Thank God (or whomever) for last night. No neo-Fascist riots in Britain, although they had been widely predicted. Instead, huge friendly pro-immigrant crowds, with music and dancing, but no reported violence, and the few neo-Nazis who did show up having to be safeguarded – probably unnecessarily – by the police they’d been hurling bricks at the weekend before.

Maybe it was the police presence that deterred the ultras. (They’re not really very brave. ‘Tommy Robinson’ was apparently hiding away on holiday in Cyprus. Is that true?) Or – more likely in my view – it may be that the counter-demonstrations represented the country rather better than the Far Rightists, despite the latters’ claims to be ‘speaking for Britain’, and the noise they (usually) make.

That’s the case I was trying to argue in my Britain’s Contested History. It’s difficult to define ‘Britishness’, and not very useful, I think; but ‘toleration’ must be there somewhere, as one of our best – if not universal, or exclusive – traits. Which is why Theresa May’s evocation of Britain’s ‘Hostile Environment’ in 2012, as a way of deterring immigrants, could be seen as deeply ‘unpatriotic’; and can also be regarded as the foundation stone – built on afterwards by two other vile women: Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – of the minority racist nationalism we saw in English city centres before last night.

Observing all this from a thousand miles away, I feel just a little bit better now.