The Tories lurch left and right without a clue where they really stand | Gaby Hinsliff

If Ed Balls didn’t have the medium of dance through which to express his feelings, he might be forgiven for wanting to punch a wall right now. So perhaps we can expect a more than usually vigorous turn from the former shadow chancellor on this week’s Strictly Come Dancing. Imagine the frustration of losing a seat last May, only for some of your political thinking to live on, also in May. Theresa May, that is.

This has been a depressing, frightening week in UK politics; a time when genuinely ugly things have been said, then half-unsaid, but not forgotten. But it’s the worst possible time for progressives to abandon hope. May has not lurched right, or left, or towards the centre ground. She’s done all three.

She’s moved left into the kind of borrow-and-build, state-led economic strategy that Balls would recognise, and into an anti-fat cat rhetoric Ed Miliband absolutely did recognise, judging by his single sardonic tweet in response to hints of a clampdown on energy prices: “Marxist, anti-business interventionism imho [in my humble opinion]”.

But she’s also moved sharply rightwards on immigration, something Labour agonised over in the last parliament but couldn’t bring itself to do, even though it was clearly what many working-class voters wanted.

And all the time she’s talking of what she calls the “new centre ground”, although centre of gravity is perhaps closer to the mark; not some balanced ideological midpoint between left and right, but the great confusing expanse of political territory where those labels stop making sense, because public opinion seems to be left-ish on some things (believing big business must be screwing them over) but right-ish on social issues. And if that looks confusing and contradictory from the outside, imagine how it feels on the inside.

This week has revealed a government still interestingly unsure of its ground

May was right to point out this week how many politicians and journalists were wrong about Brexit. But her attack on the dreaded leftie liberal elite disguises the fact that they certainly weren’t alone in getting it wrong. Plenty of outers didn’t see victory coming either, judging by private conversations in the run-up to the referendum, and nor did many of May’s current cabinet.

Not long ago the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was earnestly telling us how Brexit would hurt the NHS, and Amber Rudd was socking it to leavers in the TV debate. What a difference a referendum makes. This week Hunt, an instinctive internationalist whose wife is Chinese, was trumpeting plans to train more British-born doctors instead of importing them – prompting a furious row over whether foreign doctors are being tacitly encouraged to leave.

Rudd, a socially liberal ex-journalist, meanwhile suggested companies be forced to publish data about how many foreign staff they employ. In a country happily relaxed about immigration, that might have sounded more pointless than sinister. In the current climate, she was accused of being one step away from handing out yellow stars.

And yes, it’s scary stuff. But it also falls apart surprisingly quickly when prodded, and therein lies the ray of hope: this isn’t a cabinet of racists. It’s a cabinet peppered with people terrified of being exposed as closet liberal elitists, clumsily second-guessing what people they’d once have regarded as racists think, only without the instinctive feel that true believers often have for when they’re going too far. Push back hard enough, and they give surprisingly fast.

Within hours, May was clarifying that she didn’t actually want to send any foreign-born doctors back, while Rudd was on radio explaining that her plan wasn’t necessarily going to happen – and the odds, given the instant backlash from business, are certainly against it. (When ministers asked firms to publish minimal and anonymised data about male and female salaries as part of its equality strategy, the furious complaints about red tape and unfair bad publicity nearly killed the plan. If they’re that afraid of a little light feminist critique, imagine how chief executives feel about ending up on some far-right hit list of supposedly “unpatriotic” businesses reliant on Romanians.)

If Rudd wants to see how divisive this idea might prove in the workplace, meanwhile, she could simply look down the cabinet table. Boris Johnson was born in New York, lived there until he was five, and until last year held dual American and British passports. Should May have hired a homegrown foreign secretary? Or should we be embarrassed to live in the sort of country where anyone would raise that question?

