In an old, often anxious and conservative country, the perception of risk is a potent political weapon. If a policy or a project for reforming the UK seems too risky, or can be made to seem so by its opponents, then it can usually be quickly killed off. It can be added to the pile of possible futures that never occurred.

In politics as in life, riskiness is sometimes real. To see that Brexit or Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not end well did not require huge foresight. Yet often the perception of risk is politically constructed: a reflection of powerful forces, their self-interest, and what they do or don’t want to happen.

Thus the possibility of war with Russia within a few years, despite it already being bogged down in Ukraine, increasingly dominates discussions about British defence spending; as does the argument that spending should be funded by benefits cuts. The arms industry and military-media complex, where journalists who have never held a gun excitedly amplify the demands of supposedly politically neutral senior military men, is now a stronger lobby than that for the poor and jobless. And so the risk to the most vulnerable people of yet more austerity – an approach much of the media supports for reasons of ideology more than practicality – is presented as less real than the risk of conflict with a country we haven’t fought for a century.

Another, even more important and biased way in which our political discourse treats risk concerns the wider state of the country. Across the party spectrum, from the hard right to the radical left, the idea that Britain is in deep trouble has become commonplace. The cost of living, the........

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