David Cameron gave a big speech on Tuesday. The Conservative leader set out the party’s direction on welfare reform. It was all the more striking because the occasion was a lecture in memory of Hugo Young, a pre-eminent liberal commentator. It is a sign of how much Mr Cameron has changed the Tory party that he was invited to give the speech at all.

The lecture’s content was notable too. Saying, as Mr Cameron did, that the Tories are “best placed to fight poverty” would once have sounded laughable. Now it is at least plausible that Conservatives themselves believe the claim. He deplored the “moral failure” of big government in fostering state reliance and argued that the alternative was “the big society” in which voluntary groups took on welfare roles now filled by government agencies. This would be achieved, he said, by using “the state to remake society”.