But Labour’s vindictive inheritance tax regime means they are condemned to live out the remainder of their lives in torment.

Each of these elderly spinsters knows that if she were to die, her sister would have to sell the family home to pay a huge death duty bill.

On top of the grief of losing a lifelong companion would come the ordeal of being uprooted from all that is familiar and comforting. Were they a married couple or even in a same-sex civil partnership they would be spared from this nightmare predicament.

But the European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that the Government is entitled to discriminate against
long-established sibling companions.

It is tempting to vent one’s full fury in the direction of the European Court, which has a long record of issuing wrong-headed judgments.

In fact the real culprit is our own Government. Just because it has the legal power to do something does not mean it is obliged to do it.

The treatment of the Burden sisters is manifestly cruel and unfair.

Unfortunately, that is par for the course for any policy devised by this rotten Government.