The Social Justice Queen’s Speech 2) Through same-sex marriage to more marriage – to help raise life chances

May 10, 2016 by Jill

by Paul Goodman, Conservative Home:

J.F.Kennedy used to say that a rising tide lifts all boats – a maxim full of the optimism of the 1960s, suggesting, as it does, that growth and prosperity will benefit everyone. The usual belief on the right is that these are best brought about by a smaller state and balanced budget, just as its counterpart on the left is that they will be ushered in by a bigger state and higher taxes, or by more borrowing, or both. But what if the boats are damaged? What if they are so fissured by holes or full of water that they cannot rise?

This is a question that David Cameron, pre-referendum, became preoccupied by. As soon as last year’s election left him able to lead a majority Conservative Government, he dropped the simple slogans about “hard-working people who play by the rules” that had sustained him during the election campaign, and pushed a One Nation message that was largely absent during the immediate run-up to last May, with a new stress on helping the most disadvantaged to help themselves.

His first major domestic policy speech post-election addressed the issue by telling a story – of how the route to good jobs travels via good schools from strong families. The causes of stalled social mobility, he said, are “family breakdown. Debt. Addiction. Poor schools. Lack of skills. Unemployment”, which leave “people capable of work, written off to a lifetime on benefits”. If a man is addicted to drugs, or lacks the skills that school should have given him, or has been unemployed for so long that his skills are outdated, that rising tide of growth won’t sail his boat.

Government necessarily intervenes in the world of work, not only because it will always be a big player in shaping the economy – even if the state were much smaller – but because of the programmes it runs to help get the long-term unemployed into work. And it has been intervening in education in a major way since the nineteenth century: indeed, it was a Conservative Government led by Balfour, during the last one, that extended the role of government by rationalising the way in which church and other schools worked.

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