Enlightened employment, not marriage, provides the key
Published 12 July 2007
When political parties spin a line and journalists succumb, neither side can have cause for complaint about the poor state of the ensuing political debate. Such was the case with the launch of the Conservatives' social justice report. This is a voluminous document that ranges from issues of social dislocation and poverty to opportunity and addiction. Yet, so far, almost all the coverage has revolved around one proposal - a £20 bribe to encourage marriage.
One can understand why David Cameron endorsed this idea with alacrity. His mishandling of the grammar schools furore reinforced a feeling in the right-wing press that he was not quite right-wing enough. Indeed, the Daily Mail celebrated his return to the fold by proclaiming that, "after months of wittering about wind-power and the work-life balance", Cameron had finally "come up with something recognisable as a true Tory policy". Will he follow his ill-fated predecessors, each of whom initially sought to embrace more modern and tolerant values, only to retreat to the core vote when the going got tough?
One of those predecessors, Iain Duncan Smith, has undergone a rehabilitation of sorts since losing the top job, as Tara Hamilton-Miller points out on page 16. The buttoned-up "quiet man" has spent time touring estates and talking to people about the causes of social breakdown in the UK.
The language of his report may be paternalistic (in the manner of IDS), but some of the ideas are commendable. These include raising the minimum gambling age from 16 to 18 (Labour's love affair with this industry is incomprehensible); incentives for good head teachers to stay at schools in deprived areas; and making voluntary work part of the curriculum. Yet such is the lot of the party in opposition that, whenever it sets out policies of such quality, the government will be able to steal the best ones for itself.
Other ideas are more controversial but merit further study, such as front-loading child benefit to the very first years of a child's life. Much of the report goes to the heart of the debate about work, home and priorities, which none of the parties has understood properly. By requiring single parents on benefits to work for 16 hours a week while their children are at primary school, the Tories have attacked the problem from the wrong end. What they should be calling for is the provision of far more part-time work that fits in with family life, whatever form that family takes.
Cameron has moved, either under duress or by choice, into the old world of the married couple and mum staying at home, of charities, country fetes and straw hats. Labour, in its ten years so far, has used the state to considerable good effect, from Sure Start centres to improving maternity leave and creating paid paternity leave. Child credits have taken roughly 800,000 out of poverty. All of this is to be praised, but it tackles the symptoms rather than the causes of the societal breakdown.
Getting people off benefits and into work is a laudable aim. But, for Gordon Brown, work has become a national mission, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Parents, whether on their own or in a couple, work long hours simply to make ends meet. Many of the problems identified in February's damning Unicef report that put the UK bottom of the list of developed countries in its approach to children have their roots in economics. If, for example, both parents get home exhausted at 7pm, is it any wonder that they do not pay enough attention to their children? Is it any wonder that an increasingly immobile society which elevates consumer spending has lost its bearings? But, for Brown, deregulation and the acquisition of national wealth appear to be the most important priorities.
The job of politicians is not to tell adults how to lead their lives. It is to provide support for children, particularly the most vulnerable. By reducing parents to workhorses, by failing to force employers to recognise that they have a broader duty to society, this government has contributed to the malaise. Duncan Smith puts the cost of crime, family breakdown and educational underachievement at £102bn a year. If it is the economy, stupid, then our priorities are just that - stupid.
Anything, just to be loved
The things politicians will do in order to appear, if not lovable, then at least human. It used to be as simple as kissing the nearest chubby-cheeked baby, but that no longer cuts the mustard: too many cried (babies, that is; politicians crying is no bad thing). Now the aim, in Britain at least, is to appear ordinary. Politicians must cycle (David Cameron), use buses (Ken Livingstone), learn to smile (Gordon Brown); in the United States politicians do the macarena (Hillary Clinton) or square-dance (George W Bush).
Some attempts at down-home normality are so extraordinary that they are hard to forget: the late Mo Mowlam whipping off her wig during the Northern Ireland peace negotiations; William Hague boasting that he downed 14 pints of bitter a night in his youth; Neil Kinnock contemplatively walking along the seashore, and falling over.
Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, almost certainly had no intention of looking ordinary when she drove that tank. Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, is no retiring violet either, proudly dressing in Lurex to welcome visitors to the annual congress of rubber and leather fetishists in his city.
But the strangest attempt to win hearts and minds must surely be Hamas's campaign for respectability. Fresh from forcing a dangerous gang to release the kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, the Islamic party turned its attention to a second rescue: this time of Sabrina, a lioness stolen at gunpoint from Gaza Zoo in 2005. Aaah!
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