The best, perhaps apocryphal, line attributed to Benjamin Disraeli is when he told parliament that half the cabinet were asses. Ordered to withdraw the comment, Disraeli responded: “Mr Speaker, I withdraw. Half the cabinet are not asses”. Political invective, when it is witty and pointed, is a sign of a free society. Yet words matter and we need to take care.

Politics, in Britain as well as in the United States, is becoming less civil to a degree that is now damaging. We have to learn again how to treat opponents well. The revelation of the conference season was not progress on Europe — on which both parties are letting the nation down — but on the question of good manners in politics. Jeremy Corbyn has a…