The Tories’ food poverty problem

Marcus Rashford was just 12 when David Cameron took the Conservatives into government, a fact that makes the bones of most Westminster inhabitants creak. In the ensuing decade, he has learned to be not only a footballer of international renown, but also a measured and effective political campaigner. The Tories, on the other hand, appear to have learned nothing from ten years of dealing with the topic he campaigns on.

Rashford’s work on food poverty is unusual, not just because unlike many in his professional field who adopt causes, he has taken a great deal of time to understand it in a way that goes far beyond his personal experience. It is even more unusual in Westminster because he conducts his campaigns without any obvious partisanship and with a gentleness that appears strangely incongruous in today’s political culture.

That political culture was on show in a particularly ugly way yesterday when the Commons debated an opposition day motion from the Labour party calling for the government to carry on funding free school meals in the holidays until Easter 2021.