‘Recapitalising the poor’ – a wider distribution of economic assets – is the totemic project of progressive conservatism. Labour’s policies such as the Child Trust Fund and Savings Gateway have shared this goal but have failed to reverse the inequality in ownership of wealth in Britain. An obvious benchmark for a progressive government must be that steps to redress this – to recapitalise the poor – have been taken.

The Test:

In 2003 the bottom 50 per cent of the population owned 1per cent of the nation’s wealth; by the end of the next parliament a progressive

government should have at least doubled this.