Chatting on the café terrace with my new friends Didier and Emile made me aware that certain political ideas, which before the Covid-19 pandemic I had comfortably assumed belonged on the wilder shores of political discourse, are now mainstream among the under thirties. I felt a little envy, perhaps, for Didier’s undoubting conviction that questions of equality, gender, race and white supremacy were the ultimate verities for humankind.