Today’s Sunday Times carries an interview (£) by Caroline Wheeler, political editor, of Kemi Badenoch, tipped to be the next leader of the Conservative party following a members’ vote. The result of the contest will be announced on 2 November.
Badenoch’s comments on absent fathers closely echo those made by David Cameron early in his premiership. Absent fathers are feckless. All of them. No recognition that so many men would give anything to be active fathers in their children’s lives, but are stopped by their ex-partners and the family courts.
I am hopeful that Reform UK will have policies in their 2029 manifesto concerning access between children and both parents following family breakdowns.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Years ago an ex-minister in the Thatcher government wrote about how the Civil Service and Gingerbread had worked together to undermine his aims to strengthen “the family” by ensuring the welfare regime was built around the idea that “the family” was the mother and “her” children. Some years later the parents of my daughter’s friend were officers in the DWP frustrated ant the endemic fraud, in which a supposed female led single parent household obviously with a man present (despite attempts to conceal this if visited). They were frustrated that their management had no interest in doing anything about this. Probably because that would entail a parade of mothers in court. The operation of the welfare and tax credit systems incentives mother led “single parent” households. And this is just one part of the system that reflects this push to place fathers on the outside of “the family”.
Conservatives have been naively complicit in this through insisting that males should “man up” and take responsibility while every part of public policy now makes this incredibly hard, and indeed now calls this “toxic” and “coercive”. Their lack of an analysis about how this is driven by public policy means they will repeatedly make it worse.
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