Love and marriage?

Ok, I must admit I’m quite wary of Tory plans to encourage marriage via a £20-a-week tax break for married couples. Not because I don’t think marriage is a positive social force. I do. And Iain Duncan Smith’s usually excellent Centre for Social Justice – who are pushing the tax break proposal, along with other, more convincing, ideas, in their recent Every Family Matters report – has unearthed enough statistics over the years to prove that it is. But there’s something crude and debasing about deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision, based on sappier motives such as love, between two people. And, as Philip Collins suggests in an effervescent comment piece for today’s Times, there are plenty of reasons to think it just won’t work. Here are some key passages: