The proverb “Physician heal thyself,” a rabbinical precept quoted in St Luke’s Gospel, could fairly be applied to Theresa May’s launch this week of a campaign against racial injustice in public services in Britain. Most of the discrimination she publicises in the report and repeats on an official website stems from one or other department in her own Government. The Prime Minister admitted as much, even as she called the disparities in the treatment of various ethnic and racial groups “troubling and shocking”.

She seems to be calling on public opinion to put a rocket under her own ministers: well-intentioned, but there is a danger of oversimplifying both causes and effects.