“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” says Blanche DuBois, the tragic heroine of Tennessee Williams’ classic American play A Streetcar Named Desire.

Like other resonant phrases, people often forget the context. Blanche says this to two psychiatric nurses as she is about to be forcibly removed to what those days was called a ‘lunatic asylum’.

Words can take on a life of their own.

It is entirely plausible that Donald Trump, when he constantly compares US asylum seekers to serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, is confusing these two uses of the word ‘asylum’.

It could also be plausible that Keir Starmer’s advisors did not think through the various ramifications of what they meant when they coined the catchphrase “island of strangers” to warn of the dangers of unchecked immigration.

This is not the first time that a prime ministerial speechwriter has culled more brickbats than bouquets. Neither Margaret Thatcher, when she said “there is no such thing as society”, nor Theresa May, when she spoke of “citizens of nowhere”, probably realised how much these ideas would define their premierships.

But there may be reasons other than migration why people feel estranged in the UK today.