If you’re studying for A Levels and think you can answer our essay question “Has Britain robbed its children?”, enter our competition by 1 October 2013 and you could have your essay published online by the New Statesman and Intergenerational Foundation and win £250 of book vouchers for your school library. Get your skates on though, as short-listed and winning essays will be announced in time for university entry interview dates.

Today more than 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training. Those that do go on to higher education will be paying more fees than any previous generation, leaving university with average debts of more than £40,000 each. How times have changed – not so long ago the government of the day paid students to go to university!

Affordable housing, access to education and fairly paid jobs are considered the basics of a well-balanced society, so why are our young people facing such huge barriers to achieving any of these? Have politicians on all sides of the political divide let down the younger generation? Have we as a society become addicted to short-term gain over long-term sustainability? Can the welfare state afford the costs of an ageing population? Have we overspent as a nation? Are voters to blame? Or are the poor prospects for young people due to a combination of all these factors? The Intergenerational Foundation seeks to restore the fairness between generations that has been lost in recent decades, and to offer policy solutions to make this happen.

The Brief

Write a 1,000-1,500 word essay answering the question “Has Britain Robbed Its Youth?” Go here for details on how to enter. Terms and conditions apply. You are encouraged to focus on one of the themes outlined in the fact sheets compiled by IF for the competition, which can be found here.

Good Luck!

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Until recently, every poll on Scottish independence since the beginning of 2012 had shown the No campaign in front, usually by a double-digit margin. But that trend ended today with the publication of a new Panelbase survey putting the Yes camp ahead by 44 to 43 per cent, the first time the nationalist side has led in a poll since August 2011. 

The poll was commissioned by the SNP and, as I've noted before, it's always wise to be sceptical of polls published by political parties, principally because the questions asked are often biased in favour of a particular outcome. But on the surface at least, there appear to be no oddities. 

Those polled between 23-28 August (the sample size was a respectable 1,043) were asked "There will be a referendum on an independent Scotland on 18th of September 2014. How do you intend to vote in response to the question: Should Scotland be an independent country?" In response, 44 per cent answered "Yes" (up seven points since the last Panelbase poll in July 2013) and 43 per cent answered "No" (down three points), with 13 per cent undecided. 

It's a stunning result for the SNP, and entirely at odds with the most recent YouGov poll (carried out a week earlier), which put the No campaign ahead by a record 30 points (59-29). Until other polls are published showing the nationalist side ahead, it's wise to treat survey with caution (lest it prove to be an outlier) but after months of setbacks, the result will be cited by Alex Salmond as proof of his recent claim in the New Statesman that the polls will shift in his favour as the referendum draws closer. He told Jason Cowley: "This is the phoney war. This is not the campaign. I went into an election [for the Scottish Parliament] in 2011 20 points behind in the polls and ended up 15 in front. The real game hasn’t even started. We are just clearing the ground."

In an encouraging precedent for Salmond, Panelbase was the first polling company to put the SNP ahead in the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election. US polling oracle Nate Silver, who recently declared that there's "virtually no chance that the Yes side will win", is unlikely to be losing any sleep yet, but for the first time in more than two years, Salmond can point to some evidence that the battle is far from over. 

Update: Having looked at the full tables for the survey, it's now clear what might explain the anomalous result. Those polled were first asked whether they thought Scotland could be "a successful, independent country" and whether they trusted the Scottish government or Westminster to take "the best decisions for Scotland". It's likely that both questions nudged people towards supporting independence in the final question. All the more reason, as I said before, to treat the result with caution. 

The TUC, a trade union umbrella body, said today that the UK is failing to implement European rules designed to give equal pay to agency workers. We answer five questions on the trade body’s claim.

Why does the TUC think agency staff are being treated unfairly?

The trade body is complaining to the European Commission that agency staff are still being underpaid despite the government's implementation of the Temporary Agency Workers Directive, which came into effect two years ago. It called the implementation of this directive “flawed”.

What else did the TUC say?

It argued that agency staff working at a company for 12 weeks or more are entitled to be paid the same as permanent staff.

It said an exemption meant that if a worker was directly employed by an agency the company did not have to pay that worker the same rate of pay as a staffer - although they do get paid for at least four weeks between assignments.

It added that there has been a big rise in these types of contracts, with more than one in six agency workers now on them.

What does the TUC want exactly?

The TUC says it wants the government to ban these contracts and has asked the European Commission to investigate the problem.

General secretary Frances O'Grady speaking to the BBC said: "The recent agency worker regulations have improved working conditions for many agency workers without causing job losses.

"However, the regulations are being undermined by a growing number of employers who are putting staff on contracts that deny them equal pay.

"Most people would be appalled if the person working next to them was paid more for doing the same job, and yet agency workers on these contracts can still be treated unfairly," he added.

What has the government said?

"We worked closely with both employers and employee organisations to successfully implement the Agency Workers Regulations," the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills told the BBC.

"We will of course consider carefully any information the TUC presents to the European Commission."

What do recruitment experts think about the matter?

Kevin Green, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, told the BBC the issue was not a loophole but a "legitimate part of the legislation".

"Agency workers have benefited since these rules came in," he said. "There are lots of things our members were unhappy with in these regulations, there was clearly a compromise made.

