A house divided against itself cannot stand, warned Abraham Lincoln. The United States’ later descent into civil war over slavery would prove Lincoln right. But is 21st-century Britain now also becoming, in its different way, an unsustainably divided house too? And have Britain’s economic divisions become so intractable that the UK state can no longer manage them? More than at any time in the postwar era, the answer to both questions looks increasingly like yes.

History shows that Britain’s capacity for pragmatic resilience in the face of internal and external threat is not to be underestimated. Wednesday’s partial climbdown on winter fuel payments was an example of that instinct for self-preservation at work. Yet the U-turn will not have restored the public’s lost trust in the ability of government to solve their problems.

Keir Starmer has inherited this uneasy long-term decline, not created it. His “island of strangers” remarks last week were one attempt to respond. But immigration is not the sole cause of division. Centrifugal forces have been making the United Kingdom a more fragmented country for much of the past half century. Public confidence in this country’s system of government has reached record lows. There is little evidence of a cohesive or collaborative political economic purpose that might mark a nation more at ease with itself. The May local elections, which have now triggered the winter fuel rethink, were a powerful sign of how the divisions could easily deepen further.

On Friday, Starmer will attempt to remedy another part of the problem he faces. To some, the

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