Kemi Badenoch MP keeps being compared to Margaret Thatcher. But the truth is she has taken on the persona of a different, though equally familiar, character this week: the boy who calls out the Emperor with no clothes. In this case the Tory leadership contender is saying the inconvenient truth that absent fathers are compromising their children’s future.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, Badenoch argued that:
‘I think we ran into trouble decades ago when we were very critical of single parenthood. It sounded as if we were always talking about single mums. Where are the dads? Why are the dads not there? Why are they not looking after their families?… If you look at the prison population, the vast majority of the male prison population did not grow up with their fathers. If fathers look after their children better, they will be less likely to end up in prison. And those are the sorts of things that we need to talk about more.
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