The last 10 years have sometimes been referred to as ‘the lost decade', thanks to the long tail of the recession which shredded the economy in 2009, permanently removed £80bn a year from the nation's GDP and instigated five years of austerity in the public finances. The question is – who were the losers and what is anyone doing to help them? It is this which lies at the heart of the election campaign and a seam which Labour has struck, albeit with the simplistic response of promising bags of cash at no cost to anyone earning under £80,000 a year.

The Conservatives have preferred to play down the question altogether, unsurprisingly, since for virtually the entire ‘lost decade' they have been running the country. Furthermore, there is a generational divide with younger people feeling disenfranchised by the economic system. It was a Tory MP and former No 10 policy chief George Freeman who once told a recent Conservative Party conference that if his party could offer young people nothing, it would lose them for a generation.