"The key thing is to get people into work, to make sure you're creating jobs, if you start unpicking regulations because you decide you don't like them, then you risk creating uncertainty, undermining employers confidence and end up with fewer people in work."

One would expect a game of word association on a busy street to match many a ‘Picasso’ with ‘Guernica’. Commissioned for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, Guernica took as its subject the aerial bombardment of the eponymous Basque town. Heinkel bombers flying for General Franco had razed it to the ground across three days earlier that year. The visual language Picasso wrought from that event gave form to human suffering with unparalleled potency.

But it also gave birth to a reputation. It is with Guernica that we are introduced to the defiant pacifist, the Picasso that would stand firm during the Occupation of Paris, and join the French Communist Party (PCF) upon its Liberation. The story goes something like this: exiled from Spain, and fully aware of the threat its Falangist occupiers posed to civilisation, Picasso joined ‘le famille communiste’ and became its most distinguished voice in the struggle against fascist and capitalist tyranny alike.      

The breast, at this point, is prompted to swell uncontrollably. After all, this tale boasts every trope of our most loved and recyclable yarns: the rustic warrior exiled from his homeland, the surging rebellion yearning a voice, and the depraved autocrat condemning it to silence. It telescopes Homer and Hemingway in equal measure. It is almost enough to make us forget that we are talking about a painter.

And yet the demands of history have a way of reasserting themselves. Such is the nature of research conducted by Genoveva Tusell Garcia, published earlier this year in The Burlington Magazine. Citing correspondence within the Franco government, Garcia makes an extraordinary claim. Although the regime’s prevailing attitude toward Picasso was one of hostility, certain of its members came to see an advantage in taming his reputation and sharing in his achievements. In 1957, they approached the painter to discuss the possibility of his work returning to Spanish collections, and even a retrospective.

What is extraordinary is not just that Picasso took part in these talks, but that he provisionally agreed to their terms. ‘I hope Franco lives longer than I do’, he said, before referring ‘with a mixture of stubbornness and sadness’ to his political stance as an obligation.

The regime’s representatives knew full well how Picasso’s ‘obligations’ would fare if their plans were enacted. The prospect on offer was nothing short of ‘killing the political myth of Picasso’. But for a leak of the ongoing talks, and some tactless hackery in the French press – erroneously claiming that Guernica itself would be making the trip to Spain – they might have succeeded.

Garcia’s evidence prompts serious questions about the way we write history – and not all of the kind that you might expect. It is not that we are required to doubt Picasso’s core beliefs, his hatred of fascism, or the sincerity of a picture like Guernica. Indeed, it is precisely the urge to do any of the above that these revelations most urgently address. That our idea of a figure should be so brittle underscores the very desire that first shaped the ‘political myth of Picasso’: that of subjecting thought – and political beings, in all their complexity – to party lines.

Allow me to explain. Post-Pétain, the conditions of French politics were ripe for cultivating heroes, and the hunger for them insatiable. The Stalinist PCF was busily mounting a mammoth PR exercise, designed to replace memories of Soviet capitulation to the Nazis with the immediate and emotive images supplied by la Résistance and la Libération. To this end, Picasso was a major coup. But unlike many of his comrades, Picasso was not easily accommodated by the strictures imported from Moscow over the following years. Zhdanovism – the policy that made a compulsory aesthetic of Socialist Realism – was not Picasso’s game.

Still wishing to profit from his fame, the PCF performed a neat two-step. It appropriated and endorsed public perceptions of Picasso – his supposed aesthetic ‘freedom’ and commitment to ‘peace’ – but not the art that shaped them. As John Berger observed, the Party ‘separated the man from his work… because he was the most famous artist in the world and a communist, he was exempt’. This would be a delicious enough example of the lapses in doctrine that underscored the pragmatism of post-war communism. It would, were it not for the fact that Picasso’s art was consequently judged as irrelevant to his politics, and his politics determined by affiliation to the Party and its prolific propaganda machine.

This fallacy has outlasted its original context, and warped our judgement. It has been repeatedly recycled by scholars wishing to extract Picasso’s art from a political context they deemed unpalatable, and blighted the contrary path taken in 2010 by Tate Liverpool’s Picasso: Peace and Freedom. That exhibition attempted to resolve the gap ‘separating the man from his work’ – but did so by bringing his work in line with the myth! Swallowing the Party’s attempt to cast Picasso as a credible cold warrior, it spuriously identified a partisan purpose to his late work in the form of allusions to global events and humanitarian causes. Picasso’s personal engagement with them is ‘proven’ by letters he received – and rarely even bothered to answer. 

What we are left with is a set of assumptions about Picasso that painfully reprise his treatment at the hands of the Party. Precious little nuance withstands the desire that myth cohere. But when nuance comes back with – ironically enough – a phalanx in support, its impact is all the more devastating.  

The revelatory proportions of Garcia’s evidence illustrate just how limited our generalisations about Picasso’s art and life have been. The former betrays a serious ambivalence toward party politics. The latter is far more complex than the paltry fact of affiliation can allow. Both far exceed the limits of this article – which is precisely why they merit further attention. Until our half-baked clichés at least reflect an account capable of accommodating dissent, unorthodoxy, and self-interest, all our work remains ahead.

