I hope people don’t think I was too harsh in my language in yesterday’s blog, and some of the comments I made around it.

Insecure, anxious, neurotic and obsessed by grievances.

When I was writing this blog I was thinking back to some time I spent in Ireland and Spain over New Year. I read the papers over there most days and I was struck my the tone of them. They were calm, sensible, and grown up. They discussed issues like immigration but without any sense of panic or hysteria

I was struck by the contrast with the British press who treat every issue with a sense of panic and hysteria, particularly anything to do with immigration or foreigners

The Mail and the Express have been wetting their knickers on their front pages for decades, but I was struck how papers like the Telegraph and the Times had followed suit, full of anxiety, insecurity and nasty little grievances towards anyone not like them. They only difference was that the Telegraph and Times are slightly more pompous than the Mail and Express

By contrast the Irish Independent, which has a similar political outlook to the Telegraph, reminded me of what the Telegraph used to be like a few decades ago. Calm, sensible, and measured even if it was snobby and reactionary.

GB News is only the most extreme example of this phenomena.

So I am sorry if people didn’t like me using words like insecure, anxious, neurotic and obsessed by grievances. But these are the emotions that dominate a significant part of the British media, in a way that other countries don’t indulge in.

We are no longer the country of the Blitz Spirit, the Bulldog Breed, the stiff upper lip. Instead we are full of fear and neuroses acted out on TV and in the press. Ironically the kind of hysteria which we used to attribute to foreigners.

And above all anger. Anger for entertainment.