You can keep telling yourself this, but you’re simply wrong. I’m a left-leaning liberal who’s fiercely anti-authoritarian, and if you couldn’t deduce that from my work you haven’t understood a word of it.

I’m not an ideologue. I mistrust ideologies. I’ve never met an ideologue who wasn’t prepared to deny a bit of inconvenient truth to keep their world view intact and I include ideologies with which I find myself in broad sympathy. On the other hand, I am an idealist. I believe in human beings. We are undeniably capable of terrible acts, but the evidence is that we are astoundingly collaborative and mutually supportive, especially when times are hard.

My values haven’t changed; what’s changed is the political landscape. What was once my natural home (a pragmatic centre-left party focused on dealing with economic disparity, championing social liberalism and equal rights) is now dominated by an illiberal, identity-based strain of politics I consider elitist, harmful and out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of regular people, particularly women (and I’ve still lived more than half of my life as a non-wealthy woman, and some of that time was spent in poverty).

There are women with whom I make common cause in the TERF wars I disagree with on other things. Within obvious limits (sucking up to literal Nazis) I don’t particularly care about their personal politics. The reality is that there’s currently an assault on women’s rights unparalleled in my lifetime, and it’s coming from both left and right. If ever there was a time for women across the political spectrum to come together, it is now.

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