As Orwell warned, children now spy on adults

Brendan O’Neill says that New Labour is deploying Maoist tactics to use children’s ‘pester power’ to crack down on the ‘eco-crimes’ and alleged anti-social behaviour of their parents

When I was a child, ‘pester power’ meant stamping one’s feet in a shop. It involved little more than begging one’s mum in an irritating voice for the latest He-Man action figure or for one of those unusually thick pink milkshakes from a place called ‘McDonald’s’. It was a feeble force, this alleged power of the pest, easily squished by a clip around the lughole or by that most ominous threat issued by mums-in-distress: ‘Just you wait until your dad gets home…’

How times have changed. Today, ‘pester power’ is a powerful political tool. The New Labour government is explicitly recruiting children to its climate change and respect agendas — its illiberal, conformist, thought-policing programmes of ‘good behaviour’ promotion — in the hope that they might, quote unquote, ‘use their pester power in a positive way: reminding grown-ups how to behave’.