Alongside tackling the deficit, the government‘s priority is now tackling another major economic problem: the rising cost of living, caused by a mix of stagnant wages, a real terms reduction in benefits, and inflation. But with public spending constrained and economic growth still fragile, policymakers need to think creatively about solutions beyond the traditional reliance on the state or the market to help struggling families.

A recent report by the Child Poverty Action Group and Joseph Rowntree Foundation demonstrates the scale of the problem for families on modest incomes: over the past year the average cost of raising children has risen by 4% for those also paying for childcare. 

To boost family incomes, policymakers tend to fixate on two levers: the state or the market. Either government, through increased cash transfers or reduced taxation, or businesses, through increased wages, are called upon to do more. Under the last Labour government, cash transfers from the state to low-income families increased substantially with some notable successes, such as the reduction in the number of children living in poverty. The coalition government has prioritised reducing income tax. Recent emphasis has shifted to the role employers can play in boosting income: there is campaigning from across the main political parties to increase the minimum wage and spread the voluntary living wage to more employers.

The state and market should do more to help alleviate poverty. But the current economic conditions limit their reach. So it is also worth exploring how a third major resource can help improve family incomes: a person’s wider family.

Already, a significant minority of households receive regular financial support from their wider family, predominantly their parents. It is estimated that about 1 in 6 households regularly receive financial help from their parents with the average received in one year about £1,400. The national annual flow of such transfers is estimated to be about £1.2bn. But this undervalues the scale of transfers taking place: it misses out those who receive money through inheritance, which is estimated to be about £30bn a year.

Forthcoming research from the Social Market Foundation found that many on the lowest incomes, especially those experiencing circumstantial poverty due to unemployment or divorce, receive significant financial support from their parents, often worth thousands of pounds. And in-kind support such as the provision of childcare and shopping is also common and saves households significant amounts of money.

The family, then, is often a major but hidden form of welfare. Its impact can be quite remarkable. There can be a considerable improvement in living standards of low income families who receive support from parents: they are better able to work or train, and afford a wider range of goods from children’s clothes to holidays.

Policymakers should seek how to mitigate some of the barriers to the giving and receiving of financial and practical support between family members. Obviously, the lack of familial exchange may be explained by geographical or emotional distance between relatives. But there are other barriers such as money and time: for example, especially with cultural and governmental expectations to work for longer in older age, grandparents will have less time in the week to provide support.

Employment for older people could be more flexible. Since the late 1980s, DIY retailer B&Q has encouraged older workers, with a quarter of its workforce now over the age of 50, by ensuring flexible working – including for caring responsibilities – is part of the company culture. Maybe this could be nudged along by making parental leave, especially parents’ unpaid entitlement, transferable to grandparents if unused?

To tackle the financial constraints some families face, maybe tax efficient, high-interest multigenerational family trusts could be established to encourage low-income families to build up a pot of money to help different generations in testing times?

This year’s Budget – with announcements to help families with childcare, petrol and housing costs – showed that the government is focussing on measures to boost living standards for those on modest incomes. But policymakers will need to think creatively and draw on multiple sources: the state and the market, yes, but also the family.   

The Government's Help to Buy scheme has come under sharp attack from the Adam Smith Institute, which writes that it:

will raise the height of all the rungs on the housing ladder by boosting house prices… [and] redistributes wealth from taxpayers to house buyers.

The key to the Institute's analysis is that the British housing market is suffering a problem of supply, not of demand. That's an analysis which bridges the normal left-right divide, and puts the ASI on the same side as many on the left (indeed, that coalition is also why the ASI's Preston Byrne has written for the New Statesman on the housing crisis several times). And the report lays out compelling reasons to support that analysis:

A 2010 House of Commons briefing paper wrote, “it has been clear for some time that housing supply is not keeping up with demand,” adding that there are “significant levels of overcrowding in the private and social housing stock.” However, the briefing continues, reductions in the price of housing accompanying the recession have done little to improve its affordability, as price falls have been accompanied by “by tighter lending criteria, particularly larger deposit requirements,” such that poor working families in rented accommodation, even assuming spartan personal budgets with little or no provision for incidentals, would need to save for several decades in order to purchase a house in most major urban centres…

Housing stock in the capital’s 10 most expensive boroughs is now worth more, taken together, than the entire property markets of the rest of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland combined.

The government's approach to fixing the housing supply problem is to boost demand, in the hope that builders will follow through. And to a certain extent, their analysis of what's holding back demand is correct:

The 2013 Budget makes it clear that the government believes lack of access to finance is the primary problem.

Once prices reach the sky-high levels they currently sit at in the south east of the country, then the big bottleneck is likely to be access to finance. In 1997, "the average house cost 3.54 times the median wage" but "by 2011 one cost 6.65 times the median wage". Lenders who may have been happy to loan four times someone's salary are likely to be considerably less happy to offer seven times that.

Help to Buy sets out to improve that situation, but does so in two ways which are woefully substandard. One, an equity loan, subsidises the homeowner in their purchase by offering an interest-free loan on up to 15 per cent of the value of the house; the second involves a guarantee to the lenders of up to 80 per cent of the value of the homes they have lent against.

