Social media shows a broken Britain. Step outside and you’ll see different, writes Andrew Marr

As it does, I’d like briefly to look back at the summer. If you’ve viewed it mostly through social media, you know it’s been a very angry one – great crowds of flag-waving patriots against the asylum hotels and passionate crowds of anti-fascists against them.

Further down the street, the pro-Israelis against the Gaza campaigners. Oh yes, and all those little films you see about, London is over, Britain is finished… So much anger, so much despair.

And what I want to say is that all this is not, in general, bad or wicked people trying to turn us against one another. No. This is what the algorithms are designed for. They are selling ringside seats for a carnival of hatred, a spectacle designed to tear us apart.

My plea is, don’t let’s fall for this. Personally, I think that if Labour does not solve the migration crisis, it will be turfed out at the next election. Simple as that.

But if you put away social media and walk out into the streets and look at actual, real three-dimensional people, they mostly smile back at you.

If you look around, you don’t hear much screaming or a collapsing country. You see perfectly decent, ordinary people rubbing along, getting on with their lives and inclined, by and large, to get along ok.

That’s Britain. That’s the real us. Let us not be fooled.

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