I’ve had more reminders than I needed about how old I am getting this weekend.

First of all, both brilliant finalists in the men’s singles at Wimbledon were born in the 2000’s. And we won’t dwell for too long on the knowledge that people getting the vote next year will have been born in the year of the 2008 Financial Crash.

And then I spent many hours on Saturday evening watching the re-run of Live Aid. How can it possibly be 40 years since Bob Geldof put together the spectacular transatlantic concert to raise money for aid for those starving due to famine in Ethiopia? I certainly don’t feel 40 years older.

Live Aid was something you wanted to be part of, a collective effort to do something positive to help people who were really suffering. I went along to the Alliance and Leicester in Wick to hand over my pocket money. In those days there was no way of doing this in seconds with online banking on your phone. The very idea that a tiny rectangle could basically contain your entire life was barely even the stuff of science fiction.  The bank clerk had to write things out in longhand to put the donation through.

Neither my sister nor I think that our parents actually let us watch the concert, though I know I certainly, surreptitiously,  disobeyed them for some of it. My husband didn’t see it at all as he didn’t have a television at the time, so we thoroughly enjoyed the re-run on Saturday.  From Madonna rocking the white socks and court shoes look to the iconic Queen, to Phil Collins appearing in both London and Philadelphia, to Kiki Dee and Elton John, to David Bowie giving up his last song to show a devastating video which really brought the cash in and had me in tears again, it was an incredible showcase of the soundtrack of my youth. I knew pretty much every single word of every song they sang. I always swore I would never be one of those people who said that the music of their youth was the best, but of course it was. It has to be. The songs you first fall in love with are the ones that stay with you.

It dawns on me that the people in their teens and twenties who cheered on the bands then are now approaching their sixties and seventies and too many of them are supporting Reform.

What on earth happened?

It certainly wasn’t an accident.

Take a right wing media, a complete failure of the political system to enact the change the country needed to become more equal and meet people’s needs, a major financial crash and social media algorithms stoking divisions and blame over decades and you end up with the mess we have now.  It was kind of obvious what was going on but I don’t think we fully appreciated the consequences until it was too late. The right shouted loud and proud about what they wanted, while those in government chipped away at the social contract. This imperfect storm created the conditions of discontent that enabled Brexit, something that benefits a few billionaires and makes the rest of us suffer.

And now the world faces even greater instability and danger. The demolition of USAID compounded by the cuts to our own aid budget will both kill people and create a dangerous vacuum which will diminish the influence of western human rights based  democracy.

There are voices that think that progressive types should just shut up and not challenge those who stoke division. They attribute the defeat of Kamala Harris to her being too “woke” rather than having five minutes to put a campaign together due to her predecessor hanging around for too long.

Certainly the Democrats made mistakes by not producing a plan to tackle the financial vice too many of their target audience was trapped in. But surely if we let the right scream their own script and intimidate the opposition into staying quiet, that’s a massive lose/lose.  If we don’t challenge the well-funded racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic rhetoric and misinformation, it becomes the norm and that only leads to bad things.

It’s high time that those on the progressive side of politics found our voices and found a way to advance our arguments of inclusiveness and equality in a way that really connects with people.

If we want to halt the descent into a divided nation where scapegoats are picked off one by one, we need to speak our values loudly and show how we will actually help people to live easier, more prosperous lives both in this country and across the world. Then we will have more chance of achieving power, creating a properly functioning democracy fit for the 21st century and creating the fair, free and open society we dream of.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social