Why I regret not having a cup of tea with Leave.EU

I was scared of being cancelled and that fear is more common than people admit

TL;DR¹ - Andy Wigmore, the comms head at Leave.EU² invited me for a cup of tea and I turned him down because I was worried about getting grief from 'Remain' Twitter.

Just letting those lines sink in for a moment, here.

I, a journalist and comms person, rejected a chance to sit down with the representative of one of the most effective vote-galvanising and communications operations in recent British political history because some people I didn't know would suspect that I was a secret Brexit fan and tweet mean things about me.

It may be the nadir (among a growing list of low points, looking back now) of my time on the world's least edifying chat platform. Unless you count the time I created a fake account to troll anti-Corbyn³ centrists with the most stupid conspiracy theory I could make up and a prominent Conservative MP and future candidate for the Mayorship of London was among the first followers.⁴

But the story of my failure to take up Wigmore's offer