Do you remember all the fuss about that badger cull? About whether or not we should execute badgers to limit the spread of bovine tuberculosis? Many said it was barbaric and wrong. Others felt it was regrettably necessary. But that was the limit of the range of opinion expressed.

No one said: “Take that, bloody badgers! That’ll teach you!” There was no vengeful joy in the killing. Few were inclined to associate their own problems with the threat posed by bovine TB, to unleash anger at those heedless, carefree, stripy scroungers jeopardising the livelihoods of the squeezed middle. It takes all sorts and I’m sure there are those for whom blasting a terrified badger to bits is a joyous and cathartic act. But those guys tend to be shy about revealing themselves – much like badgers, ironically – and aren’t considered an electorally significant demographic. The basic principle that killing a badger is not, in isolation, a nice thing to do was acknowledged by all concerned. And that, in a small way, reflects well on the state of modern politics.

The situation is different, however, when it comes to the suffering of people. When you replace the image of an adorable badger with one of an extremely fat person lounging on a sofa, or a recent school-leaver sucking on a roll-up, the onlooker is less inclined to mercy.

That’s the insight David Cameron has been exploiting over the past week. First, he said that addicts and the obese will have their sickness benefits cut if they refuse treatment; then he announced that young unemployed people will be forced to do 30 hours a week of community work or forfeit their payments; and finally the minister for welfare reform, Lord Freud, announced an end to “sick-note culture” with a scheme for GPs to refer anyone who’s been off sick for a month to a private company for telephone assessment.

Let’s set aside the issue of whether these policies are needed or would work. What interested me about them was that, unlike the badger cull, they weren’t advocated in terms of regrettable necessity. There was no sense that threatening people who are poor, young, ill, fat, addicted or all of those things was something ministers would rather not have to do. It wasn’t a case of “needs must” – because if needs really must, they’d surely have musted when Cameron first came to power, rather than just in the run-up to an election.

By using phrases like “sick-note culture” and “it isn’t something for nothing”, these proposals are deliberately made divisive and accusatory. The country is in an irritable and confused state – most people are poorer and more worried than they were. In our less admirable moments we all look for people to blame. We know whom Ukip would blame. So now the Tories, in fear of losing votes, are lining up their own focuses of culpability – people very unlikely to vote Conservative, if they vote at all, who can consequently be alienated without electoral cost – and eagerly listing the nasty things a Tory government would do to them.

This might be an effective way of garnering votes, but it’s hardly statesmanlike. It’s surely not a political technique that any of us, including those inclined to resent benefit claimants, are proud to see from our leaders. The prime minister, it seems, is content to turn citizens against each other because he knows he can retain power in the teeth of the majority’s dislike. Sew up the votes of a seething third and he’s probably home and dry.

This makes me think that the Church of England’s intervention into the nation’s pre-election debate could hardly have been more timely and apt. On Tuesday, the House of Bishops published a “pastoral letter” calling for “a fresh moral vision of the kind of country we want to be”. “The different parties have failed to offer attractive visions of the kind of society and culture they wish to see,” it says and calls for citizens to engage fully in the political process: “Unless we exercise the democratic rights that our ancestors struggled for, we will share responsibility for the failures of the political classes.”

In its 52 pages it says many things – it praises the “big society”, the living wage and the principle of the EU, questions Trident, condemns racism and calls for us to vote “with the good of others in mind”. It endorses no political party but many Tories feel most of the criticism was aimed at them. “There is a very definite leftwing leaning to their message,” said Nadine Dorries MP on the Today programme, a view endorsed by editorials in the Daily Telegraph and the Times.

This letter is brave. It takes aim at an establishment without whose favour the church will lose its special status

They’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean it’s bias, just the bishops’ sincere opinion on how society might be improved. Other than being vaguely in favour of Christianity, they haven’t really got an axe to grind. They probably just want things to be nice. What infuriates me about critics of the letter is that, rather than simply disagreeing with its contents, they take issue with the fact that it was written at all. Bishops should not comment on this sort of thing, they reckon. On wealth and poverty, on how our communities are governed, on right and wrong. It’s fine for Russell Brand, but not for the leaders of our established church – that’s apparently the Tory view now. They should just smile and nod like the Queen, while hell breaks out around them.

This letter is brave. It takes aim at a political establishment without whose favour the Church of England will lose its special status. And in riling the Tories, the bishops have pissed off their traditional supporters; it’s hardly as though the long-term standing of the church would be best served by a Labour government. Far safer and easier for the bishops to keep their heads down and hold jumble sales.

But, like many of us, they feel that something is seriously wrong, not just with the specifics but with the fundamentals of our political system. They’re calling on us to make a leap of faith – not to a belief in eternal life, but to the liberal conviction that society is better, that collectively and individually we’ll be happier, if we look for and expect the best in each other, if our first instinct is compassion, not anger.

You might think that, in an increasingly secular democracy, we ought to dispense with the moral leadership of the Lords Spiritual. But, with our elected leader advancing a savage policy of divide and rule, I reckon we’ve never needed it more.