The damage is done now, of course. Some people will have heard the dog whistle all right, but missed the dogs being called off later. Sadly, those who have felt unwelcome here since June may simply feel more so. But the whole episode reveals a government still interestingly unsure of its ground, precisely because much of this isn’t naturally its ground; it’s still feeling its way in circumstances most ministers didn’t anticipate.

That means it can be shamed, it can be reasoned with, and now its defences have been tested properly its weak spots are more obvious – as are the places where arrows ping helplessly off its armour. And Labour ought to know, because it’s been there.

There was more than a whiff of Blue Labour – the economically leftwing, socially rightwing, heavily nostalgic movement that was fashionable for a while under Ed Miliband – about May’s agenda this week, and that provides some interesting clues as to where it might get unstuck. Team Miliband liked Blue Labour’s ideas on economic justice but balked at their awkward, uncomfortable messages on immigration (with the arguable exception of Balls, who was raising concerns over freedom of movement back in 2010).

Judging by the wild applause for every mention of Brexit in Birmingham, and the silence when May promised to protect workers’ rights, Red Toryism has a similar problem in reverse. But if the 2015 election result is anything to go by, cherrypicking the easy bits and ignoring the harder ones doesn’t work; like trying to dance a waltz without a partner, people can see something’s missing.

Trying to keep both ideologically warring halves of the package together, however, is like trying to waltz with someone who’s trying to make you dance the Charleston. Blue Labour excelled at capturing what angry voters thought, but could never quite turn it into coherent policy. Judging by last week, the Red Tories are about to find out how that feels.

The Tories lurch left and right without a clue where they really stand | Gaby Hinsliff

Think loneliness is about single people looking for love? Think again | Gaby Hinsliff

It’s hard to feel alone inside a long and happy marriage. But it’s easier than it looks, perhaps, to feel lonely. Last week, Italian police officers responding to reports of screaming and crying inside an apartment in Rome found something unexpected behind the door. Jole and Michele were a devoted elderly couple who had ostensibly got themselves worked up over a sad story on the TV news, but some gentle questioning elicited the fact that both were struggling with terrible loneliness. After 70 years of apparently loving marriage they still had each other, and yet that clearly was not enough.

Related: 10 reasons people are lonely? It’s more complicated than that | Sue Bourne

This being Italy, the officers rather charmingly cooked them a meal of spaghetti with butter and parmesan and stayed to chat, before doing the washing up and posting a flowery account on Facebook of how loneliness can suddenly sweep over you “like a summer storm”. The story went viral because it’s so heartwarming, and yet on second reading it’s also rather unsettling. The lonely are not quite the people we think they are.

It will be 20 years ago this summer that the first Bridget Jones novel was published, a timely reminder to ignore the spectacularly awful sequels and remember just how neatly the original skewered some of the myths about lonely singleton life.

Bridget was famously terrified of dying alone and forgotten, but ironically the one thing she wasn’t was lonely: she was riotously surrounded by friends and family, even if they did all keep harping on about her getting a proper boyfriend. It’s smug marrieds who can all too easily collapse in on themselves, severing old friendships they will come to regret in the process. (Anyone who thinks that having a baby means you’ll never feel alone again, meanwhile, has yet to find out how it feels to be home with a howling infant, desperately trying to engage the postman in conversation because he’s the only sentient adult you’ll see for hours.)

It’s all too easy to become consumed by family life and then wake up in middle age, ostensibly at the centre of a rich and busy life, struggling to remember your last meaningful conversation. That feeling may not be loneliness yet, but it’s a first step on the road.

The blunt truth is that not all lonely people are lovable old grannies who tug at your heartstrings

For while the cavernously empty feeling endured by the bereaved or unwillingly single can indeed be a terrible thing, and life-shortening to boot, it’s not the only kind of loneliness. A recent University of California study found that while almost half of its elderly subjects confessed to feeling lonely at times, only 18% of them actually lived alone.

