I’ve always found the Conservative facility for audaciously brazening out acts of sheer human callousness to be verging on the sociopathic. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are like the serial killers who taunt the families of their victims, but there is something bloodcurdling about such politicians’ willingness to visit, say, a homeless shelter, when they are responsible for cutting housing benefit. But this past weekend’s seemingly coordinated series of visits by Tory MPs to food bank drop-off points has reached new heights of cold-bloodedness. Could there be a better example of their villainous brand of cognitive dissonance than this?

Aside from such tactics giving the eerie impression of a looming election campaign – “We care as much about austerity as Corbyn does, guys, honest!” – it’s the brass balls of these stunts that floors you. Witness Dominic Raab MP – who voted in favour of the bedroom tax, against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices, and against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability – grinning in a tabard next to hardworking volunteers. “Thank you to Tesco in Molesey and the Trussell Trust for partnering to encourage customers to generously provide food collections for families in our community, who are struggling at this time of year,” he tweeted, with what was obviously a poorer grasp of the concept of irony than even Alanis Morissette. But, of course, to borrow Raab’s rationale, this food will only be eaten by “someone who has a cashflow problem episodically.”

The Tories want a model of philanthropy where their paternalistic good deeds are divorced from their social policies

Festive food-bank images become part of what is something of a Tory tradition, dating back as far as at least April 2017, when we saw Claire Perry MP – similar voting record – looking so ecstatic at Devizes food bank that you’d almost think she’d been up for three nights gurning to Born Slippy. Except Tories don’t do MDMA, they smoke weed at Oxford while listening to Supertramp with James Delingpole.

In further indications that this past weekend was stage-managed, one Twitter user highlighted four Scottish MPs’ near-identical tweets about their visits, revealing them to be clearly part of a script sent to them by the Scottish Tory HQ. And so we see Ross Thomson MP looking spiffy in an immaculate suit while shopping for tinned peaches in Aberdeen (“Today I visited @Tesco Wellington Road to meet volunteers for @TrussellTrust and @FareShareUK. I was pleased to make a donation to the local food bank to help those who are vulnerable and in need #EveryCanHelps”), parroting the exact same lines as Kirstene Hair MP grinning in Forfar (“Today I visited @Tesco Forfar to drop off a food donation and meet the Angus Foodbank team. Tesco are working with the @TrussellTrust and @FareShareUK to help those who find themselves in need, and you can help by donating long-life food at your local store too”). Aside from exposing how these MPs care so little about food poverty that they couldn’t be arsed to compose their own thoughts on it, there’s the fact that it has all just ended up sounding like a big advert for Tesco.

It sticks in the craw, though, doesn’t it? Or rather, it makes me incandescently furious. These blithe, publicity-friendly smiles, when people are going hungry because of the policies these politicians supported. The last remaining universal credit rollouts are imminent in areas including Blackpool, Anglesey, Milton Keynes and parts of Liverpool and Glasgow. In April, food-bank operator the Trussell Trust reported that its facilities were four times busier in areas where the new credit had been in place for 12 months or more compared with those where it had been introduced more recently. Not too far from my childhood home, in Anglesey, food-bank supervisor Roy Fyles tells the Observer they have been sending out three times as many packages in the past few months. The Trussell Trust handed out 1.2 million food packs in 2016/17. There are 4.1 million children – nearly a third of the entire child population – living in households on less than 60% of the average income.

We know from teachers that they are paying out of their own pockets to help feed children and their families, that there are children going hungry at school, complaining that their tummies ache. A letter from teacher Kate McLaughlan, from Newark primary school in Port Glasgow went viral this week when she asked for donations to a local food bank in lieu of presents from children and parents. As Christmas gears up, the 120,000-plus homeless children in Britain will spend their Christmases in hostels and B&Bs, many without the means or facilities to provide a Christmas meal. It sounds Dickensian and it is Dickensian. The Tories want us to return to a Victorian model of philanthropy where their paternalistic good deeds are entirely divorced from the social policies – their social policies – that giving rise to such destitution.

And then there’s the lack of authenticity. These PR-heavy visits are a sort of fake news, really. The message that austerity is hurting people seems to have trickled into the psyches of a large part of the British public – how can it not, when we are weaving around the homeless in the streets, when food bank use is on the rise, when many of our friends, neighbours, colleagues, family members, pupils etc are struggling to make ends meet? And yet the big lie is that this is somehow separate from Tory policy. It’s the lie they will peddle if there does end up being a general election, because they know that Corbyn’s anti-austerity agenda is what has reached the hearts and minds of his voting base. And it’s why my mum, and so many other people who felt they had been “left behind”, went out door-knocking for Labour in 2017.

So what the left must do, urgently, is to make sure that austerity sticks to the Tories. I often say the Conservatives are like Teflon, but even Teflon can be scratched. It’s never been more important to state, again and again, that this crisis lies on their doorstep. If you don’t believe me, then believe the UN. “There is a striking and almost complete disconnect between what I heard from the government and what I consistently heard from many people directly, across the country,” said Philip Alston’s report. And yet, they continue to smile through their lies. If it’s not evil, then it’s something close to it.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author