People in Britain used to agree to disagree. Since Brexit, they no longer dare to talk about difficult things | Elif Shafak

Studies suggest the country is more divided than ever – but we won’t come together unless we begin to talk rationally and calmly

Read more from the Brexit Vote: 10 Years On series

When I first moved to England, nearly two decades ago, I was invited to attend a talk in London on “the future of British identity”. It was a heated debate from the start, and it became all the more intense when the subject of putting colonial history in the school curriculum was raised. The two main speakers held opposite views and they traded barbs wrapped in velvet – scathing but polite at the same time. It wasn’t just the particulars of the oratory that stayed with me, but what happened afterwards. When the session was over, I saw the speakers shake hands, and then I heard one of them casually ask the other whether he would like to go for a pint. Off they went looking for a nearby pub, these two men who were at loggerheads on so many issues.

I stood there absorbing what I had just witnessed. That two people with clashing worldviews could still find the openness of heart to share a drink together somehow left a bigger impact on me than anything that had been said that evening. This is because I came from Türkiye, a country of profound political chasms and unhealed social fractures. Equally, I had lived in the US for about five years in the aftermath of 9/11 – writing and teaching in various universities in Boston, Michigan and Arizona, which gave me the chance to observe the deepening fissures between liberal campuses and anti-liberal small towns.

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