Perhaps No 10 is worried that deeply awkward questions will be asked as to why so many families need help in the first place
When in a hole, it helps to stop digging. This government has now so categorically lost the argument over extending free school meals through the holidays that the only way of escaping with any dignity is to give in. When every other small cafe owner in England seems to be offering free sandwiches to kids over half-term, even while struggling to keep their own businesses afloat in a pandemic, then you should know you’ve lost. When lifelong Conservative voters, whose churches make regular collections for the food bank, are dismayed, then you’ve lost. When your own MPs are sending text messages such as the one I got, worrying that free school meals could become this government’s poll tax – well, sooner or later a U-turn becomes inevitable.
They may want to call it something different, dress it up not to look like a retreat. But the cabinet can’t keep twisting themselves into the kind of knots Matt Hancock did on Monday morning, telling Radio 4’s Today programme that on the one hand he agrees with the footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to stop children going hungry, but on the other hand – no, they won’t actually do what Rashford wants. The prime minister’s promise a few hours later that no child would go hungry at Christmas, even if he couldn’t actually explain how that would be guaranteed, suggests he now realises the position isn’t sustainable. The only mystery is why it took so long.
