That's definitely something very ingrained in English culture. I got interested in the history of the Muggletonians, who were one of those religious sects who sprang up around the Civil War, and it didn't surprise me at all that they held their meetings in pubs. The Quakers eventually became respectable but the Muggletonians never quite did.
The point about the 'politician with a pint' photo - people who've never seen Farage in person but only on broadcast mode won't get this. Obviously he's got an ego and loves the sound of his own voice, which is standard in politics. But if you ever see him interact with normie voters, he hardly says a word. He's listening all the time, he's interested in ordinary people and their stories. That's rare enough for people to pick up on it, even subconsciously.
I've become convinced that a lot of what passes for politics is really just status games. Now I've interacted professionally with serious politicians, but you even see it on the low level.
I might be vague on details here because of potential outing, but before I became seriously interested in the trans issue, I was quite plugged in to the left wing activist space, and I got very invested in the abuse of women in that space. Sometimes I mention the rape coverup scandal that split the SWP in 2013 - that wasn't unique, and I had been banging on about the issue for years prior, but I got quite optimistic that people might draw some conclusions about their political culture.
I was wrong about that optimism. People would make the minimum concession (the SWP was wrong to cover up for the rapist Martin Smith) and then they would pat themselves on the back for having taken the right position and not think about it any more.
So I'd come in saying, "Hang on, this is a longer term issue, I can cite XYZ cases", and nobody wanted to know. The victims weren't names to them, and the alleged guilty parties had status in "the movement", and I didn't have status, and pretty soon the reaction on Facebook was what Victoria Smith would have predicted - you can't listen to her, she's mad, why pay attention to these accusations against valued comrades...
So you become a designated acceptable target, and you're fair game for sniping and sneering and gaslighting, and then when they're trying to convince you that man are women and concerns about women's safety are a moral panic... well perhaps at that point you start to see the pattern and you say fuck you Colin, you've lied to me about everything else, and you decide you've nothing to lose by being disagreeable.
So the situation where Glinner wakes up to this issue and says, "This is outrageous, surely I just have to state the facts and everyone will wake up" - well, it doesn't work that way, and don't call me Shirley.
Possibly this is something Glinner failed to anticipate due to his privileged position, but if you've seen the script before, you can't miss the cues the second time around.