IN THE course of my work as a poet, I regularly meet those strange creatures, the literary liberals. They ascribe to themselves every progressive and humane value, while at the same time apparently finding no place in their imaginations for even the possibility of a world not run in the interests of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Apple Inc.

They are the sort of people who, if they didn’t necessarily agree with her, would at least have understood where artist Tracy Emin was coming from when she called David Cameron’s coalition of 2010-15 “the best government... that we’ve ever had”.

Politically, Emin may be an ignoramus. But her incontinent mouth is useful in that it makes her spell out what others in the arts are only brave enough to occasionally think.