Oscar Wilde remarked that: ‘The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.' This Viewpoint isn't going to stare into a glass darkly, into the latest political murk of ‘partygate'. Instead, we are going far deeper, back to the beginning, taking a biblical cue from Milton's Paradise Lost and ‘Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree', and to ask if sincere and deeply held attitudes about the fallen nature of man and original sin are shading, theologically speaking, into the levelling up realm.

In defining his own politics for his profile in the Spectator, Michael Gove strongly asserted his primary belief is ‘in the fallen nature of man'. In this, the levelling up secretary is echoed by his parliamentary bag carrier Danny Kruger, advocate, through the New Social Covenant, of a well-thought through form of Conservative communitarianism.