The latter is most punishingly described as Britain's Fannie Mae. That organisation, as well as its sibling Freddie Mac, both played a similar role in the US mortgage market for years leading up to the crash. But when the housing bubble popped:

the extent to which the taxpayer was potentially liable was the difference between (1) the prices at which Fannie and Freddie issued their debt, and (2) the price Fannie and Freddie would have to pay the private sector to take on those risks in the event of a default.

In the US, that difference was 0.4 percentage points, but "with combined assets of over $5 trillion, 0.4 percentage points represents a very substantial figure".

That risk to taxpayers represents an all-or-nothing gamble. If the bubble pops, we'll be firmly out of pocket, but it's possible that the risk will end up coming to nothing. The same is not true of the equity loan. Although it is being written off the books (the government will bank the value of the assets they now "own" to prevent the Help to Buy scheme affecting the bottom line), it remains the case that billions of pounds are going to be "invested" in an asset class with no return on investment at all. On top of that:

this aspect of the Help to Buy scheme will take effect as a subsidy, meaning in practice that non-participating taxpayers, in addition to paying for the loans, will have to work against them as the infusion of government liquidity increases competition for limited supplies of land.

That is, insofar as help to buy merely subsidises a particular group to buy rather than boosting building, it is zero-sum: renters who can't afford even the subsidised deposits will lose out. The hope is that increased building will offset that effect, but that hope is looking slim.

What could work instead? It's in the proposed solutions that the ASI becomes most noticeably libertarian; the fact that there is broad agreement that interventions need to be on the supply side does not mean that there's broad agreement about what those interventions should be. And so the report suggests:

Releasing limited amounts of farmland for suburban development… radical liberalisation of urban planning laws… and the abolition of mandatory affordable housing provision in new housing development.

Of those, the liberalisation of urban planning laws is the most likely to get widespread support: from maximum height restrictions to requirements for car parking, there are a number of regulations which prevent us from making the best use of inner-city space. But to the ASI's suggestions might be added a nationalised programme of housebuilding, either paid for with a land value tax or deficit funded as a stimulus measure, or major investment in public transport, opening up greater areas of the outskirts of cities to inner-city population density. The institute probably won't like those ideas as much, but even they might agree they are better than what we have at present.

Here’s a story that seems redolent of the London of Dickens, but is happening all around us. The homeless are under threat from criminal gangs. They pick them up from soup kitchens and day centres across the capital with offers of money or drink in return for low-skilled work, then traffic them around the country to do slave labour. I’m in the offices of Thames Reach, a homeless charity, when I’m told about a case with which they’ve been dealing that day.

Daniel was approached at a soup kitchen by a man who offered him a job, accommodation and money. He was taken to a shed at the back of a large house in Croydon, where he stayed with eight other men.

He worked from 6am till 8pm on demolition jobs. He was paid £40 a day, but out of that he had to pay a Polish man (the leader of the gang overseeing them) for petrol and accommodation. As time went by he developed a back problem. He asked his boss if he could see the doctor. In response, the gang leader refused to pay him the money he was owed, and told him to get lost.

One member of staff at Thames Reach tells me she’s seen 50 such cases - those are just the ones she’s referred to other authorities. Another tells me that one group of rough sleepers in Brent were being paid in cider by the gangs. They know of at least one bakery in the Midlands and a factory in Lancashire where rough sleepers have been plucked from the streets to work, along with another man who ended up doing chores in a house in Leicester. None of these workers are, of course, paying National Insurance, so if anything goes wrong, as it did with Daniel, there’s no safety net.

This is happening all around us, every day in this country. It seems a shocking story. Why is it so under the radar? Part of the issue may be the nationality of these rough sleepers. It’s something our politicians have been reticent to discuss, because it’s a hot potato and they can’t do much about it.

The profile of rough sleeping in Britain changed following the accession of central and eastern European countries to the European Union in 2004 and 2007. To quote Jeremy Swain, Thames Reach’s chief executive:

In London in 2005/06, central and eastern Europeans comprised just 6 per cent of the rough sleeping population. In the latest figures (2012/13) this figure stands at 28 per cent, and now 53 per cent of London’s rough sleeping population are non-UK nationals.

Many of these people are living in squalid conditions, but as Swain says:

This horrifying phenomenon of rough sleeping among predominantly non-UK nationals remains an issue that, with honourable exceptions, homelessness organisations are reluctant to highlight, less still debate.

And as he goes on to say:

Tackling migrant homelessness and working with people with complex immigration issues is a high-risk business. As the statistics indicate, it involves engaging with some people who are living in this country illegally. Any serious debate on the subject runs the risk of being manipulated by [...] pressure groups and populist politicians. Yet the homelessness sector, by behaving as if it hopes to side-step debating these matters, is failing to shine a light on a developing humanitarian disaster as people are consigned to live in deplorable conditions, the worst witnessed for a generation and certainly comparable to the monstrous ‘cardboard cities’ of the 1980s.

***

So in many ways these shocking tales are the flip side to an issue with which we’re rather more familiar: the trafficking of people to Britain in order to carry out slave labour for criminal gangs. Something else with which Swain’s charity has plenty of experience.