Unhappy marriages, atrophying into long silences and separate lives, might have something to do with that, but the story of Jole and Michele suggests something else: a distinct kind of loneliness stemming not from the absence of significant others but from a feeling of disconnection with the wider world, a sense that you’re no longer part of something shared and human. Is it just a coincidence that the Italian couple’s crisis seems to have been provoked by a run of news stories – violent attacks, abuse at a kindergarten – revealing human nature at its coldest?

Fleeting loneliness comes to all of us occasionally, but it solidifies into something deeper and darker for those who start to perceive the world as a harsh and hostile place, one that wouldn’t welcome efforts to connect even if you try. It’s that nagging feeling of rejection, of not belonging or standing somehow apart from others, that is the true hallmark of feeling lonely in a crowd, and it’s by no means the preserve of the old.

Interestingly, a recent Brunel University study of over-50s found more than half of those identifying themselves as lonely had been that way for over 10 years, suggesting the feeling had become part of the fabric of their lives. (The same study, by the way, found levels of loneliness had barely changed since the second world war; so much for the idea of a modern epidemic, caused by fragmenting and hectic modern family lives.)

Related: The future of loneliness | Olivia Laing

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that this week’s obituaries of the fabulously wealthy Duke of Westminster, a father of four, should describe him as “lonely”. Immense wealth can of course be isolating – although the money clearly didn’t make the duke unhappy enough to get rid of it, or indeed to eschew the family tradition of minimising inheritance tax liabilities – but in Gerald Grosvenor’s case something else seems to be going on. What emerges is a picture of a man struggling all his life with feelings of inadequacy and anxiety, worried that he had done nothing to live up to the reputation of those ancestors who built his unearned fortune. Bullied at school, he reportedly left Harrow without one proper friend.

And if you can’t bring yourself to feel sorry for a billionaire, the blunt truth is that not all lonely people are lovable old grannies who tug at your heartstrings. An unhappy few have pushed others away with their self-destructive behaviour and are now paying a high price for it; some have struggled bitterly all their lives with the art of making friends, never quite mastering social norms. How much of the late-night bile spewed on social media simply reflects the envy and frustration of those who see other people happily connecting all around them and just don’t quite know how to join in? Loneliness has its dark side, one not so easily solved by more visits from the grandchildren or well-meaning volunteer “befrienders” popping in for chats over coffee.

For Jole and Michele, at least, perhaps there will be a happy ending. Now their story has been made public, perhaps surviving relatives or old friends will rally round, and if nothing else the knowledge that strangers worldwide are now asking how they can send letters or visit must do something to restore their faith in human nature.

Yet while a little kindness goes a very long way, it’s too easy to pretend loneliness can all be solved by a few more companionable plates of spaghetti. It makes for a less heartwarming story but the truth is that, like the poor, the lonely may to some degree always be with us – even, perhaps, when they’re ostensibly with someone else.

Police officers serve pasta to Jole and Michele, a lonely older couple, in Rome, August 2016. Photograph: Italian police photo/AP

Think loneliness is about single people looking for love? Think again | Gaby Hinsliff

I hate Web page three but applaud the Sun"s breast cancer campaign | Gaby Hinsliff

The Sun: battling breast cancer with cleavage shots. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Phwoar, what a timely health care reminder. Which is the rather confused message we are presumably meant to take from Monday’s Sun, which as a special deal with for female readers promoted the Web page 3 pretty to web page a single for a day – the twist currently being that for when all her clothing have unaccountably fallen off in help of avoiding breast cancer (geddit?). It is boobs, yes, but not as we know them. Which is strangely disorientating.

Most grown ladies know quite properly what they think about the Sun stunners by now: dated, seedy, juvenile at ideal and demeaning at worst. Personally I never favour a ban, a lot as I like the No Much more Webpage Three campaign’s cheerful activism, because I would far rather the paper’s editor simply woke up tomorrow and determined that in 2014 it seems frankly weird to have Ukraine at war on a single webpage and – oh look! boobs! – the next.

