Poverty is fundamentally about power and powerlessness. The workers with the least power can't avoid jobs that trap them in poverty. The least valuable consumers can't get the best prices. Those without economic and social power are held back, ground down and exposed to public services that treat them at best as children or at worst as cogs in the machine. They don't have the economic power to avoid the social security system or buy better mental health treatment. They don't have the social power to assert their rights or persuade providers to behave with compassion. They don't have the political power to challenge stereotypes or change the direction of policy.

Prejudice and discrimination strip away another layer of power, leaving disabled people, some Black and minority ethnic groups and women with even fewer options and less leverage to change their situation.

When Beveridge proposed the industrial welfare state he did so in an age when the industrial working classes were claiming more power through organized labour. But he and his ilk were still the products of the age of deference and the structures and systems he designed reflect that. His five giants still stalk the UK, but to defeat their modern incarnations we need a new rebalancing of power for a new technological age.

We have to rebalance digital markets to empower consumers; rebalance labour markets so they offer better jobs and careers paths for workers; rebalance the housing market to create stable homes; rebalance our tax system to tap into wealth and revive fairness; and rebalance our public services to put users in the driving seat and relationships at their heart.

We can't defeat the giants of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness by shuffling a bit of money around or tweaking a few policies. We need to rethink what kind of society we want to live in, using the post-pandemic moment to remake those parts of our economy and our state that are no longer fit for purpose. This time around it won't be good enough for us to hand down solutions from on high and expect the grateful masses to queue up to buy them as they did in 1942. Nor can the changes that we need to make be done by stealth. They need to emerge from public deliberation and have the backing of democratic consent.