A loss of faith in the system, driven by inequality, which helped produce Brexit and make Jeremy Corbyn Labour leader, is now in the process of tearing the Conservative and Labour parties apart.

A warning by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that increasing inequality is a danger to democracy – with rising “deaths of despair” among the poor and skyrocketing wages for the rich – should be taken seriously.

Professor Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who will chair a major new IFS study of the problem, even claimed inequality was now such a serious issue that it was possible “democratic capitalism is broken”.

Brexit and Corbyn came from a desire to smash the system, but we should fix it instead – leader comment