Upholding family values will see off the Left
Conservatives have long understood that strong families are the best safeguard against state intervention. Couples who take care of each other, look after their children and take responsibility for their elderly relatives, all reduce the burden on the state and on the public purse. In contrast, socialism has always been dismissive of family ties, viewing parents as agents of inequality. Marxist doctrine holds that children should be reared collectively, to eradicate privilege and to ensure loyalty to the state and its objectives.
To rediscover the differences between conservatism and Corbynism, to build a coalition of voters that will deliver a majority at the next election, and to create positive arguments for limiting the size – and cost – of the state, the Tories need to make the case for upholding and strengthening the role of the family.
What does this mean in practice? It starts with support for marriage, the institution proven to be the best insurance against family breakdown and the most likely to provide children with stability. Research shows that the value of marriage is not just coincidental; the public affirmation involved in signing up to marriage, rather than drifting into cohabitation, plays an active role in maintaining a couple’s commitment to each other.
Happily, divorce rates are falling. But the prospects for children remain bleak because nearly half of all babies are born to unmarried parents. These parents are three times more likely than their married counterparts to split up before their child reaches 16.
Worryingly also, marriage is becoming the preserve of the betteroff: the vast majority of married parents are higher-rate taxpayers, whereas low-income parents are mostly unmarried. Clearly, any government interested in promoting family stability needs to provide more support for marriage among middle and lower income groups. Yet recent Conservative governments, in common with their Labour predecessors, have focused support on couples who split up. The marriage tax allowance, so long promised by David Cameron, was finally implemented at a paltry £200 a year, so insignificant that most couples fail to claim it. This contrasts starkly with the level of subsidy available to parents living apart.
Conservatives also need a message to contrast with the Left’s vision of collective, state-supervised childcare. Raising children should be the prerogative of parents, with minimal state intervention, save in cases of abuse or neglect. The role of a Conservative government should therefore be to encourage freedom of choice for families. Instead of subsidies contingent on non-parental, stateregulated care, families with a working parent should be offered tax allowances to spend as they wish, on childminders, nurseries, or care by a family member.
If one parent wants to spend time at home caring for their children, while the other works, Conservatives should applaud that decision. Perversely, however, the Tories’ strategy of continually increasing individual tax-free allowances has driven more families to have both parents in work, leaving those with just one breadwinner substantially worse off.
Giving families the option to pool their allowances, allocating work and care as best suits them, would not only affirm family life, it would demonstrate a Conservative belief in individual choice, enabling parents to transmit their own values. Such choices should also be open to families when deciding on the best school for their children, and so it is disappointing that the government is cutting the budget for free schools, the parent-led initiative introduced by Michael Gove.
Forced by their lack of a majority to abandon plans for more grammars, the Tories should at least be confident in making the case for free schools and their ability to respond to parental choice while providing opportunities for families at all income levels. Instead, however, Justine Greening appears to be succumbing to the agenda of the Left: that all schools should receive more cash, regardless of their success rates.
The education secretary also seems overly keen to subscribe to the most extreme of Left-wing ideas: that gender is a social construct rather than (in almost all cases) a biological fact. Parents who are worried about such outlandish and confusing notions becoming part of the curriculum could be excused for thinking that “conservative” is no longer an apt description of Theresa May’s party.
In opposition, a political party can more easily be forgiven for toying with borrowed ideas or seeking to reinvent itself at leisure. But for a government trying to hold back the advance of the most Left-wing Labour leadership Britain has known, such luxuries are not available. If Tories fail to articulate a message based on recognisable principles, ideological ground will soon be ceded and they will find themselves lacking any coherent message. In making the case for conservatism afresh, and pushing back socialism, where better to start than by upholding the family?