Is this country, today, strong and aware enough to “develop an acute feeling of national shame” for those we have allowed to suffer the dismantling of benefits, the ‘bedroom tax’, cuts to disability allowances, withdrawal of child benefits, handing over tranches of schooling and health to profiteers, and all the cruelties and dysfunctions of unnecessary austerity? We should remind ourselves of that great reforming, modernising, progressive government, and yearn for its return. Who is to protect us from the profiteers and racketeers? Who will curtail today’s plundering of our economy?