Slawimir was approached outside a homeless shelter in Prague. A friendly man told him that he could find him work and accommodation in the UK if he was interested. Slawimir explained that he could not afford to go to England as he was out of work. The man offered to pay his fare to England, telling Slawimir he could pay him back out of his first wage packet as he had been helped to find work himself and understood Slawimir’s situation. Slawimir could not speak or understand English.

He was taken in a minibus to a house in Switzerland and kept under lock and key for three days. He was told that the transport could arrive any time to take them to England and it was important that they remain in the house to facilitate a speedy journey. The gang master took all his documents, saying he would need to show his ID at the border. Slawimir said that he and the seven other people (two Slovakians, four Romanians, and one Polish man) also kept in the house were treated very well.

They landed in Dover. However, after going through customs the mini bus driver and his companion began to change their attitude. They stopped at several truck stops and each time Slawimir noticed that when one or two guys were taken from the minibus they were getting into different transport and their ID was given to the driver of the new transport. Slawimir also noticed that money was being given to his driver.

By the time they got to Leeds there was only Slawimir and one other victim left in the minibus. Slawimir began to get scared when the driver of the minibus picked up a big Asian-looking man who told the two men that they would be working for him and it was important that they did as they were told. The man then gave the minibus driver a bundle of £20 notes.

Slawimir and the other man were then transferred into a saloon type car. They were placed in the back seat of the car and their doors were locked. They were driven for about one hour before they arrived at a house in what Slawimir describes as a ‘field’. The two men were put in a room off a kitchen and the door was locked. Next morning the man told them that they had to go to work. They refused, saying they did not want to be living in a house where they were locked up.

Both men were then beaten up by the big man, and a younger man, also of Asian appearance. They were told that they could disappear if they did not do as they were told. They were shown photographs of a burnt out-house with bodies laid outside. The men were told that the same thing could happen to them and their families if they did not follow the instructions of their bosses. Both were told that they belonged to the big guy as he had paid a lot of money for them. He asked them who they thought paid for them to live in luxury in Switzerland. He told them that this is why they would eat, drink, work and sleep only when he permitted it.

Slawimir received one meal a day and never received one penny for the work he was forced to do. He later explained that he’d done all sorts of jobs; building driveways, tiling work, factory work in a carpet factory where he was watched very closely by the boss and even having to clean the house belonging to his gang master and looking after his children. His working day began at 5:30am and he would usually get to sleep around 1am. He slept on a bit of carpet with one blanket for the duration of his stay.

He eventually escaped, and made his way to the Czech Embassy in London. Slawimir was told he needed to go back to the place he had fled from and get his ID. When Slawimir told them he could not go back to these people, the embassy made a referral to Thames Reach. He explained what had happened to their staff and was offered support to report his ordeal to the police. Slawimir was frightened, but knew there was another male being held at his location.

He had copied the shapes of letters spelling out some significant names, but this wasn’t enough to help the police pinpoint the location where he was kept. He was advised about the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) and the support he would receive if he chose this referral pathway. Slawimir did not want to accept Thames Reach making a referral for him but, he was also scared about returning to Prague. Thames Reach contacted one of their partner support organisations and explained Slawimir’s situation and his concerns. They placed him in a B&B so he could feel safe while they made his travel arrangements and got emergency travel documents from the Embassy.

Thames Reach then contacted all the EU Embassies to alert them to the fact that this practise of recruitment was also happening to their nationals. They arranged to accompany Slawimir to one of their projects in a different part of the Czech Republic. This project then linked him up to other support services who could give him accommodation and counselling.

Many hundreds of thousands of migrants are prospering in the UK since the enlargement of the EU. But at the bottom of the heap are men like Slawimir, who come here believing they’ll receive a fair wage and find themselves bound to criminals. The issue of black market work hasn’t really hit the headlines since the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster of 2004. There’s a lack of willing to question where we get much of our cheap labour. But someone’s providing it. It’s not good enough to pretend it happens by magic.

Downing Street has spent the day fending off multiple calls for a second vote on Syria, stating that the government has "absolutely no plans" to go back to parliament. In addition, Nick Clegg said that he could not "foresee any circumstances" in which the possibility of military action would be raised again. 

But at defence questions this afternoon, Philip Hammond was careful to leave the government with some wriggle room. In response to shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy, who has expressed "unease" at David Cameron's decision to take military action against Syria off the table, he said: 

Circumstances would have to change very significantly before parliament would want to look again at this issue.

That answer will prompt speculation about what those "circumstances" might be, the most obvious being another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime.

But the political reality is that it suits both Cameron and Ed Miliband to close down debate over a second vote. Cameron is understandably reluctant to avoid appearing indecisive by putting military action back on the table and, in view of Labour's unpredictable stance, is not confident of winning a second vote.

Miliband, who narrowly managed to avoid a major party split, has little incentive to offer Cameron his support for raising the possibility of intervention. Shadow transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick resigned before last week's vote over Miliband's refusal to rule out intervention and I'm told by a party source that at least six other frontbenchers, including one shadow cabinet minister, were prepared to do so. After a woeful summer, Miliband has regained some authority as the man who prevented a precipitous rush to war even if, as Boris Johnson wrote today, "his real position has been more weaselly". It suits him to now treat the question of military action as closed.