But cleavage for a function? Damnit, that’s a trickier contact, due to the fact it raises the query of when a breast is just a breast, and when it turns into something else entirely.

Any person who has ever breastfed a infant for a couple of months will bear in mind the strange shift from seeing one’s breasts as erotic invitation to seeing them as dreary previous public property. You start off with furtive manoeuvres in dark corners, feeding the infant below an elaborate overlapping method of shawls gradually, you realise that it really is not a disaster if the shawl slips a bit, because everyone’s fervently not looking anyway and ahead of lengthy, you’re whipping them out wherever with rest-deprived abandon. What was once an object of lust comes to appear about as desirable as the stained T-shirt covering it, so much so that eventually it feels really typical to open the door to a startled postman mid-feed. The flesh is the same, but the context utterly changed.

The Sun, 4 March 2014 Photograph: Information Global

It is accurate that numerous males – or postmen – never very attain the same stage of blase indifference to a nipple, maternally or otherwise exposed. But most intelligent adults are nonetheless capable of grasping that the identical breasts have diverse meanings in distinct contexts. Kate Moss painted topless by Lucian Freud is artwork Kate Moss topless underneath a sheer designer dress is fashion Kate Moss topless in an advert helps make you question regardless of whether she wouldn’t possibly like to put some clothes on just for once Kate Moss photographed topless on a personal beach is a breach of the press complaints code. How exciting, then, that when Moss supports the yearly Vogue Targets Breast Cancer charitable initiative she does it by pulling on 1 of their nice higher-necked T-shirts.

Soon after all, it really is precisely the panting schoolboy obsession with breasts in well-liked culture that makes mastectomy so distressing for several ladies. It really is challenging to come to feel reassured that dropping them will not indicate losing all your allure when even cancer-awareness campaigns look for to grab interest by flaunting a excellent pair (oddly, you seldom see a perky pancreas or saucy little liver exploited in the exact same way). Some cancer survivors will doubtless see this campaign as a crass and offensive stunt, a cynical try to regain the moral substantial ground for soft porn. Other folks may possibly think it would have been a great deal more empowering had the Sun selected to increase awareness by handing the Page three slot to a superbly photographed model with a mastectomy scar.

But that mentioned, there’s no ducking the truth that by asking millions of readers to examine routinely for the warning signs of breast cancer, this campaign will possibly save lives. Granted, deploying glamour versions barely out of their teens signifies that the paper almost certainly is not speaking to individuals older women who are statistically at highest threat. But provided it is doing work in conjunction with the youthful women’s charity CoppaFeel, launched by a 28-year-outdated whose cancerous lump wasn’t diagnosed until finally as well late to halt its spread, this campaign is obviously targeting a a lot more niche audience. It is rare for ladies in their 20s to get breast cancer but it happens and since it is unusual, there is a danger of misdiagnosis by GPs who will not count on to see it in women so youthful. The cheeky, perky CoppaFeel tone (not to mention name) might grate on any individual who has seasoned breast cancer close up, but it really is probably a good match for the mood of young women who nevertheless truly feel as well immortal to heed standard public well being campaigns. And if the sight of Rosie, 22, from Middlesex undoubtedly grabbed more male focus than female, effectively even which is not always a bad factor: a considerable quantity of lumps are actually found by a woman’s partner.

So I get No More Webpage Three’s point that there’s some thing quite odd about fighting illness using titillating images of ladies in their pants. These photos are profoundly divisive. But all I can say is that to my surprise and faint embarrassment, my gut feeling is rather considerably what it was on initial doing a double-consider in the newsagents’ this morning: first, why the hell couldn’t the model be allowed to preserve her jeans on? And 2nd, an awful good deal of girls will be checking themselves in the shower tonight.

This is the best Page 3 the Sun will ever run. What a shame they didn’t go out on a large, and make it the last.

I hate Web page three but applaud the Sun"s breast cancer campaign | Gaby Hinsliff