I’m starting to feel a tiny bit sorry for the chancellor. Yes, most of the economic and fiscal problems we’re facing have been exacerbated – if not caused – by current Treasury policy. But Labour’s welfare reforms, flawed and limited as they were, at least acknowledged that the welfare bill is not just fiscally unsustainable but also morally unacceptable.

The idea that we should simply accept rising worklessness among the young – 25 to 34-year-olds are now the fastest-growing group on sickness benefits, with claims up 69 per cent in five years – is indefensible in a supposedly compassionate country. Much of this is driven by the medicalisation of anxiety and depression. To pretend these people are actually among the very ill who cannot be helped back into work is a failure of both policy and principle.

Nevertheless, someone in government seems to have forgotten Lyndon Johnson’s first........

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