I try to keep politics out of these pages – these days it’s far too divisive and provocative a subject. But yesterday I was contacted by a TV news correspondent asking if I’d like to contribute to a piece on the mental health impact of Brexit. And that got me thinking again about the sheer enormity of the changes this country is hurtling towards – and the damaging effects Brexit is having on our society before we’ve even left the EU.

When was the last time in Britain that a single political issue caused so much sadness, anxiety and anger that it divided friends, families and communities from one another? When was the last time that such untrammelled levels of hatred poisoned the national conversation? Possibly during the 1984/5 miners’ strike. But certainly I have never known anything like it in the last 30 years.

Every Thursday I have to decide whether to grit my teeth and watch that week’s edition of BBC1’s Question Time. The audience is often frighteningly venomous, on both sides of the argument. At London dinner parties friends whisper: “Whatever you do, don’t mention Brexit – she voted Leave…” Out in the country, angry posters adorn the front windows of terraced houses. Take our country back! And We won the war – we can win Brexit!

German parallels

I studied History at university, and was fascinated by the last years of the Weimar Republic. And what I see and hear today reminds me to a worrying degree of the death-throes of democracy in the Germany of the early 1930s. The vicious newspaper headlines slamming “traitors” and “enemies of the people”. The moderate politicians harangued on their way to Parliament by jostling protesters. Governments clinging shamelessly to office after enduring massive defeats.

And yes, I do worry about the impact of Brexit not only on the nation’s economy and polity, not only on this country’s standing in the international community, but also on its health and wellbeing. We are becoming a nastier country full of anger and rage. I feel it in myself whenever the subject of Brexit comes up. My blood boils when I’m confronted with an opposing viewpoint. An entire generation is growing up surrounded by hatred.

Wistfully, I think: if only we could get back to the happy, civilised liberalism of the golden era of the late 1990s – when Britain boomed, the government ran the country in a centrist, managerial way, and people were more interested in the latest hits of the Spice Girls than in angry political slogans.

Anger at elites

But the 2016 referendum unleashed all the pent-up discontent that had been simmering under the surface since the financial crisis. Voters used the occasion to register their anger at remote “elites” who – in their view – were opening the floodgates to endless immigration. Clearly there were real issues the political class had failed to address properly for years. But by voting to leave the EU, the malcontents threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Ever since the referendum, Brexit has dominated not only political debate but also the business of government. Much-needed reforms of the NHS, the care system, education and criminal justice are put on ice because there isn’t the time to deal with them. And far from saving us money, the decision to quit the EU has incurred endless extra expenses, from stockpiling medicines to practising for the expected motorway traffic jams.

So in practical terms, Brexit is time-wasting, effort-wasting and money-wasting. In social terms it is hugely divisive and causing levels of stress and anger that I’ve rarely encountered before in politics.

Europe needs to stick together

But for me the decision to leave the EU has also caused real personal hurt. I’ve grown up with the EU and its predecessor, the EEC. I am London-born but half-German and quarter-Polish. I feel European to the core. For me, all European countries should stick together and work together to promote their common values.

In a world of territorial aggression, nuclear posturing, authoritarian leaders and incipient environmental collapse, Britain’s place is in Europe, with Europe, at the heart of Europe. Anything else is an abrogation of our responsibilities – both to our own children and to the rest of the world.

Just before the 2016 referendum I addressed these issues in a short video which I put up on YouTube:

Time is running out now. There are just two months left before Britain crashes out of the most successful free trade area on the planet. It is time for a People’s Vote to ask the electorate one more time if this is really what they want.