The novel of the summer reminds me how the politics of hope has been strangled

FOURTEEN years ago, when David Cameron defeated Gordon Brown to usher in the new British age of chaotic, wayward Conservatism, I was still in my thirties.

Watching first a sequence of divisions sewn into the country, on issues of genuine political consequence, then the factious, petty culture wars that nagged in their wake, reflected a more internal turmoil for me. How to be middle-aged.

This election, I face an impending reversal of political weather well into my fifties. Most of my concerns about the forthcoming election are personal, not ideological, a part of older age I hadn't factored in. I've been in the same relationship since Blair was PM and sober for several years. I run a business.

My priority exciting thoughts outside work rotate around if, how and when I'll be able to retire.

Just because I now look back at my own youth as a fruitlessly fun search for absent utopias doesn't mean I haven't noticed how under-represented young people have been so far in the election coverage. When the media circus arrived in Clacton this week to gawp at Nigel Farage at close range, they were not looking for 23-year-olds to probe on him. Ingenues on all sides are no longer fresh. Angela Rayner is a grandmother. Owen Jones is almost 40.