Childhood: the key dividing line in UK politics?
Well, that’s what Jenny McCartney argues in the Sunday Telegraph, anyway. McCartney argues that although stabbings of the kind that have dominated headlines in recent weeks remain extremely rare, there’s still no getting around the fact that “our children lead those of all the industrialised nations, by some distance, in teenage pregnancy, early and unprotected sex, smoking and drinking”, with obesity rapidly emerging as an additional concern.
But, she continues, beyond a shared emphasis on the importance of parental responsibility, Labour and Conservative policy on what to do about all this diverges sharply. Where the Conservatives “appear keen to return direct responsibility for bringing up children to parents, the extended family and the wider community of responsible adults, such as teachers”, Labour has developed proposals for a much more statist approach: a new, computerised ‘Children’s Index’.