In defending the nanny state, Keir Starmer walks right into the objections that are often raised against it, which is that governments should not try to change behaviour, such as eating the right food and cleaning your teeth (Starmer to embrace ‘nanny state’ with plan for toothbrushing in schools, 10 January). Where in these worthy proposals is an understanding of how children develop? Most of us know in our hearts that the better you are looked after, the better the result. This is not from instruction but through attentive care, the capacity for which is undermined by poverty and insecurity.
So why is Labour not restoring its most inspired social provision for under-fives, Sure Start? This was set up in 1998 with Treasury funding under the brilliant Irish-born civil servant Norman Glass, who made sure that Whitehall colleagues from different departments collaborated in its design and that parents became active partners in the communities thus created. As long as children’s centres were centrally funded, they were successful, but this was not convincingly demonstrated until a decade after Conservative austerity had begun closing them, while laying waste the rest of the social fabric on which families rely.
