It is impossible to imagine a similar occasion among today’s politicians of the Left. (Not so among writers: James Fenton, who won the PEN-Pinter prize last month for his political poetry, presented an equally brilliant double act with Julian Barnes.) Michael Cockerell’s recently-aired documentary about the late Denis Healey was a reminder of the days when Labour had a chancellor with a hinterland. Jeremy Corbyn’s praetorian guard has taken to naming and shaming Labour MPs who defy the whip so that they can be subjected to trial by Twitter. Among the early victims of such tactics have been the few intellectuals: Tristram Hunt, Liz Kendall, Frank Field and other moderates. In due course, such dissidents may be purged or deselected.

This is, obviously, no way to encourage a free and frank exchange of ideas; but the thugs of the hard Left have never been interested in debate. Their conduct at the Conservative conference — where delegates had to run a gauntlet of expletive and spittle — along with the new militancy of the unions suggests a regression to the menacing tactics of the last century. Labour is in grave danger of becoming both the stupid and the nasty party.

Throughout the West, the battle between Left and Right is being fought on the question of inequality (compare our Overrated and Underrated profiles of the Americans Joseph Stiglitz and Harry Frankfurt). Should governments pursue the egalitarian goal of taxing the rich and spending the proceeds on the poor? Or instead create the market conditions for the kind of capitalist take-off that has lifted the living standards of some two billion people in the last generation? Is growing inequality the price we pay for prosperity, or is it morally wrong? Inequality is not the same as injustice, but the Prime Minister has declared that “real equality” means doing away with discrimination against women or minorities. Does he mean to endorse a tough-minded agenda of meritocracy, or a softer one of social justice? There is scope for more than one view of inequality within the broad conservative church, but the Left’s vindictive use of penal taxation as a panacea is outside the national consensus.

Europe, and especially the migrant crisis, disconcerts Left and Right alike. Only the conservative side, however, seems capable of taking into account those most affected: the ordinary people of Britain. The European question will be decided by how well David Cameron articulates their interests. As Stephen Glover argues, he has a fight on his hands. But the fight is not with the gaunt Don Quixote and the paunchy Sancho Panza who sit opposite Cameron and Osborne in the Commons. That is no contest, either practical or intellectual. For the moment, the centre-Right has won.