The riots, it has rightly been said many times since they erupted, present an opportunity for Cameron to break out of this depressing cycle. He could use this moment to give his government a proper sense of purpose. But how?

The answer should lie in at last engaging intelligently with the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. It does not mean turning her into a religious icon and treating her speeches as sacred texts. After all, her governments made policy mistakes even as she rescued Britain.

Thatcher has always been a highly problematic figure for the Cameroons. Worshipping at the shrine of Blairite centrism (believing that was the way to win the last election, which it turns out it wasn't), they have seemed embarrassed by her existence. Some concluded that it was best to define themselves in opposition to her "divisive" ideas.

It doesn't help that quite a few Cameroon camp-followers are also the ideological spawn of David Owen, having begun life in his SDP. However, the Owenite centre ground turns out to be, unsurprisingly, a barren place, particularly when it comes to searching for answers to the greatest problems of our age.

To tackle social breakdown and the rise of the underclass it will be essential to take on and defeat the post-1960s liberal consensus on family, welfare and education. Fatherhood, or the frequent absence of fathers in the underclass, was insufficiently discussed in the aftermath of the riots. A more muscular approach would mean persistently offending liberal sensibilities, and would also create problems for the Tory modernisers whose credo is that if it is modern it must be accommodated.

Gove's education reforms — which increase the number of schools free from local authority control — are good. But they should go further, with academic selection, discipline and a new wave of technical schools needed in the ghettoes that fostered the rioters. 

Equally, it is no good being apologetic or half-hearted about the need for a dramatic shift of resources towards the private sector and away from the state, which is spending half of GDP under a Conservative-dominated government. That means tax cuts and deregulation of the labour market to stimulate investment and increase emploment. There can be no other way if we are to invest, save and produce our way out of this mess.

Of course, on social breakdown Thatcher's record was poor. The incapacity benefit scandal — signing millions off work and into a culture of welfare dependency — escalated dramatically on her watch as she unravelled uncompetitive industries. Yet, surely in her pro-enterprise, free-market credentials Cameron could find inspiration. Much of what is presented today as capitalism — for example monopolistic mega-banks, some of them owned by the state — is actually corporatism and a conspiracy against the consumer. Thatcher understood that to be viable, proper capitalism had to have a degree of popularity, and promoted it relentlessly to the aspirational as the route to improvement and prosperity. 

But the key lesson from Thatcher is behavioural: you cannot be friends with everyone. Forget trying to please all. To get things done it is necessary to make enemies, and rather a lot of them.