Quality | 2010.01.17
Little by little, the blue seeps through Cameron's silky skin | Polly Toynbee
Scratch the surface of the Tory leader\'s dreamy vision of good parenting and his true colours become that bit clearer
He called it a "sit up and think" moment. For all those musing on what being David Cameron means, and who the Conservative leader is, this might indeed be a "eureka" day. Now we finally begin to get it.
In a lecture today at the thinktank Demos on how families build character, he said he had found the social science equivalent of E=MC 2 . The research on which he will base his child poverty policy was "one of the most important findings for a generation". As used by him, the research for Demos was certainly a gem, a priceless pearl, a gift to conservatism beyond his wildest dreams. It proved, he claimed, that "the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by confident and able parents". What matters is not "the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting". He challenged "the left who have always argued that the best way to tackle disadvantage is to redistribute money from the rich to the poor". Instead – eureka – what children from every background need is "strong and secure families, confident and able parents, an ethic of responsibility instilled from a young age". With one bound, he is free.
In the realm of the blindingly obvious, children brought up by loving parents do better than the unloved. Is it all about money? No, the beloved children of a curate as poor as a church mouse will do fine. Unloved children of rich but frosty parents may do badly (don\'t mention the Queen). But there is no escaping the fact that children of families poverty-stricken for generations stand least chance. No one ever said they only lack money – they lack nearly everything.
There was a wince at Cameron\'s interpretation from the Demos researcher who analysed the figures from the Millennium Cohort – a large group of children born in 2000. Jen Luxford, co-author of Building Character, says poverty has an immense effect. Looking at what the report defines as the two key ingredients of good parenting – love and consistent boundary-setting – the authors found love scattered regardless of social class. But poor children had fewest rules imposed, because, she suggests of "more pressure, less support, a harder life". And Cameron\'s "no statistical significance" between poverty and bad parenting stands everything on its head – though it may suit him to imply they are all down there because they are bad characters. Luxford, however, makes another telling point: "It may not be in the best interests of the child growing up in hostile surroundings to be trusting and full of empathy. It may be rational to be bad, aggressive and impulsive."
Cameron is a serial abuser of social research. He has form. This time he also turned upside down the work of Leon Feinstein, whose famous research found that after 23 months of age, the dim but rich child begins to make faster progress than the bright but poor child – until at the age of six their achievements cross over, the poor child sinking, probably for ever, as the dim but rich rises inexorably. Nurturing, conversation, stimulation, a good nursery and attention from educated parents push one upwards while the other falls prey to adversity.
In his recent Hugo Young lecture on poverty , Cameron badly misused the ground-breaking work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level . He acknowledged their incontrovertible proof that "the more unequal countries do worse according to every quality of life indicator", but in the next breath he ignored the very foundation of their work when he said: "That doesn\'t mean we should be fixated only by a mechanistic objective like reducing the Gini coefficient " – the measurement of the inequality that causes social dysfunction, crime, drugs, drink and all the social evils that put Britain near the bottom of the league for civility. But no one could be a Conservative and want to narrow the gap between top and bottom. Instead Cameron said he would seek to "focus on the gap between the bottom and the middle". Leaving the rich untouched is, of course, exactly what his inheritance tax plans do.
But how lightly he treads, how delicately he picks his way among the prickles of the wicked issues, scattering a caveat here and there. Speaking on what builds "character", he was in his airy element yesterday, opining on family, parents and responsibility. But his dreamy vision of good parenting with two loving married parents sealed in matrimony by a tax allowance was blasted off the lectern by the reply to his speech from the magnificent Camila Batmanghelidjh , the founder of Kids Company.
She takes no prisoners in her raw description of the 1.5 million children she estimates are profoundly neglected and abused by drunk, drugged, mentally ill and incapable families. Two parents? If only they had one half-functioning carer. Baby P is just one that came to notice – but shortage of social workers means most are kept off the register and thrown off after a few short visits. Long queues for children\'s mental health services leave them unsupported. These children are often left bereft by state as well as parents, a world away from the moralistic finger-wagging of politicians. And, no, she told him, voluntary organisations can\'t do it all.
What would David Cameron do? Ominous threats were breezily implied, leaving no fingerprints. How about this? "We support tax credits but this exciting new evidence from Demos sets us a new challenge: to alleviate poverty of parenting, in the knowledge that it is the best way to help children escape material poverty." Will parenting classes compensate for tax credit cuts? He promises much needed extra health visitors – but Sure Start would face cuts, contracted out to voluntary groups in "a new spirit of enterprise" that would "pay by results". Here was his final homily: "Parenting is the coalface of creating character" – and who could disagree?
One deep character question remains: the nature of David Cameron, slippery as silk, smooth as his airbrushed cheeks, adept at allusion yet elusive on everything. But little by little the blue beneath the skin seeps out with each new speech. Compassionate Conservatism, let alone "Progressive Conservatism" is exposed as a head-swivellingly empty oxymoron. Day by day we may understand it a little less and condemn it a little more.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]cameron-skin-parenting-colours
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