Sorry kids, but the Bank of Mum and Dad is now shut

AT FIRST I thought this was just the Curse of Camelot (can you think of a Lotto winner whose life hasn’t fallen apart?) but then I realised: it is also the parable of the May manifesto. Last week, former Naval officer Michael Dawes, 32, whose dad Dave, 53, had won £101million on the lottery in 2011, took his father and stepmother to court for cutting him off after he had burnt through £1.6million of their prize money.

The Afghanistan veteran said: ‘My expectation was that this was an ongoing process, that there was more money coming in, and that this would be the process throughout my life.’

The first two words explain why the Prodigal Snowflake thought he could take his own father to the cleaners. ‘My expectation…’ says young Mr Dawes. He expected his father and stepmother to featherbed him for the rest of his days.

Lawyer Richard Wilson questioned Dawes junior’s sense of entitlement – and the judge dismissed the case. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what Mrs May is doing to the country. She wants to turn this nation into the Great Meritocracy for the Mainstream. Out go entitled posh boys who don’t know the price of milk – in come on-yer-bike strivers who have got where they are ‘on merit, not by privilege’. And not, it seems, on parental handouts either.

Mr and Mrs Dawes handed out a million quid each to 11 close family members, but that wasn’t enough for our Michael. He wanted more. After all, it’s common enough for parents to hand over large sums (the Bank of Mum and Dad was recently named the country’s ninthlargest mortgage lender) as offspring struggle to raise the cash for a home, with the average price now hitting £216,000 nationwide and £472,000 in London.

But it’s still jolly generous of them, of us – indeed, the many spent needles of parental cash injections to our kids are littered all over the national floor. Until the Tory manifesto was published last week, I grimly expected to do the same. I’d sell up and buy my three grad pads, perhaps.

BUT with this new ‘restored contract between the generations’ unveiled by Mrs May, I’m not sure the house will be ours to pass on any more.

I can no longer think of our main asset as a Patek Philippe watch (as in the famous ad: ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation’).

I don’t have a pension. I don’t have oodles of savings. Worse, I can’t find my way out of a paper bag and apparently ‘getting lost all the time’ is an early indicator of Alzheimer’s. My expectation, therefore, is this: that our family home will have to be sold after my death to settle a large bill for my social care (although if I get a terminal disease like cancer instead of dementia, I can still get free treatment on the NHS).

I can’t complain, though: the new deal is that other people’s children shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for your care, while your own inherit your assets. Like it or lump it.

In that sense, the judge in the Curse of Camelot case and the PM are preaching the same lesson to the entitled. There is no such thing as a ‘rightful inheritance’ – so grow up, stand on your own two feet, and don’t go crying all the way to the Bank of Mum and Dad.

Boo hoo!