Mrs May based this philosophy on the principle of what she defined as “fairness”, but this was not what those notorious liberal elites have been calling by that name. It was not government-imposed equality that was fair, but the rewarding of talent and effort. Your chances for success should be determined not by your origins, your race or your gender, but only by your ability and your willingness to work hard. Without the possibility of upward mobility through talent and self-determination, social divisions would become entrenched and ever more bitter.

There is nothing sensationally original about this: every prime minister in living memory has uttered some version of it, including at least one public school toff who clearly had no understanding at all of the deprivations of working-class life. What matters is that Mrs May sounded really serious.

Her most daring opening policy gambit when she took office was a reintroduction of selective schooling, which suggests that this perception is accurate. She says that she wants a society in which your own talent and self-discipline will determine your fate, and in her first weeks in office she proposed a mechanism for delivering it. This is a radical departure from the paternalist, class-guilt definition of fairness which has permeated the doctrines of all the political parties: it does not guarantee equality of outcome but only equality of opportunity. It is, in fact, what most people mean by “fair”: that you should get out of life pretty much what you put in.