A balmy October Friday evening outside my local pub in Grantchester a village near Cambridge and I’m sitting with a bunch of people I consider to be friends.

A group of twentysomething men come in, one of them in a wheelchair.

He leaves the chair at the door and walks the few extra feet into the pub, which is small with uneven floors and a narrow bar.

He clearly has trouble with his mobility and can’t walk far, but that doesn’t stop some in my group from immediately snorting their disbelief and scepticism about his need for a chair.

“Just back from your tap-dancing class?” asks one snidely and goes on, in the obvious hearing of the disabled man, to make loud references to “benefits scroungers”, “Blue Card fraudsters” and how “that’s where our money is going.”

Throughout this onslaught the young man smiled politely but refused to be provoked – it was depressingly clear that this was not the first time this had happened recently.

Me? I was horrified, embarrassed by my friend and then dismayed and furious at how acceptable it seemed to be among the 10 or so other people in our group for someone to be saying this.

Since the May election and the Conservatives’ cuts to tax credits, disability benefits and other welfare payments, there has been a palpable sense of growing intolerance towards the most vulnerable in society.

Home Secretary Theresa May’s speech to the Tory party conference appears to have given carte blanche for people to attack immigrants and refugees – verbally and sometimes physically.

Last week a report detailed how a Muslim woman in a veil on a train in east London was doused in alcohol by a group of men in a completely unprovoked attack.

The English Defence League is claiming an increase in its support and membership since the election and has staged a number of “anti-Islam” marches in recent weeks.

And extreme views are now not just limited to the political fringes.

Writing in his Spectator magazine column last week the journalist Rod Liddle likened the triumph of Nadiya Hussain in the Great British Bake Off to the prospect of “uncontrolled immigration” – a view that was lauded by the EDL.

The evidence is not just anecdotal. Figures just released by the Home Office show an 18 per cent rise in hate crimes in England and Wales in the last 12 months, including a 25 per cent increase in disability hate crimes and a 65 per hike in Islamophobic attacks in London.

My village is overwhelmingly white in its racial make-up and yet conversation last week was dominated by the idea that refugees were “flooding in.”

This rise in intolerance is not confined to England. Last week Dr Duncan Morrow from the University of Ulster was named as the head of a new hate crime taskforce in Scotland.

Dr Morrow, an expert in sectarianism, will lead the independent advisory group on hate crime, prejudice and community cohesion.

Figures show that while hate crimes in Scotland have fallen overall in the last year, there has been a 20 per cent increase in attacks reported by disabled people.

Liz Sayce, chief executive of the charity Disability Rights UK charity, says that the increase in attacks may be partly due to better reporting of crimes but also reflects the changing mood across the UK since the election.

“I think public attitudes towards disabled people have become entrenched in a very negative way,” she said.

“There is this real sense of suspicion of disabled people, of people ‘trying it on’ and getting free transport and handouts – that suspicion is completely misplaced but is being reinforced by the policy and rhetoric of the Government.

“The reality is that between 150 and 200 people a week are losing their Motability cars because of changes to the system.

“We used to stick disabled people in institutions – now we are institutionalising them in their own homes, isolating them by taking away their transport and making it harder for them to work and be independent.

“Social isolation has a huge impact on people’s health and that in turn will put more pressure on the NHS which only reinforces the idea that disabled people are a burden on society.”

Even people who voted for the Tories are beginning to question the new regime.

On Thursday night’s Question Time programme on the BBC, broadcast from the Kent town of Dover, a working mother broke down in tears as she told how she had voted Conservative but was going to struggle to pay her rent and bills because of swingeing cuts to tax credits.

Another mother, 37-year-old Shona Smith from Gloucester in the south-west of England, told the Sunday Herald: “I’m a single parent and I’ve always worked and paid my way.

“The cuts to tax credits terrify me. I don’t know how I’m going to cope but when I mentioned this to someone I know the other day they acted like the tax credits meant I was taking handouts from the state.

“This woman said that if they were being taken away from me I obviously didn’t need them in the first place. People honestly have no idea what this is going to do to families.

“This country is getting more and more divided between the haves and have nots.”

The “haves” who support the Tory cuts are unrepentant.

Bob Jones, a businessman living in Leicester, says: “I don’t condone violence or hate but quite frankly I don’t have any sympathy for people losing their tax credits.

“We are in an age of austerity and everyone needs to tighten their belts.

“It’s survival of the fittest. If that means disabled people losing their scooters then so be it.”

What that means for safety and social inclusion of the polite twenty-something man in his wheelchair, hoping for a quiet pint with his mates in the pub, remains to be seen.