’

‘The IRA, man! He supports the IRA!’

‘That was ages ago. Why do you care so much about it?’