The collective mental breakdown among self-styled progressives since Donald Trump’s re-election has been quite the sight to behold. The subsequent declaration by many that they will leave X, in protest of that platform’s supposed descent into fascism, has made matters all the more entertaining. What a glorious outpouring of self-importance and self-righteousness, combined with an utter lack of self-awareness.

Though such tantrums are amusing, the spectacle has also been appalling. This has been a grim cocktail of piety, sanctimony and belligerence, with rancour and malice thrown in, too. If the cleavage between remote, moneyed liberals and normal people was laid bare by the US election result, the fall-out since has made the gap appear all the more cavernous.

We should have been prepared for this behaviour, of course. We witnessed such sneering petulance from the entitled overclass back in 2016, the year that saw Trump first elected as US president, and also the year a majority of the British public voted to leave the European Union.

Up to then, the elites had silently become ever-more detached from the lower orders, regarding them with increasing disdain. This antipathy suddenly erupted in spectacular fashion. They had grown so accustomed to getting their way that they just couldn’t process or accept that, for once, their demands had not been met.