Free school meals and the anatomy of a U-turn

No. 10’s screeching U-turn on food for low-income kids over the summer will not do the government or ministers serious harm with the wider public. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.

First, the public. They are not on Twitter. This fact cannot be repeated enough around Westminster. In a finding that should be tattooed on the flesh of every politician and journalist in and around Westminster, the latest Reuters digital news report finds that only 14 per cent of the UK population say they get news from Twitter.

The hours of Twitter frenzy that precede the U-turn will have gone largely unnoticed by most people. The BBC (including its website) is still, by a mile, the biggest news source in Britain. And quite a lot of those people will first hear about this story as ‘government backs nice footballer’s campaign to be nice to poor kids’. That may even play quite well with some voters, not least since that (remarkably impressive) footballer is being impressively gracious about the change of direction.