This election may be the first in which the place of Islam in British society takes centre stage — not, we must hope, under the duress of a major terrorist attack. The Labour Party is often seen as “the Muslim party” — a factor that helps to explain its strength in many urban areas. But Labour’s claim that it does not tolerate anti-Semitism collapsed after Ken Livingstone avoided expulsion despite his attempts to identify Zionism with Hitler, echoing Communist propaganda. Labour has undoubtedly boosted its pro-Islamic credentials by endorsing anti-Zionism, yet many British Jews are not only appalled by the party’s direction, but are even wondering about the long-term future in a Britain where at least one of the two main parties denies the legitimacy of their attachment to Israel. In the last election this brutal disenfranchising of a community that has flourished in Britain for centuries was somewhat obscured by the fact that the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was the son of Jewish refugees. This time, the presence of Jeremy Corbyn — a lifelong anti-Zionist — removes any ambiguity about Labour’s requirement to repudiate the Jewish State. By contrast, Mrs May has repeatedly demonstrated her admiration for Israel, even raising the possibility of a royal visit to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

Parties that play identity politics by setting one minority against another must beware of the consequences. That Britain is already a bitterly divided society was made obvious last year by the referendum. The Conservatives, having held office for seven years, must bear some responsibility for this state of affairs. And Theresa May’s brief premiership has indeed been marked by a sincere attempt to reunite the country around the Judaeo-Christian values to which she appealed in her Easter message. However, the three opposition parties of the Left — Labour, Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists — do not speak her language. Their unifying values are those of either socialism or European federalism, or both. They intend to carry on guerrilla warfare, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary, to reopen all the issues voters regard as settled — though derailing Brexit is only a means to the end of deconstructing the nation state and its institutions in favour of supranational ones.

Mrs May has an answer to the opposition: she says that “the country is coming together, but Westminster is not”. This, as various commentators and the Labour politician Yvette Cooper pointed out, is questionable on both counts: polls suggest that Leavers and Remainers (or Somewheres and Anywheres) mostly voted according to their perceived interests, so few have (like Mrs May) switched sides. And the government was getting its business through both Houses, despite a small majority in the Commons and none in the Lords.

Yet the Prime Minister was right to compare the country favourably with Westminster and, by implication, what Goodhart calls the global village (which includes the BBC, academia, the civil service and the City). Most people are not obsessed with politics; they are too busy getting on with their lives. They may or may not have liked the referendum result; either way, they accepted it and moved on. In so far as it affects them, their instinct is to make a success of it. That is not how Westminster works. Its adversarial system sees everything as a zero-sum game and consequently goes on rehearsing old arguments interminably. The Leavers may have “won the argument” on Europe, but the Remainers in Westminster and their allies in Whitehall live to fight another day, awaiting their restoration.