It was Benjamin Disraeli who invented the phrase “One Nation Conservatism”, which acknowledged the need to reach all parts of a grossly divided country not at ease with itself. Later Tory leaders paid lip service to the idea of serving the interests of rich and poor, but the divisions remained. It falls to Boris Johnson to have another go. The 80-seat majority he won in the general election will quickly melt away if he fails, for it relies on the votes of Brexit-supporting former Labour supporters from some of the most deprived parts of the United Kingdom. The Conservative Party targeted these voters ruthlessly. Mr Johnson was lucky to be able to harness the resentment they felt at the way the majority decision in the 2016 referendum was being frustrated in Westminster.

The so-called “red wall” of formerly Labour-held seats stretched across England from the Humber to North Wales, and largely consisted of towns the post-industrial revolution left behind. They were victims of the policy of Margaret Thatcher’s government of rebalancing the economy away from heavy industry – coal mining, steel making, shipbuilding and so on – to a reliance on services, mainly financial services, where London is a world capital and the southeast of England its prosperous hinterland. Meanwhile, these heavy industrial jobs were exported overseas.