Cristina Odone

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.

For parents with young children, it’s been a game of grandmother’s footsteps. First they heard from the new Labour government that they will open 300 new state nurseries in England to cater for the 30 hours of free childcare that families with children aged nine months and upwards are eligible for. Now they hear Naomi Eberstadt, high priestess of New Labour’s early years programme Sure Start, proclaim the home, not the nursery, as the best place for a child under one.   The 'yes but no but yes' approach of policy makers risks further confusing working parents. The 30 hours of free childcare was the previous Conservative government’s response to the UK's crisis-level economic inactivity.

Labour’s latest proposal for teachers to supervise pupils’ toothbrushing reveals a worrying view of parenting as playing a light-touch, rather than hands-on, role in a child’s upbringing. Only a week ago, the thoroughly sensible and appealing shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson MP delivered a speech that emphasised the need ‘for a two-way street’ in education: teachers and parents should collaborate to improve children’s outcomes and school attendance, which has reached crisis point. Yet within a day Sir Keir Starmer had come up with a proposal for teachers to oversee three to five year olds as they brush their teeth. Sir Keir as the tooth fairy is a comical image but one that should also raise the alarm.

We know that Westminster politicians do not always listen to ordinary voters. But there are few issues on which our representatives are more impervious to entreaties from their electorate than childcare. Too many politicians look on children as the impish impediment to both parents being in paid employment, the obstacles to Mum and Dad paying into Treasury coffers through taxes and national insurance contributions. Parents look on children as their life’s work. There is a particular cohort for whom this clash of priorities has been uniquely painful: parents who stay home to raise their own children.

Imagine a key that opened the door to a place where children did better at school, were less likely to become dependent on drink or drugs, less likely to run into trouble with the police, and ended up in a better job. Now, imagine that key being jealously guarded by a group of well-heeled families. They hold on to it tightly, this elite, but never admit to doing so. At any mention of the key in public, they roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders: it’s nothing special, they pretend.  Given the obvious unfairness, we would be within our rights to call out such outrageous behaviour, accusing these individuals of a heartless monopoly over what should be a common good. Except we don’t. Because the key to improving children’s lives is marriage, an institution few dare defend.

James looks nothing like Johnny Depp. For one thing, he is a lot taller than the 5 foot 8 star; and unlike Depp, he doesn't sport 37 tattoos. But James identifies with much the Pirate of the Caribbean star is telling the court in Virginia (and the millions following proceedings through social media).   The first time James was attacked by his wife, he convinced himself it was a one-off. They had had a row over the quality of a meal they’d shared at the local restaurant. Suddenly his wife rushed at him, battering him with her fists. He was shocked, but thought she must have drunk too much. He caught her hands in his and spoke soothingly until she stopped trying to hit out. Life resumed as normal.