Sir Keir Starmer’s sincerity when he talks about family is palpable. On Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs last year, as in a speech given on Monday, he appeared most animated when speaking of his feelings towards his parents, wife and children.
The bonds between generations, and couples, clearly mean a great deal to him, as they do to most people. In 2021 our society is more honest than it used to be about the degree to which such relationships can and do go wrong.
But our ties to the people we share our lives with remain, for most of us, an enormously important aspect of who we are.Policies geared towards families have always been part of social democratic politics.