OPINION - The novel of the summer has reminded me: where did the politics of hope go?

Fourteen years ago, when David Cameron defeated Gordon Brown to usher in the new British age of chaotic, wayward Conservatism, I was still in my thirties. Watching first a sequence of divisions sewn into the country, on issues of genuine political consequence, then the factious, petty culture wars that nagged in their wake, reflected a more internal turmoil for me. How to be middle-aged.