This year I’ve had Nazi salutes thrown at me and been called a ‘gay jew’. How did we get here?

I remember a moment as a gay teenager that I felt more comfortable in my own skin. It was 1999 and Russell T Davies’s Queer as Folk was airing on Channel 4. I’d arrive at school and it was like I could hear the soundtrack playing in my head. Suddenly being the gay kid in class had gone from the ultimate shame to really capturing the moment.

And now, Davies’s new drama, Tip Toe, is making me reflect on that moment. There’s a character in the first episode, an older gay man, who says they used to arrive in rooms and shout TA-DA! – and now they tiptoe.

The struggle for equality has taken so many forward steps. From the abolishing of Section 28 to the legalisation of gay marriage, progress has been significant. Yet in the last few years it feels like something much grimmer has started to creep into our public life. As an out gay politician, I experience this new wave of homophobia every single day online. On the night of the election in Gorton and Denton I was followed by two men filming me and shouting “gay jew”.

What are the reasons for this shift? In a time when we live in “rip-off Britain” with low wages and high bills, there’s huge disillusionment in the air. This in itself doesn’t create hate, but it all adds to a febrile atmosphere in which hate is allowed to simmer.

We know this doesn’t start or end with gay men. There are so many groups and individuals who would have felt, just a decade or two ago, a sense of better times coming. But with the election of Donald Trump in the US and the rise of Reform, we are not just seeing progress stalled but a clear reversal. We’ve seen a resurgence in homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia. To put it another way, if you tick “other” in any box, then the chances you will be subjected to hate have risen. That’s why it’s so important that those of us from marginalised groups stick together – when they come for one of us, they come for all of us.

Tip Toe also leans into the idea of toxic masculinity. It explores the idea of repressed feelings, the lack of space for people to express themselves, which in the worst cases can bubble over into violence. The reasons for this are diverse and complex and there’s no single solution.

It is clear that decades of austerity have destroyed community spaces and places where people can gather together. If we don’t get to know our neighbours, or have time to get to know people across the divides, these encounters will only play out on social media. While there are many benefits to people being able to connect across the world online, far too often it is a dangerous, toxic space full of misinformation.

Last month I was at a rally – as a Jewish man leading a political party – where a protester was arrested for throwing a Nazi salute in my direction. Words and actions are not physical violence, but it’s all part of a culture and an atmosphere that increasingly feels unsafe. Cartoons and caricatures of me that I consider antisemitic have appeared in the rightwing press – what would have been deemed unacceptable just a decade ago has crept back into the public realm.

“When fascism comes, it won’t be wearing jackboots,” the saying goes: it’s the degrading of our standards, the eroding of our communities that causes decent people to turn away because the fight seems too noisy or too complicated.

The strength of Tip Toe is the way it brings light to dark material. Community and a sense of chosen family come from a bar on Manchester’s Canal Street, the Spit & Polish. The series is full of the humanity of people coming together to challenge hate and to find ways to connect even in the most difficult circumstances. We all have the responsibility to de-escalate, to find ways of connecting rather than dividing people, and ultimately to make sure that we stop fighting each other and start to tackle the hoarding of wealth and power. Those of us in public life must offer hope and a plan.

Davies’s new series asks: how do we look out for each other, support each other and keep cool heads in a time of division? And although this is a drama series, I hope to see our real-world politics respond to these challenges through a greater commitment to defending both people and our planet.

Tip Toe begins on Channel 4 on 31 May at 9pm

Photograph by Ben Blackall/Channel 4