LABOUR and the Tories do not agree on much, but they both recognise that Britons feel squeezed. Average real wages are lower than before the financial crisis of 2008-09. Perhaps a million people, including nurses and teachers, have drawn on food banks in the past year. Theresa May, the prime minister, wants to help “ordinary working families” with caps on energy prices. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, talks of policies “for the many, not the few” and promises a £10 ($13) minimum wage. Yet since neither party breaks from the regressive changes to benefits policy that are in the pipeline, the poorest Britons seem certain to suffer big income cuts.

Britain’s welfare state has been on a diet for some time. As the coalition government of 2010-15 set about reducing the budget deficit, welfare spending fell by one percentage point of GDP, with working-age families bearing the brunt. The reforms squeezed the incomes of the poor, yet falling unemployment cushioned the blow.

Since 2015, however, the Tories have turned a hard-nosed welfare policy into a punitive one. George Osborne, the former chancellor, used cuts in working-age benefits as a way to balance the books, planning to reduce the overall bill by £12bn. A four-year cash-terms freeze on most benefits began in April last year. That policy was announced when inflation was close to zero. Now it is nearing 3%, the purchasing power of everything from tax credits (top-ups for low-paid folk) to housing benefit is falling.

Philip Hammond, Mr Osborne’s successor, has pared back the deepest cuts. He reduced the “taper rate” of universal credit, an all-purpose benefit, which means that as people earn more they lose their benefits less quickly. But the direction of travel is the same. In November the government lowered to £20,000 (or £23,000 in London) the ceiling on what a workless household could claim in benefits each year.