Michelle Obama’s unlikely friendship with George W Bush should inspire us to move beyond our divided politics

It’s over, but can my household ever revert back to normal? Can we talk about toast and Christmas cards and not the B word, Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson?

From the moment Boris called an election, the British public told anyone who would listen they were utterly sick of politics, but the bitter campaign has dominated our lives, and consequently the conversation dragged on for weeks. Who to vote for and why became an inescapable talking point. Leaders were trashed, policies mocked. For a nation who said they’d had enough, we couldn’t stop talking about it – and there lies the problem. It was all too personal.

At home, it only took one or two trigger words and the bickering started. Every meal, news bulletin, and even breakfast became an opportunity to make a point. I remained at odds with my partner until the very last day; he even cast his vote by post, so I couldn’t change his mind.

I slunk off to the local polling station to make a protest I knew wouldn’t really make a difference. Now, the person I called a class traitor is gloating, which is even worse than the acrimony.

Perhaps the time has come to start again, to resume talking pleasantly to people we have come to loathe. I think it’s called being “civilised”. I rarely agree with the po-faced female curate who pops up on BBC Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day”, but she had a point this week: we now have a result, so let’s start again by being inclusive, and trying to learn how to disagree without resorting to calling the other side “nutters”.

Michelle Obama would be a good role model. As a woman of colour married to the most powerful man in the US, she routinely encountered prejudice, hypocrisy, and bullying. She was criticised by her husband’s political rivals even though she held no public office.

As first lady, Michelle was always charming and gracious, her popularity evidenced by the astounding sales for her personal memoir Becoming, the best-selling book in the US in 2018, and which has now sold over 10 million copies.

Under her husband’s successor, political discourse in the US has become infantile and vicious: Trump spews out a series of knee-jerk reactions on social media daily and reckons that constitutes serious debate. As in the UK, politics has become equally toxic – people tend to mix with their own kind, and in the process they are creating a modern kind of ghetto where we aren’t willing to listen to views other than the ones we already hold. It’s nothing more than self-inflicted dumbing down. Those blinkered attitudes are evident from campuses to pubs, shops, offices and factories up and down the country.

How to build bridges? Here’s a clue: this week, Michelle Obama used an interview on NBC in America to reveal that she and George W Bush – the Republican president her husband deposed – are good friends, in spite of holding opposing political views.

A famous photograph, taken at a museum opening in Washington in 2016, shows the pair hugging. According to Michelle, they regularly sat next to each other at state funerals and public events, using these meetings to swap stories about their families. From these encounters a friendship grew, based on common ground. According to Michelle: “Our values are the same. We disagree on policy but we don’t disagree on humanity. We don’t disagree about love and compassion.”

I can’t think of a better motto to end this particular week in the UK. Instead of harping on about what’s wrong with Johnson (white, male, posh education, flimsy relationship with the truth on occasion) let’s try and build a new relationship (even if it is no more than a tolerance) based on some shared values.

Perhaps MPs on all sides should start considering the stuff they can agree on. What has emerged from this ultra-divisive period is that, even when we disagree about Brexit, most of us care about the same things: the NHS, a decent education, helping people have a home to call their own. We need to build on these common objectives, not political dogma.

Cross-party groups can address these key areas, with the Tories acknowledging that tough debate stirs up creativity and positive action. As a former boss, I know that you never get a good outcome by only listening to people you agree with; that approach limits your input by 50 per cent.

In October, Barack Obama spoke of the dangers of “cancel culture”, where a storm of protest erupts on social media directed at anyone who dares to voice an opinion the “woke” generation disagree with. The former US president said this tactic was “not activism”, and told his young audience “you want to get past that”. Obama went on to say that “the world is messy, there are ambiguities … people who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you.” It suits Donald Trump to treat anyone who does not agree with his actions as stupid, brain-dead trash, and the result is the shutting down of debate.

In the UK, the voting is over and now we must build bridges. I’m going to give it a try. Can you?