Labour’s Green Paper on families makes it clear that the party is opposed to promoting marriage. Ferdinand Mount says it’s crucial that the Tories don’t waver, but stick to their promise of a financial incentive
What, if anything, should David Cameron promise in order to shore up family life in general and marriage in particular? Would some sort of tax incentive help to improve social outcomes and make people happier? Or is this a retro dead end, at once patronising and impractical and prohibitively expensive? Doesn’t Cameron’s self-confessed slip-up when explaining his commitment show how devilishly tricky and unrewarding the whole business is?
He can at least claim to be the first party leader to have dared put the question on the agenda. For on the agenda it now firmly is. Ed Balls’s last act of the old year was to admit that Labour had been wrong. The Minister for Children, Schools and Families conceded: ‘Because we knew it was complicated, we ended up not talking about families and talking about children instead.’
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