Let’s first acknowledge that, for the vast majority, a leave vote in no way validated the attitudes and actions of the people that callers to my radio show have been telling me about – tearfully and still incredulous – all week.

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But it is even more important to acknowledge that the people who told the elderly German-born widow of a Chester GP or the 42-year-old Ilford-born shop assistant that they would soon be “going home” would not and could not have uncorked their bottles of bile without the perceived validation of last week’s vote. While any suggestion, however cautious, that 52% of voters harbour such prejudices is palpably absurd, it seems fair to suggest that many of those who are bigoted are labouring under the toxic illusion that 52% of the population are somehow on their side.

And who can blame them? As a phone-in host you have a daily opportunity to canvass not just what people think on a given issue but why. It is not a scientific selection – 99% of listeners would never dream of ringing in and the ones who do are obviously skewed towards the highly opinionated – but it is clear to me that many, many people believe that “uncontrolled” immigration is wreaking havoc not because of what they see outside their windows and front doors but because of what they see on their TVs, hear on their radios and read on their newspaper front pages.

There are myriad reasons to fear the unknown, to believe that negative social change must be the fault of the most recently arrived. It is not racist or even odd to feel unsettled by women walking in the streets of your home town with their faces covered or shops with frontages in incomprehensible languages.

But when you dig a little deeper, when you ask the caller concerned if they actually know of a single child without a school place, or precisely how the sausage and vodka in a Polski Sklep “dilutes” British culture any more than the local tandoori, something very strange happens. Not only do folk mostly fail to provide substantive answers or evidence – a personal recent favourite would be a jolly chap from Bishop’s Stortford who ended up claiming that he couldn’t get to the till at his local shop because of all the immigrants – but they also end up convinced that by unpicking their position, by encouraging them to be less angry and fearful, you are somehow labelling them racist.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘When you ask the caller precisely how a Polski Sklep ‘dilutes’ British culture … they end up convinced that you are somehow labelling them racist.’ Photograph: John Robertson

This is the problem decent politicians now face, and it is created by journalists and editors who know it is easier – and considerably more lucrative – to sell tickets for the ghost train than the speak-your-weight machine. Journalists and editors, moreover, who live in gated communities and Kensington mewses but talk about “liberal elites” being out of touch with working-class lives. Point out that concerns about immigration are routinely much higher in areas where there is hardly any, and you merely confirm your deafness to the “valid concerns” of the population.

Looking at the referendum campaigns and factoring in the deliberate and cynical demonisation of “experts”, you suddenly see what the wonks mean by “post-factual” politics. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who encourage “othering” are big box office, and if they can talk not just unchallenged but actually endorsed by journalists in a way that suggests all Muslims (or Mexicans) are rapists, and immigrants are sucking the NHS dry while stealing our jobs and living on benefits, why shouldn’t ordinary punters employ similar rhetoric on public transport or in shops or with their neighbours?

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All that’s changed, post-Brexit, is the target. We’re witnessing a move from “immigrants” as a faceless horde to “immigrants” as identifiable individuals: whether it’s an American college lecturer on a Manchester tram being told to “go back to Africa”, a German-born pensioner being told to go back to Germany or an Essex retail worker being told to “go back” to a country she’s never visited, a swath of the country clearly believes the “leave” they voted for referred to what they want “foreigners” to do.

The challenge now is to address those pouring this poison on their neighbours while remembering that it was brewed and delivered quite deliberately by politicians and journalists. And for all the editorials calling for calm and harmony there is little evidence, and still less hope, that the breweries will be closing any time soon.