Duncan Smith, though, has never resorted to concepts like the "undeserving poor". Forgoing any political capital to be had from strivers versus shirkers, the turbulent minister has instead blamed the system. A system so complex it baffles people. A system that disincentivises work. A system that traps people in poverty. 

In the Channel 4 documentary series Benefits Street, there's a moment when Fungi receives a letter from the DWP offering him a personal adviser who will first assess him and then provide support in getting him back to work. Fungi takes the letter to White Dee. She tells him not to worry. She's had letters like this before. Nothing ever happens. 

Ensuring that something does happen — what the government is doing at the moment — is painful, unpopular and in many cases problematic. But it puts into practice a principle all three parties in theory agree on — that is, until it has to be put into practice.

But the sanctions — again, this is the vital point — are only part of a package of reforms. For if sanctions are the stick then universal credit is the carrot — the brand-new system where six benefits will be rolled into one monthly payment and then reduced gradually as the person moves into work and earns more. The problem has been chronology: what we have right now is the stick; the carrot is yet to come. We still await the rollout of universal credit.

One of the biggest events in Washington last month was the publication of Republican Congressman Paul Ryan's report, The War on Poverty. Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate in 2012, is chairman of the House Budget Committee and a potential presidential candidate for 2016. His 204-page report is hugely significant. It's the launch of Compassionate Conservatism 2.0. It takes up only the task of diagnosing the problems — why poverty in the richest country in the world persists despite LBJ's declaring war on it 50 years ago. 

Predictably, the Left out here have written it off as a pseudo-foundation from which Ryan can later eviscerate government anti-poverty programmes. But in fact, outside the report, the biggest hint Ryan has dropped as to where his thinking is going has been to point to Britain's welfare reforms. In a major speech at the beginning of the year he name-checked universal credit, hailing it as a solution to the disincentive problem that has dogged social policy for so long (that when you get a job you lose all your benefits at once). 

There is, then, a certain irony to the current situation. A prominent American politician is looking for ideas about how government can do things differently. And he wants to pinch an idea from the Brits. But that idea, though legislated for, isn't yet a reality in Britain.