The young are deluded about Labour’s ‘kinder politics’ – and about much else

onto courses more likely to be attractive to employers, but the health of university sociology departments suggests the disease hasn’t been cured.

Second is the miserablist idea that, because my generation may be worse off than our parents’, capitalism is broken. Yes, extreme housing costs are a massive problem, while incomes have not been rising fast enough.

But this is also a golden age for consumers. I’m told Chicken Kiev was once the best you could get in British restaurants; today there is infinite variety at lower cost. Travel is cheaper, amazing innovations (like apps) are free, technology is advancing, choice has expanded in virtually all areas. It’s baffling anyone would want to destroy the system that’s created all this. One of the reasons the housing market is so frustrating is that, unlike nearly every other part of the economy, you get what you’re given, not what you want.

The final delusion has its roots in a mad theory that has contaminated so much of modern life: that injustice is “structural”. This is the belief that, if you don’t achieve what you feel you ought to, it’s not your fault but the system’s. The gender pay gap is down to systemic discrimination, not that women tend to make different choices. “Safe spaces” are necessary to protect against “micro-aggression”. The old have stolen the future from the young.

We can laugh, and obviously have no truck with prejudice, but vast numbers are growing up thinking that individual agency is irrelevant, that all that matters is what community you are born into. Blame is shifted, effort downgraded, and progress redefined as raging against the system.

All this should terrify Tories. Rational appeals to self-interest may not be enough to win over the young.