Politics
IDS has made the family a frontline issue again, but John Hutton is ready to fight back
16 December 2006
For years the Conservatives avoided mentioning the family for fear of being seen as censorious. But, in his first year, Mr Cameron has done enough not to be written off as a Dickensian prude on this issue. I am told that whatever he proposes for marriage will apply to gay couples and civil partnerships — an approach which may, in itself, provoke fresh ruptures in his party. Such discontent — along with another year of inaction — is what Mr Hutton is banking on.
Even so, Mr Duncan Smith can — at the very least — claim with justice to have moved the terms of political debate on to his ground. He has left politicians heading for the Christmas recess thinking about the true foundations of society; whether family is a stronger force than welfare and — indeed — whether Chesterton had it right in his ‘Christmas Poem’:
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
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