The battle over universal benefits continues on the local front

Here’s a question for you: should free school meals (FSM) be given to all pupils, regardless of their parents’ income? I ask because this is precisely what the Labour-led council of Southwark is proposing for its primary schools. As the Evening Standard reports, the councilmen’s thinking is that by giving “healthy” FSMs to every pupil, every day, they might help “reduce childhood obesity.” Oh, and the measure will cost some £4 million a year.

Even if we put aside the question of whether the local praetorians should — or even could — tackle obesity on behalf of middle-class parents, this is still needling stuff. Southwark council has to find savings of £50 million over the next two years; a process which is seeing it cut everything from library to street cleaning services. And yet it decides to roll out this measure? Hm.

But more important than yet another spat between the Fiscally Restrained and the Councils is what this says about an area of philosophical difference in British politics: universal benefits. The question of whether benefits should be extended to the middle classes was poised to be the defining divide between Labour and the Tories at the start of Ed Miliband’s leadership. That’s no longer the case on the national stage — but it is still, clearly, a live topic locally.