Balls’s god delusion

Ed Balls has had enough. He’s finally decided to haul in Britain’s absentee fathers and teach them a thing or two about parenthood. ‘All the evidence,’ says the Families minister, ‘is if fathers are properly engaged and involved, then they stay, they’re supportive to their children, they do all the things which lead to better child outcomes.’ Balls has fallen victim to two whopping fallacies here. One is statistical. Labour’s tax system encourages cohabiting parents to pretend to be living apart, so large numbers of invisible dads are absent only in Whitehall graphs. In fact they are at home already, exactly where the government is spending money urging them to be.

The greater fallacy is the ‘god delusion’ to which commissars like Balls are prone. They flatter themselves that the answer to every problem is the ministry and its omnipotent cohorts. Ministries are extraordinarily self-centred organisms. They’re too ready to believe that a press-release aired is a problem solved. And they adore large bureaucratic gestures. Balls plans to print 600,000 copies of a ‘Dad’s Guide’ which will help new fathers understand their obligations. Soon, he hopes, our runaway dads will be poring over government tips about ‘why dads matter’, ‘sharing chores’ and ‘keeping a good relationship with mum’. All sensible, intelligent advice, no doubt. But Balls and co haven’t twigged that the dads they want to target — unemployed, drug-addicted, sexually nomadic — are completely unresponsive to sensible, intelligent advice.

In any case, the values Balls wants to instill in fugitive fathers are not specific to parenthood. Discipline, self-sacrifice, ‘sharing chores’, loyalty to one’s kin, living within one’s means — these are the duties of good citizenship. A dad who believes parental responsibility ends the moment the condom bursts isn’t going to become a good citizen overnight just because some minister somewhere wants him to do so and has written 120 pages of stuff begging him to change his ways.