Mark Field's rage acts as a litmus test for our divided times | Gaby Hinsliff

The Tory MP has rightly been suspended as a minister. But he has also attracted a disturbing level of supportThey came wearing red evening dresses and sashes, like something from a bygone age of suffragette protests. Or perhaps that should be suffragists, the more peaceful wing of the movement. For the climate crisis campaigners who set out to disrupt the chancellor's annual Mansion House speech to the City had done all they could to look unthreatening, knowing that politicians are understandably jumpy about personal security nowadays. The protest was female-led, Greenpeace explained, in the hope of keeping it calm.Some hope. The police are investigating precisely what happened when protester Janet Barker walked behind the Conservative MP Mark Field, apparently heading towards the top table holding the great and good. But film of Field leaping up and grappling with her, before frog-marching her out with a hand around her neck, has gone viral for good reason. Whatever the police investigation concludes, it is hard to think of a more toxic image of Conservatism than an angry-looking man in black tie manhandling a woman away from a fancy banquet. Brute male force versus plucky female resistance; cosy privileged club versus outsider somewhere she wasn't invited. No wonder we can't stop watching and re-watching it. Continue reading...