In 1960, when we moved into the house I still inhab­it, the real estate agent described this part of Chelsea as ​“run-down” but ​“com­ing up.” Indeed, my moth­er-in-law, who’d just stopped being a stal­wart Com­mu­nist, con­grat­u­lat­ed her son on liv­ing at last ​“among his own peo­ple.” She’d lived in our street briefly in the 1930s and remem­bered it as work­ing class. Nowa­days, the news that I live in Chelsea occa­sions whis­tles of sur­prise or dis­ap­proval or pos­si­bly envy. It’s where rich peo­ple live.

We are governed by people who have been cushioned from need all their lives.

Yet until a month ago, there were five men sleep­ing on the ground under an over­hang­ing con­crete shelf by the local fire sta­tion, which is exposed to the ele­ments and the unfriend­ly. I took them to be refugees, as they didn’t speak much Eng­lish. Pre­sum­ably those who some­times left crois­sants and bananas and occa­sion­al­ly books thought the same. Now they’ve been evict­ed and their tem­po­rary sanc­tu­ary made impen­e­tra­ble by the erec­tion of a nasty green steel bar­ri­er. They are just some of the thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple who are told these days they’re not want­ed, that they should return to homes that no longer exist, should expose them­selves and their fam­i­lies if nec­es­sary to drown­ing and bombs, and to pover­ty and starvation.

A famous 19th-cen­tu­ry insti­tu­tion, the Char­i­ty Organ­i­sa­tion Soci­ety (which spread to the Unit­ed States lat­er in the cen­tu­ry), saw its pri­ma­ry duty as dis­tin­guish­ing between the ​“deserv­ing” and the ​“unde­serv­ing” poor. We appear to be return­ing to those times, as the state dis­owns respon­si­bil­i­ty for suf­fer­ing or pover­ty and spends longer sift­ing the sheep from the goats than on con­fronting the caus­es and the extent of pover­ty in the world.

All that may seem miles from the so-called Pana­ma Papers and the embar­rass­ment they’ve caused our prime min­is­ter, David Cameron, when they revealed that his father ran a tax-avoid­ing invest­ment fund in one of the ​“trea­sure islands” (oth­er­wise known as tax havens) that now con­sti­tute what’s left of the great British Empire. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Cameron turns out to have ben­e­fit­ed from his father’s fore­sight, though it’s not clear that either father or son act­ed unlaw­ful­ly. But Cameron refused four times to come clean about it all, and when he final­ly admit­ted to his par­ty col­leagues that it had been a ​“bad week” and he was sor­ry if he’d mis­led them and han­dled it all bad­ly, his mea cul­pa end­ed with assur­ances that the Con­ser­v­a­tives were still the ​“low tax” par­ty, which is what mat­ters most to them all.

But the goings-on on my street cor­ner and in off­shore tax havens both show how far our laws have been bent to suit the rich and screw the poor. It’s been some time since I’ve felt inclined to raise more than two cheers for our democ­ra­cy. Remov­ing help­less peo­ple sleep­ing in the street and stash­ing your mil­lions in low- or no-tax havens are both legal­ly sanc­tioned in this coun­try, and nei­ther the Labour gov­ern­ment nor the Coali­tion nor this Tory gov­ern­ment have had the slight­est inten­tion of chang­ing laws that make such actions permissible.

We are gov­erned by peo­ple who have been cush­ioned from need all their lives. Not only have they shown us to be almost the mean­est of any Euro­pean coun­try in our offer to take in refugees, they have over­seen a thor­ough dis­man­tling of those social struc­tures best able to mit­i­gate dis­ad­van­tage: account­able local author­i­ties, trades unions, even libraries and lan­guage class­es. More aggres­sive­ly still, they have removed all curbs and restraints on the wildest excess­es of inequal­i­ty in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Not only do thou­sands of peo­ple wake up to find them­selves unem­ployed and in dan­ger of los­ing their homes, they have to read and learn dai­ly of the capac­i­ty of the rich to increase assets effort­less­ly, max­imise for­tunes and take for grant­ed their own and their children’s right to choice and vari­ety and success.

Cameron jeered at Jere­my Corbyn’s shab­by clothes recent­ly. But a few sharp ques­tions about the antics of Cameron’s dead father, who made mil­lions for him­self and his clients by hid­ing it in Jer­sey, and we’re expect­ed to feel sor­ry for him?