With all this in mind, after last week's extraordinary events, it would be wise to avoid easy predictions. 

When did margarine get so homophobic? Flora have published an advert which seems to compare your child coming out as gay to a bullet through the heart:

The bullet says "uhh dad, I'm gay" and the message at the bottom says "You need a strong heart today".

The campaign is by Lowe + Partners, Johannesburg, but it's Unilever, the consumer goods firm that owns Flora, that has come under fire from a number of gay rights groups. Interestingly though, the group also includes ice-cream makers Ben & Jerry's which changed their Cookie Dough flavour to "I dough, I dough" last month in support of same sex marriage.

Update

A Unilever spokesperson said:

“This advert was prepared by an external agency in South Africa and was not approved by anyone at Unilever. The advert is offensive and unacceptable and we have put an immediate stop to it. Unilever is proud of the support that our brands have given to LGBT people, including our recent campaign for Ben & Jerry’s on equal marriage.”

State-owned China General Nuclear Power Group is demanding a greater say in the running of any future nuclear power plants its finances in the UK, after talks with France’s EDF to partner up on a possible £14bn new plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Industry insiders predict that CGN is using Hinkley Point as a stepping stone to push for greater control over future projects, such as one of two new reactors also planned for construction by EDF, this time at Sizewell in Suffolk.

It is thought that the Chinese could seek to become joint operators of this plant, causing much unease for the government, who have already said Chinese companies should only be able to take a minority stake in sectors of the economy which are of national importance, such as energy.

This follows an attempt last year by Chinese companies to bid for Horizon, a nuclear project with plans to build reactors in Oldbury, Gloucestershire and Wylfa, Anglesey, which was put up for sale by its then-owners, German utility companies Eon and RWE. Tory MP Mark Pritchard, a member of the parliamentary joint national security committee said at the time: "Using a communist-backed, state-owned Chinese company will create major security concerns."

The bid was ultimately won by Hitachi of Japan, but it doesn’t mean Chinese investments aren’t currently growing elsewhere in the UK’s energy and infrastructure sectors. The UK’s largest water supplier, Thames Water, last year saw a 9 per cent stake bought by China’s sovereign wealth fund, while the Chinese National Oil Company, CNOOC, also acquired Nexen, in a deal worth $18bn, giving it stakes in a number of North Sea oil fields.

Despite the government’s misgivings, there is a looming energy crisis heading for Britain if it doesn’t start finalising plans to meet its future electricity needs as older out-of-date power plants close. It needs to attract investment in a new generation of nuclear reactors wherever it can get it, especially as costs have risen in the industry following Japan’s Fukushima disaster.

The Horizon project, which has already changed hands once from Eon and RWE to Hitachi, and with EDF now reducing its 80 percent stake in the Sizewell plant with the help of CGN, it is clear that few a willing to take the big risks involved in the huge costs of financing nuclear new builds. There are relatively few competing reactor designs available and companies with the means and the motivation to build them, so the government could yet find itself accepting greater Chinese help in future.

How CGN uses its involvement in Sizewell as a springboard to future projects in the UK remains to be seen, but the French and Chinese nuclear industries are already closely linked, so further partnerships could be on the cards. French-owned reactor manufacturer Areva, plus CGN, were one of the consortiums bidding for the Horizon project last year, and the pair are already working on a number of reactors together in China.

Try – just for a moment – to imagine your life without the internet. No web browser, no email, no smartphone. No online shopping. No TV on demand. No Skype, no Facebook and no Twitter. Definitely no Angry Birds, Words with Friends or WhatsApp. For most of us it's hard. If you're under 35, chances are it's pretty much impossible.

There is, of course, one place where you don't have to imagine what the world would be like if the internet had never been invented: government.

Ok, that's a little unfair. Whatever you think of the coalition, there's no denying that they have made real progress changing the way government approaches ICT. And against all the odds, GOV.UK, the new single website for government, not only landed on time and on budget, but also went on to win the coveted 2013 Design of the Year award.

So government is changing. But the world around it is changing faster. The digital revolution has already altered our lives in more ways than we could ever have imagined – and with ubiquitous superfast connectivity, 3D printers and the internet of things on the horizon, the pace of change will only accelerate. Along the way, industry after industry has been turned on its head by the internet and the things digital technology makes possible.

The potential for revolution in the business of government is real. If Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple or any one of their competitors were redesigning the way government works, do you think you'd still be wading through paper forms to get your passport renewed? Or hanging on the phone for hours trying to book a hospital appointment? Or sticking a paper tax disc in your windscreen?

Just matching the user experience we have come to expect as digital consumers, and finally putting us in control of our relationship with the state, would be enough on its own to justify digitising government. But behind the scenes even more is possible. By leveraging technology, data and the internet, a digital government really could do more with less. Routine tasks could be done faster and with fewer mistakes. Independent developers could unleash an explosion of apps and services designed to interact with government systems. High performance analytics could drive smarter decisions about when and how government chooses to act. Cumulative savings of up to £70bn by 2020 are not beyond the realm of possibility.

