Theresa May’s unusually difficult week began not with more bad news regarding Brexit, but failure on another front altogether – social justice. Levels of poverty and deprivation in British society are rising, and inequality with them. She has been warned that “the worst position in politics is to set out a proposition that you’re going to heal social divisions and then do nothing about it.” These are the words of Alan Milburn, explaining his resignation, along with his three colleagues, from the Government’s Social Mobility Commission. He blamed government “indecision, dysfunctionality and lack of leadership.” Brexit, he said, had crowded out everything else.