So first question, this is from Helen, who asks, in the introduction to clean living,

you describe yourself as being part of the most politically quietest generation between

1945 and the present day.

Do you see any particular commonalities amongst people like yourself who identified with

the left at a time when socialism seemed a particularly exotic project?

And are there any particular differences

you see between your generation and younger leftists? Yeah, yeah, very much so. I mean, all of

these sorts of generational generalisations, you know, they're all a kind of rule of thumb.

There'll always be people that it doesn't apply to and so on, with that caveat in mind, I'm always kind of disappointed in myself by how much

I'm sort of drawn to, particularly in commissioning, the Tribune and for the alternative

guide to the London boroughs that I edited for Open House last year, that a lot of

the people are basically

in that category, in the sort of category of people in the 30s or 40s who are on the left.

Because we all, I mean, I don't want to kind of go down the road of talking too much about

that thing. But we all, those of us who took part in left wing politics in the last five years,

and I suspect this is true of the Sanders movement and the DSA as it is true of Corbinism,

noticed the big gap, you know, that there was the 25-year-olds and there were the 65-year-olds.

And it wasn't that there was no one in between, because obviously I was there.

I imagine you were there.

But we were a tiny minority.

There would be a big meeting would have like 40 people in the 60s and 70s, 40 people from between 17 and 30 and 10, if you were lucky, in the ages between that.

So I think that the kind of point of that generation, which I suppose, you know, the sort of larger generation X cohort.

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