It is axiomatic that the acid test of a decent society is that it does not neglect the most vulnerable. Britain is in danger of failing this test. The welfare state, invented in wartime to banish permanently the five “giants which stalked the land” – poverty, disease, squalor, ignorance, idleness – has reached a crisis not only of resources but of purpose. There is a growing class of people in distress because they cannot make ends meet, for whatever reason. Yet there seems no enthusiasm in any major party to take their side. In so far as the Catholic Church, indeed all the Christian Churches, have a stake in this election, this is where it ought to be planted.

Theresa May, who can expect to be reconfirmed as Prime Minister on 9 June, has inherited an anti-welfare bias in Conservative thinking that stands in the way of her wish to see the country’s unity restored after the divisive shocks of Brexit. George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer under David Cameron, devised a political strategy to turn public opinion away from those who were dependent of benefits.