Even when it comes to a topic as divisive as Brexit, is calling people ‘thick’ ever OK?

So we lost the rugby – of course we lost the rugby. We’re England, we’re losers, along with Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. We’re the nation that can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as proven when we went to the polls 2016.

I don’t think this country is capable of winning anything at the moment. We’d probably come last in an international Morris dancing competition, we’re stuck on a losing streak. Brexit has cursed this land and I doubt even Disney could fix us a happy ending, who is going to kiss us better and when can we hold up our heads in pride again?

Rugby aside, there has been much to feel slightly embarrassed about this week. Last Wednesday night on BBC’s The Apprentice, in a challenge to scavenge items from the university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, many of the twenty something contestants revealed to the cameras that they didn’t know when the Second World War began, while the meaning of the word “mortarboard” also flummoxed them. I blushed on their behalf, rolled my eyeballs and casually tweeted how “thick” they were.

The next morning I deleted that tweet, because sneering and calling other people “thick” isn’t really very useful, is it?

Sadly it’s what us smug middle-aged, middle class people tend to do, especially when we’re a glass of Chardonnay down, but it only serves to make things worse. Because if I call so and so “thick” on social media then they have every right to call me a “self-satisfied tw**” back and so it goes on, the name-calling and nastiness, the lines and the divisions and the taking of sides.

Sometimes it seems the whole world is in “slag off mode”, calling out people for not knowing stuff, for inadvertently using the wrong words and accidentally falling foul of those that know everything. Last week even Barack Obama felt the need to wade in on behalf of the “not as woke as we should be folk” who tend to get an online pasting if we ever wobble off the “right on” Twitter tightrope. Basically he was asking us all not to be so quick to judge, “life is complicated” you’re not kidding and social media can be merciless.

Apparently there’s this new thing called “cancelling” – a horrible, dehumanising word which basically means the mass online boycotting of someone (usually a celebrity) who has either fallen foul of current opinion or simply gone out of fashion. Tolerance is very thin on the ground at the moment and here in the UK we might as well brace ourselves because the bitching is going to get a lot worse over the next six weeks.

As we head into what is inevitably going to be a great deal of bad-tempered campaigning, the issue of bandying around accusations of ignorance and stupidity has been praying on my mind: is calling people “thick” ever cool? Even if that someone is asking (as a Love Island contest did this summer) whether “England and Scotland are the same place”.

Anyway, what actually constitutes “thick” in 2019 – not knowing what a graduation hat is or not having a clue who you’re going to vote for?

Brexit has made fools of millions of us. I don’t think there has ever been a time when people have been so conflicted by the prospect of standing in a ballot box.

My partner, who is genuinely one of the least thick people I know (a combination of decent brain, good education and a great deal of extra-curricular reading), might be the kind of bloke you’d want on your pub quiz team to answer all those tricky battleship questions, but how to vote is genuinely puzzling him. For the first time in his voting history, he is thinking of spoiling his ballot paper. He’s certainly not alone: many people are feeling politically homeless at the moment. For starters what is a moderate Remain-voting soft Tory supposed to do? The party they once supported is on the brink of no longer existing since Boris Johnson took over, the “one nation” members have been squeezed out, leaving the party full of frothing anti-EU caricatures.

Equally, where is a Leave-voting Labour supporter who is desperate to “get Brexit done” going to put their cross? These are the folk Boris Johnson is desperate to win over and he just might. Looking at my Twitter timeline, there are also many “once upon a time” staunch Labour supporters who cannot bring themselves to vote for a party riddled with accusations of bullying and antisemitism.

How many people stumped by indecision will simply stay at home on 12 December?

For a staunch Remainer and centrist like me, the choice is a lot simpler, although there are many things about the Lib Dems that make me anxious, it’s the party whose Brexit mandate is closest to my heart.

So while the answer for me is as easy as knowing the dates of the First World War, I have huge sympathy for those who can only answer the voting question with an honest: “I just don’t know”.