Just one hurdle stands in the way, and it's neither hardware nor software. Technology is both the context and the enabler for radically better government, but it is how we choose to embrace it that will make the difference between success and failure. This is particularly true for senior people in government: if an organisation's leaders aren't willing or able to change then there's little hope. If we are serious about transforming government, then the people working in government must explore radical, digital approaches to everything they do. Exposing more senior officials to outside organisations that live and breathe digital innovation, and replacing general role descriptions with specific, measurable and time-limited objectives for digital transformation would be a good start.

Today we think nothing of being able to access all of the information in the world, in an instant, just by picking up a smartphone. Change happens fast. Ten years ago, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Dropbox and Instagram didn't exist. Twenty years ago Google didn't exist, and there were only a few hundred websites in the entire world. Thirty years ago, there was no internet.

The digital revolution is coming, and government is running out of places to hide.

Chris Yiu is Head of the Digital Government Unit at the think tank Policy Exchange, and author of Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger: Remaking government for the digital age.

Follow him on Twitter: @PXDigitalGov

Elop’s role questioned as Nokia hangs up (FT)

Nokia has been through many twists and turns since starting out as a paper mill business in 1865, following that with ventures selling rubber boots and car tyres.

Decade of talks sealed with a hotel handshake (FT)

A decade of on-off negotiations between Vodafone and Verizon Communications came to a head two months ago when their two chiefs met in a San Francisco hotel to shake hands on the outlines of the third-largest ever M&A deal.

Red Bull heir Vorayuth Yoovidhaya faces Thai arrest (BBC)

Thai authorities will seek to arrest a grandson of Red Bull's billionaire, co-creator Chaleo Yoovidhaya, after he failed to appear at a court hearing.

Vorayuth Yoovidhaya, 28, is alleged to have driven his Ferrari into a police officer and killed him last September.

Premier League clubs spend record £630m (BBC)

Premier League clubs spent a record £630m in the summer transfer window, according to Deloitte's Sports Business Group.

The previous record of £500m was set in 2008. The transfer window closed at 23:00 BST on Monday.

Chinese police accuse GSK of systemic bribery (Telegraph)

Chinese authorities have ramped up pressure on British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline by challenging the company's defence that bribery took place outside its systems and controls.

Technology giant Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Nokia's entire devices and services business, patents, and mapping services for €5.44bn (£4.6bn).

Microsoft will pay €3.79bn for Nokia’s devices and services business, and €1.65bn to license Nokia’s patents.

Under the terms of the agreement, about 32,000 people from Nokia are expected to join Microsoft at closure of deal. Nokia will retain its headquarters in Finland, chief technology office (CTO), and patent portfolio.

In addition, Nokia’s top executives Stephen Elop, Jo Harlow, Juha Putkiranta, Timo Toikkanen, and Chris Weber are also expected to be transferred to Microsoft at the close of the transaction.

Risto Siilasmaa, interim CEO of Nokia, said: “Today is an important moment of change and reinvention for Nokia and its employees. With our strong corporate identity, leading assets and talent, and from a position of renewed financial strength, we will build Nokia's next chapter.”

In the recent times, Microsoft saw poor sales of Windows 8 operating system and its much-hyped Surface tablet. This acquisition is expected to give a big leap for Microsoft in the mobile handset area considering Nokia’s brand value.

The competitive smartphone market is currently dominated by Apple and Samsung, with most of the manufacturers preferring Google’s Android operating system.

Industry analysts think that Nokia’s dominance in Europe and Microsoft’s extensive presence in the US are the two vital factors of this deal.

After the closure of the deal, Nokia plans to focus on its mobile broadband services business NSN, its mapping and location services business HERE, and on its technology development and licensing business Advanced Technologies.

As part of the deal, Nokia will grant Microsoft a 10-year non-exclusive license to its patents, while Microsoft will grant Nokia reciprocal rights related to HERE services.

Both the companies have formed a partnership in 2011 to use Windows software on mobile phones.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, said: “It’s a bold step into the future - a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies. Bringing these great teams together will accelerate Microsoft’s share and profits in phones, and strengthen the overall opportunities for both Microsoft and our partners across our entire family of devices and services.”

The deal, which is expected to strengthen Nokia’s financial position, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2014.

1. The world would miss the US policeman (Financial Times)

The US’s ‘red lines’ underpin global security from the Pacific to eastern Europe, writes Gideon Rachman.

2. Merkel the European will wake up – once Germany's elections are over (Guardian)

It may look as if the chancellor is dozing on the volcano of the European crisis: but that will all change if she wins a third term, writes Ulrich Beck.

3. Britain should stay on track with HS2 (Daily Telegraph)

The high-speed rail link will display national ambition and help to rebalance the economy, argues a Daily Telegraph leader.

4. The lobbying bill will save corporate PRs but silence the protesters (Guardian)

Today parliament must wake up to a lobbying law designed to muzzle the government's biggest critics before the election, says Polly Toynbee.

5. Britain’s wish to intervene will survive (Financial Times)

Far from being a foreign policy realist, David Cameron has a taste for moral activism, writes Janan Ganesh.

6. Cameron the quarterback can’t keep relying on a Hail Mary pass (Daily Telegraph)

The only sure way for Cameron to put himself beyond the reach of the Tory posse on his trail is a healthy majority, writes Benedict Brogan.

