I slipped out of the Labour conference to the Museum of Liverpool’s John Lennon exhibition where, playing on a loop, was: “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. . . ” The 1971 lyrics voiced a hippy idealism yet ran counter to a consumer boom. In boutiques and record shops, a buoyant, new, socially mobile youth were differentiating themselves from their buttoned-up, war-battered parents, not only in their values but in the objects they could buy.

I wonder if young people can imagine no possessions now. Imagine no savings: figures this week show that 53 per cent of under-29s have no nest egg at all, up by 12 percentage points in a decade. Or no homes: only 27 per cent of under 30s own