Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

In defence of smacking children

Scotland is fast becoming the most strident, unforgiving nanny state in the West. A world leader in the policing of people’s beliefs and lifestyles. It has in recent years passed laws telling football fans what they’re allowed to sing and chant. It has banned smoking in cars and parks and said it wants to make Scotland ‘smokefree’ by 2034. It has introduced the Named Person scheme whereby every bairn will have a state official keeping an eye on them from birth to the age of 18. (George Orwell called — he wants his storyline back.) And now this little republic of rulemaking plans to ban parents from smacking their kids.

Yes, parental slapping, the thing that so horrifies middle-class tofu mums, which brings tears to the eyes of New Dad newspaper columnists who are so scared of screwing up their kids that they think even the naughty step is a little too Hitler, is going to be outlawed north of the border. Green MSP John Finnie has brought forward a bill proposing that the defence of ‘justifiable assault’, which allows parents to physically punish their kids, be removed from Scottish law. The SNP says it won’t oppose the bill. Of course it won’t. The SNP distrusts parents so profoundly it introduced the Named Person thing. It’s hardly going to object to a bill telling parents how to parent.

The consequences of the bill will be dire. Loving parents will suffer. The stressed-out mum trying to manage four kids as she negotiates the aisles of Asda and then finds herself lashing out at one of them: grass her to the cops. The traditionalist father who adores his children more than life itself and thinks a smack on the legs is a preferable form of punishment to plonking them on a chair for 15 minutes: drag him to court.

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