‘I allowed the toxins of politics to seep into my skin’ - Rafael Behr on the personal toll of Brexit

Political columnist and podcaster Rafael Behr returns to the Inside Politics podcast to talk about his new book Politics: A Survivor’s Guide.

One theme of Behr’s book is denial about how toxic and dysfunctional politics has become, which he compares to his own failure to notice how his own health declined while covering the most divisive and frustrating years of Brexit as a columnist for The Guardian.

“I carry on thinking, I’m sure these obstructions will clear themselves and I’m sure this difficulty we’ve all got breathing the air of politics might just pass and it’s just a phase. And having what I believe is clinically known as a massive bloody heart attack, certainly forced me to confront the possibility that I had underestimated the scale of the challenge.

“Now, I should be clear. The book is not one enormous extended metaphor that turns my cardiovascular system into the body politic. That would be weirdly self-aggrandizing”.