THE angry scenes that unfolded during the mass protest in Manchester at the Tory conference were but child’s play compared to the brutal lived reality of the government’s austerity programme, which has been and continues to be akin to a mass experiment in human despair.

In a country in which two million pensioners and four million children are now living in poverty, in which the disabled, unemployed and vulnerable of every stripe have not only been subjected to a withering assault on their ability to survive but have been demonised, dehumanised and stigmatised in the process, rage is an entirely natural response.

The frog’s chorus of commentators — some with the temerity to describe themselves as on the left — that saw fit to indulge in ritual condemnation of the protesters involved in the ugly scenes that took place merely confirm that for them austerity is just a word. Some of them may oppose it, may even strenuously object to it, but none of them feel it or fully grasp its consequences.