You must have heard about the theory of 6 Degrees of Separation – you know the idea that everyone in the world is personally connected to anyone else on Earth by on average only six people.

There was even a Hollywood film and a game – Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon – in which everyone in Hollywood is given a ‘Bacon Number’ depending on whether they have worked on a film directly with the actor Kevin Bacon (Bacon Number 1) or has worked with someone else who has (Bacon Number 2) or worked with someone who has worked with someone who has worked on a film with him (Bacon Number 3) etc etc etc.

So what’s Kevin Bacon got to do with politics you may be wondering?

Well I’m old enough to remember the rise of the far-right National Front in the 1970s and its subsequent decline in the 1980s –…