Family stability is a forbidden question
Until we have a political and cultural class which is prepared to be truthful about the causes of child poverty – and that lads need dads and that family stability is vital – we might as well be lead by the best intentions of Man United's young centre forward.
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If you walk from Trafalgar Square to Strand you'll see a huge photograph on a building currently being refurbished. The image is of a young man who is arguably the UK's most influential voice on child poverty. The statement next to the photograph reads: "Marcus Rashford MBE is a shining example of someone who is passionate about community. He has become a relentless campaigner against child poverty and inequality."
Rashford is highly successful young man and appears a sincere and thoughtful fellow. Much of his concern for young people seems to stem from being rooted in his locality and experiences in his youth. He plays for his local team, Manchester United, the club which took him on as a child. He still lives close to where he grew up and has maintained contact with his childhood friends. No one could doubt the success of his campaigns. During the peak of the pandemic last year Rashford achieved a shift in Government policy, costing tens of millions, such that free school meals were extended beyond term time and additional food vouchers were made available. Rashford has mobilised his huge social media following – he has over five million followers on Twitter – to move public policy in a direction he desires which makes him, in a sense, a political figure more persuasive than most MPs. Recently he argued for the Government to abandon its suspension to the temporary £20 uplift to Universal Credit.
That a young footballer has become the most influential voice on child poverty in Britain raises a number of questions, the first of which relates to the nature and quality of his advice. Rashford's interventions have something in common in pointing the blame for hunger or child welfare squarely on British society at large and, in particular, government policy. Much of the discourse engaged with his media team is punctuated with demands to reduce personal stigma and to refrain from making judgements about individual action or choices. The world painted by Rashford and his media team leaves little room for personal responsibility or indeed judgement of any kind. The connection between choices and consequences has been stripped away. Likewise, the solutions Rashford argues for always involve the state providing the solutions, usually in the form of additional spending on favoured programmes.
Some of his ideas are, in my view, fully justified. A policy of providing free school meals to all children attending state schools is what, as social democrats, we would simply call the basics. However, in asking for the state to take control of feeding children outside term time he strays outside what many would consider the Government's legitimate purview into the realm of private family life and, indeed, parental responsibility. The moral implications of doing so does not seem to be questioned.
Of course, if Rashford thinks the answer to child poverty is simply 'more freebies', as the Conservative MP Ben Bradley has called them, then I fear he is mistaken. The problem with Rashford's 'solutions' is that they focus entirely on dealing with the symptoms of child poverty rather than tackling the causes. And in the UK the causes are well known.
As the philosopher John Gray has noted: "The poverty of the modern underclass is nowhere primarily a monetary phenomenon. It is instead a cultural phenomenon, caused by family breakdown, the depletion of skills across the generations and the emergence of a dependency culture… If, as is manifestly the case, much underclass poverty is a product of family breakdown, then policy must address the conditions of family stability." Whether Rashford knows it or not, metaphorically, his campaigns pump air into the punctured tyre but fail to fix the puncture itself.
Recently I tried, in good faith, to address this question in the following way on that dubious platform known as Twitter (I am a reluctant Twitter participant):
"Another coup for Marcus Rashford in criticising welfare cuts but, like calling for free school meals, these are easy wins for his media team. Tap ins. I'd love Rashford to address the question of family breakdown and absent fatherhood – which is the prime cause of poverty."
The result was explosive. My Tweet attracted many likes, over quarter of a million impressions and incited a predictable onslaught of abuse. To some it's simply intolerable to point out the decades of social research which links family breakdown to poverty, increased crime, educational underachievement and lower earnings. But responsible politics can't deny reality. Until we have a political and cultural class which is prepared to be truthful about the causes of child poverty – and that lads need dads and that family stability is vital – we might as well be led by the best intentions of Man United's young centre forward.
