In 1952, when Queen Elizabeth succeeded her father, Britain was broke. Meat, butter and sweets were still rationed. Abortion and homosexuality were illegal. Polio maimed thousands of children a year. Smog killed thousands of adults. Innocent people were sentenced to death. Plays were censored. Just 17 MPs were women.

Here's my advice to the prime minister: if you are privately, honestly confident that the Bill will unquestionably be good for the NHS, stick to your guns. But if, away from the public gaze, you harbour doubts and fear that the massed ranks of doctors and nurses might just possibly be right, then pull the Bill.

The politics of health reform are becoming ever more tangled. And the more tangled they become, the worse it will be for the Government. Last week I argued that, if David Cameron genuinely believes that the Health and Social Care Bill really will drive standards up and costs down, he should ignore the doubters and keep going. However, fresh YouGov research underlines the risks that he is running.

Peter Kellner finds that most of us think that Britain’s welfare bill is too large, that they suspect millions of people of lying to claim benefits, and that we are divided on whether we can still afford to pay state pensions to the better-off.