THERESA MAY has rightly faced harsh opposition from across the political spectrum for her proposed Brexit deal, which, as Jeremy Corbyn has said, “is a bad deal for the country … the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds.” And that is why Labour will oppose this deal in Parliament.

While much attention is understandably focused on this issue, which is so vital for our future, it is not just in this area that the government has shown again and again that it is incapable of governing in the interests of the majority of people, as two shocking recent developments have demonstrated.

The first was a report by United Nations poverty envoy Philip Alston, based on a two-week fact-finding mission, which delivers a damning indictment of Tory austerity from start to finish.

It says the government has inflicted “great misery” on people with “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous” cuts, driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity.

He calls current levels of child poverty “not just a disgrace but a social calamity and an economic disaster.”

About 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty and 1.5 million are destitute, highlighting predictions child poverty may rise by 7 percentage points between 2015 and 2022, possibly  as high as 40 per cent.

Furthermore, the report says austerity Britain is in breach of four UN human rights agreements, relating to disabled people, women, children and economic and social rights.

Echoing the concerns of equality campaigners, Mr Alston says: “If you got a group of misogynists in a room and said how can we make this system work for men and not for women, they would not have come up with too many ideas that are not already in place.”

Alongside this, cuts of 50 per cent to council funding are “damaging the fabric” of society, he warns, yet the government is in a state of denial, with a “striking disconnect” between what ministers and ordinary people said.

Then, hot on the heels of these revelations, we found out that we will see the busiest Christmas ever for foodbanks as the universal credit roll-out comes to an end, having forced thousands of people into poverty.

Volunteers are expecting to distribute 1.5 million meals to desperate people, possibly including a shocking 590,598 children.

Figures showed a 49 per cent surge in demand at Trussell Trust foodbanks last December compared with the rest of the year.

The charity distributed 159,388 emergency parcels, each containing enough food for three meals a day for three days, in the run-up to and over the 2017 festive period – that’s 1,4 million meals and a 10 per cent surge from the year before.