The irony of the purging of Bo Xilai, the brash and charismatic Communist party chief of Chongqing, is that he may have been the most popular politician in China. When asked last year what they thought of Mr Bo, a group of middle-aged women from a housing estate in the central Chinese city emphatically thrust their thumbs up in unison. “Bo Xilai is great,” they said. “We love Bo Xilai.”

Mr Bo’s habit of appealing directly to the public over the turrets of the Communist party castle almost certainly contributed to his downfall. As party chief in Chongqing, he led a brutal crackdown against the local mafia, which ran the usual prostitution and gambling rackets and which almost certainly had ties to some elements of the Communist party. Given the extra-judicial nature of his “anti-crime” campaign – in which 13 people were executed in speedy trials – it would not have been hard to dispose of political rivals in the process.

Mr Bo, in an initiative several commentators likened to the Chinese equivalent of running for office – a place in the nine-member standing committee – enacted other popular policies. He weakened the distinction between city dwellers in Chongqing and those in the countryside, making it easier for rural residents to access the health insurance and other benefits denied to most non-city dwellers. He also championed construction of public housing and huge infrastructure projects that made Chongqing, a city of 10m people, one of the fastest-growing in the country.