Oreo
Annie1 there are those who can’t bear to be friends with anyone who holds opposing views to their own, on politics or anything else.I think I should maybe feel sorry for them but mainly think of them as idiots.
I think that a lack of tolerance (including thinking of others as idiots!) has been fostered by the Tories. They have deliberately turned young against old, for instance, rich against poor, and poor against poorer (and vice versa in each case). It's very easy to create resentment amongst people who have little by telling them that their plight is the fault of those who have even less.
Similarly, Gove's talk about people being fed up with 'experts' (which he had to drop like a stone when we needed experts to persuade us to lock down) created animosity between people who came to resent 'elites', and reverse the ambition to get at least 50% of young people places at university. If 'experts' are to be despised, people are more likely to agree that children don't need an education, even though it usually other people's children who 'aren't right for university'). This sort of thing, and the way immigration was used to blame refugees for the lack of investment in the welfare state created the environment that led to Brexit, which has fed into the cost of living crisis, and caused more division than anything I've seen in my lifetime.
We are, as what used to be a society, much more divided than ever. Also, social media means that people talk about their beliefs more than they used to when politics weren't considered a suitable topic for polite conversation. Now people sit behind keyboards and write others off as 'idiots', 'Boomers', 'TERFs', 'Remoaners' and so on, and don't bother to listen to them. We see it on here all the time - differences of opinion quickly get nasty, even when they are about celebrities or the RF, who have no impact on the lives of anyone on here.
When there was a safety net - decent benefits, council houses, an NHS that delivered a GP appointment when you wanted it and operations when you needed them and so on, people weren't so scared of falling through the holes, and were more tolerant of others in some ways. In others, such as racism, sexism and homophobia, however, we have come a long way, so up to a point it is swings and roundabouts, I suppose.
. I share your approach (ie having friends of all political shades), but I respect the right of others to differ and prefer not to, provided they can explain why they hold a differing view. 