I CAN’T have been the only person who has been touched by the Tories’ desire to prescribe personal recovery plans when life’s little challenges set you back more than somewhat. It displays rare humanity in a world which is too often impervious to the suffering of others. With the Tories, such empathy and compassion have been a few hundred years in the making but as it says in the Good Book: “joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repents, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.”

Esther McVey is the latest Tory to have discovered her long concealed St Francis of Assisi when she appeared before MSPs at Holyrood’s Social Security Committee on Monday to explain the UK Government’s decision to limit to two children the amount of tax credits a woman can claim.

Asked if she was “comfortable with the idea that a woman has to prove non-consensual conception in order to access entitlement for a third child, McVey replied that she certainly was and that the policy came with a hitherto undiscovered layer of compassion. “This could give them an opportunity to talk about, maybe, something that has happened that they never had before. So it is potentially double support there.” Not since the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition reached out to people by offering them “a wee heat by the fire” has a national government displayed such tenderness and compassion.

Having shown that it is now The Party that Cares I now look forward with some relish to further outpourings of sensitivity. With this in mind I’d like to draw up a blueprint for reactionary types who perhaps have been misunderstood when seeking to convey the essential goodness at the heart of the Tories.

FOOD BANKS
Irresponsible left-wing types have sought to use food banks for party political gain by depicting them as an evil blight on the character of the Good Ship HMS Britain. According to these worthless lefties, food banks are the last chance saloon where only people in desperate need are to be found.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Anywhere you care to look there are heart-warming tales of lives being turned around by the discipline of having to plan your eating habits a wee bitty more. Hard-pressed local health practitioners have reported huge reductions in obesity levels among the poor in neighbourhoods blessed by the existence of a local food bank. By forcing them to spend a few months visiting food banks they begin to think twice about all those three-for-two hamburger and frozen chips deals at Iceland when their benefits are restored.

FORCED DEPORTATION
There will always be a negative vibe around the issue of forced deportation. In many instances though, this is the result of perfidious leftist propaganda. As usual the reds wilfully neglect to mention the advantages. Very often an African or eastern European family with young children who are dragged away in the middle of the night are grateful for their taste of the delights of staying in the UK. They know that all good things must come to an end and it makes them determined to do what it takes to come to Britain legitimately. So long as they can avoid summary execution and physical and mental torture as well as save up to £100,000 for the boat over and a decent deposit on a house and gain a degree in mechanical engineering they are welcome back any time. Those who have done so have contributed greatly to Team UK.

HOMELESSNESS
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this issue can stir the emotions of people who insist on taking it at face value. Admittedly, it can be tough for people who are forced to sleep rough because they took a left turn on life’s great journey when they should have gone right or who went the wrong way round life’s unforgiving roundabout. Yet, here too those insidious liberals deliberately fail to see the upside. Official figures collated by our good friends at Cambridge Analytica have shown that a wee spell sleeping underneath the stars can do wonders for a person’s sense of his place in the world.

Freed from the concerns of having to pay a mortgage or rent or go without food to pay for the heating they discover inner reserves of fortitude in the face of adversity. Bins, once heaving with rotting food products are considerably lighter in those places with a high incidence of homelessness. In the UK we waste obscene amounts of perfectly decent food ... but not in places where there are happy packs of homeless people roaming around eager to hoover up all the scraps.

LOW LIFE EXPECTANCY
There is a myth propagated by the hand-wringing brigade that low life expectancy is a jolly bad thing. There you are, in the prime of your life and looking forward to a decent innings when, all of a sudden, you wake up dead many years before your time. Undoubtedly the shock of the untimely demise of a loved one can knock you sideways for a bit. We get that.

But look on the bright side: in those neighbourhoods where people die before they reach 50 there is reduced pressure on all the local services. These people probably smoke and drink too much and insist on taking advantage of those cut-price deals at Burger King. By dying off early it then allows the hard-pressed local health service providers to concentrate on the next generation. And anyway, if everyone were to survive into their 80s and buy Stena stairlifts and reclining armchairs the UK would just become soft overnight. This isn’t what made Britain great.

THE POVERTY GAP
This is another phenomenon which always gets a bad press but all is not as it seems. Let’s face it, if everyone had an equal chance of getting on in life and we were all able to afford a decent standard of living Britain would simply become complacent. Studies by Cambridge Analytica have shown that where a large gap exists in the quality of life people will always work harder to attain those wee advantages which sort out the wheat from the chaff.

It’s like greyhounds chasing a rabbit at a dog-race. Of course they’ll never actually catch the rabbit but they don’t know that. And when did you ever see an unfit or unhealthy greyhound dug?