The rise of identity politics has led to an interesting new category which has been little noted, compared with the usual oddities like men who ‘identify’ as women and snobs who ‘identify’ as socialists. We now have bad people who identify as good people. Think of those men who are all over the internet, threatening any women and Jews who stand up for their rights with rape and murder, while telling us to #BeKind. Or think of Keir Starmer, probably the most prominent of these weird creatures yet.

Labour swept The Heartless Tories away at the last General Election with promises of a new dawn. But the grim reality of the morning after, just a few months on with a long hard winter ahead, is one of unalloyed bleakness. I believe that the Starmer paradox – the bad man who identifies as good – is at the heart of it.

At first glance, the way he has behaved during his short rule so far appears to be mere hypocrisy, so common in politicians that we rarely remark on it anymore. The wonder is here that it’s so utterly upfront. The former anti-corruption crusader now revels in cronyism, allowing a plutocrat to kit him out, as if he were a 20th-century Hollywood gold digger hooking a sugar daddy. The man whose own pension is so big it required its own act of parliament plans to take the winter fuel allowance from the elderly, which may be the difference between security and misery for thousands. The man with the Jewish wife, and who is keen to observe Friday night suppers, who dealt yet another blow to grieving Jewish families by punishing Israel for fighting back against Hamas, just a few days after more Israeli hostages were murdered.

Most strikingly, he is the man with the happy family life who will sacrifice the happiness of hundreds of women and their families by releasing actual attackers of women prematurely, in order to free up prison places for committers of thoughtcrimes.