News from the New Party

Family matters

No reasonable person can deny that the former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan-Smith has used his time wisely since his departure from that post.  The work of the Centre for Social Justice, the think-tank which he founded, has been valuable and well-received, and his more recent efforts at the head of the Conservative Party's Social Justice Policy Group has attracted much comment, both positive and negative.

The Polly Toynbees of this world will never welcome a critique of British society which points to the widespread social breakdown and the collapse in family life which to a very large extent is its cause.  We have argued on this website that the welfare state itself has contributed greatly to this problem: a tax and benefits system that incentivises lone parenthood and penalises couples bringing up children is nothing less than an engine for social disintegration.  Pseudo-liberals who complain about "judgmentalism" in this regard are missing the point.  A system which incentivises behaviour which effectively damages millions of children and families deserves to be judged more harshly than the individuals (parents and children alike) who have been damaged by it.  Those who support such a system for their own deluded ideological purposes deserve to be judged most harshly of all.

We have had much to say about David Cameron's project to renew the Conservative Party, and much of it has been critical.  In fairness, however, it has to be said that David Cameron has been reasonably consistent in the priority he has attached to family values.  Iain Duncan-Smith's report therefore presents David Cameron with both a vindication and a challenge.  David Cameron is right to prioritise support for families - but has he got the courage to follow through?  Already the recommendations of the Social Justice Policy Review are being denounced by some on the left as "reactionary".  The Daily Mail leader today celebrates David Cameron's return to the traditional Tory fold.  Neither comment is helpful.  This issue is too important to be left to traditional right-wing Conservatives; there are those in the Labour Party (most obviously Frank Field MP) who are reaching similar conclusions to those of IDS.  David Cameron's challenge is to hold firm in what is perhaps the only policy area in which he has expressed convincing sincerity.  The instinct to retreat to hardcore Toryism would be as damaging as a surrender to the Guardianistas.  This is the issue by which the true mettle of David Cameron's leadership will be tested.