It’s a family affair for Tories

12:02pm Thursday 20th March 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

DAVID Cameron last week allowed fly-on-the-cereal-packet cameras from ITN to record his family at breakfast.

I had thought of doing the same thing for readers of this column, but decided against it. Just imagine pasty-faced, hurriedly dressed teens and their bleary-eyed parents and you will get the picture.

Imagine buttered toast topped with jam, marmalade or honey - surely the food of the gods - and it will be a Sunday. Imagine natural yoghurt and chopped banana - surely the ungodly food of the middle-aged tummy dodger - and it will be every other dreary day of the week.

Watching Mr Cameron and his family having their breakfast was probably enough to put ordinary viewers off whatever they were eating at the time. It may also have given them indigestion on a number of counts.

Certainly, having to swallow this ordinary-guy stuff from the end of Mr Cameron's silver spoon might prove indigestible. Yet not so, apparently - because the Tories are this week at an historic high in the opinion polls, racing 13 percentage points ahead of Gordon Brown's slip-sliding stragglers.

For all that, the Camerons are far from an ordinary family, no matter how many packets of Shreddies they artfully place on the breakfast table for the TV cameras. They both come from wealthy establishment families, have solid-gold social connections and are unlikely to suffer the money troubles that bedevil so many less elevated families. But they are parents - to a baby, a toddler and an older, severely-handicapped boy - and parenting is now political. What troubles my own stomach about all this is that youngish parents aren't always right about everything, and the parental view of the world isn't the only one.

Parents often forget this, as they drone on about their offspring, while listing their achievements and all-round wonderfulness. Don't get me wrong: me too. I have been a baby bore, a toddler bore and so on - times three. But as you stumble along the parental path, making everything up as you go, you begin to achieve some sort of perspective.

David Cameron doesn't have this as yet, and is still at the stage where the whole world appears entirely child-shaped. Last week, he said: "Nothing informs my thinking more than my family. It's the most important thing in my life." This is fair enough, but what does it mean? And doesn't it sit uncomfortably with parading his own family for political benefit?

I'm with glum Gordon on this one. Asked by reporters if he would do anything similar, he replied: "I am not going to get into what other people have done." A good job, too - the thought of Gordon glowering above his salty porridge as he broods over whatever catastrophe is about to blight his day is not a happy one. You can just see him spitting out a hot mouthful when his old mate Tony Blair pipes up on the radio.

Don't get me wrong (again): it is good to hear a politician such as David Cameron expressing concern about the family. The future of the country is in many ways tied up with the future of the family. But what is there beyond the politico posturing? Well, there is his big idea about both parents being entitled to six months' paternity leave on the statutory pay of £110 a week. But how many couples will be able to afford that?

Plus a rosy-hued proposal about hugely boosting the role of health visitors for new mothers. Like many of Tory Dad's ideas, this one sounds good, but seems sketchy on the money.

Perhaps it was just another voter-seducing idea scrawled on the back of a packet of Shreddies. Oh, and I bet the nanny bought the Shreddies. And I don't recall seeing her around the ITN-viewed breakfast table.