7. For Syria's sake, end Iran's isolation (Guardian)

Iranian support to help the west bring an end to the civil war in Syria would be beyond price, writes Shirley Williams. 

8. Exposing the UKIP sham will not be enough (Times)

Andy Coulson misses the point: Farage’s party is part of a wider discontent with politics, says Tim Montgomerie.

Six months after the worst scandal in the history of our supermarkets, it is the shops and food manufacturers that are having the last laugh, writes Alex Renton. 

10. So who still thinks Israel is the root of Middle East problems? (Independent)

When regimes in the Middle East feel threatened by their own people, they immediately seek to blame the insurrection on Israel or ‘the Jews’, writes Dominic Lawson. 

The seasonally adjusted UK Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) has risen to a two-and-a-half year high of 57.2 in August 2013 compared to 54.8 in July.

The growth is primarily due to rise in output and new orders, according to statistics released by research firm Markit and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply (CIPS).

A measure of manufacturing activities in the country, PMI of above 50 implies that the sector is experiencing growth, and below hints at contraction. Manufacturing activity accounts for about one-tenth of the UK economy.

During the month, manufacturing output grew due to positive contributions from the consumer, intermediate and investment goods sectors, while demand in domestic market contributed in growth of new orders.

In addition, most of the producers launched their new products in August that improved market confidence. Exports also grew due to strong demand from countries like the US, China, mainland Europe, India, Scandinavia, Brazil and Ireland.

However, cost inflationary pressures grew due to increase in price of raw material. Manufacturers reported price rise of commodities, feedstock, oil, paper, polymers and timber.

Average selling prices and buying volumes also grew in August.

UK manufacturers continued hiring new people in production, research, management and support teams in August.

The UK manufacturing sector registered a 0.7 per cent growth in the second quarter of 2013. It is expected that the growth will touch 1 per cent in the third quarter.

Rob Dobson, senior economist at Markit, said: “Orders and output are growing at the fastest rates for almost twenty years, as rising demand from domestic customers is being accompanied by a return to growth of our largest trading partner, the eurozone.

“While the latest PMI suggests that the output side is increasingly positive, the news on the other fronts is much less so.”

David Noble, CEO of CIPS, said: “Manufacturing maintained Q3 momentum to reach a two and a half year high thanks to the biggest jump in output and new orders in almost two decades.

“This boon was driven by strong domestic demand and accelerated growth in export orders; all of which are a sign of growing confidence in the UK economy more broadly.”

Data for the survey was collected from 600 industrial firms between 12 and 27 August 2013.

For months education figures have been warning that England will soon face a chronic shortage of primary school places, a problem exacerbated by Michael Gove's decision to open free schools in areas where there is already a surplus.

The latest to sound the alarm is the Local Government Association (LGA). Its chairman David Simmonds warns that almost half of English schools districts will have more primary pupils than places within two years and that "the process of opening up much-needed schools is being impaired by a one-size-fits-all approach and in some cases by the presumption in favour of free schools and academies." 

Of the 145 free schools approved in Waves 2 and 3 of the programme, 20 per cent are located in areas where there is at least a 10 per cent surplus of places. The LGA has responded by echoing Labour's call for the schools to only open in areas with a shortage. As Simmonds said, "Local councils have a legal duty to ensure there is a school place for every child in their area but they are being hampered by uncertainty and unnecessary restrictions". Shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg said: "In choosing to prioritise school capital funding in areas with surplus places through his free schools programme, David Cameron is showing he is out of touch with the needs of ordinary people by failing to meet basic need for school places."

Michael Gove's defence is that the schools offer parents choice in areas where there may no be shortage of places but there is a lack of good schools. As he said in response to the LGA: "We have more than doubled funding for new school places and we are also setting up great new free schools, which are giving parents a choice of high quality school places in areas Labour neglected".

The Education Secretary can point to the fact that 75 per cent of the 24 free schools inspected by Ofsted (a sample too small to draw any firm conclusions) were rated as good or oustanding, significantly higher than the average figure of 64 per cent. But one concern remains that free schools are not opening in those areas in the greatest need, with more located in authorities whose schools are in the top ten per cent than those whose schools are in the bottom ten per cent. As Southwark school governor Annie Powell recently noted at Left Foot Forward, "no primary free schools have been approved for Medway, Hull, Suffolk, Portsmouth or Peterborough, the bottom five performing authorities on the main measure of performance (percentage obtaining level 4 or above in both English and maths). Contrast this with the two primary free schools in Richmond upon Thames and the three going to Wandsworth."

But standards aside, Gove is still unable to explain how free schools will deliver the 240,00 new primary school places needed by 2014-15. An additional 93 schools will open this month, taking the total to 174 but 415 new openings are needed every year to keep pace with the rise in pupil numbers.

Until he's able to get close to meeting that target, Gove's priority should be responding to what it is being accurately described as a school places crisis. And, whatever their other merits, it's already clear that free schools are not the best means of doing so.

Update: The Department for Education has been in touch to point out that it is spending £5bn between now and 2015 on creating new school places, stating that this is a "massive increase" compared to what Labour spent. Here's the full response from a DfE spokesperson:

We are spending £5bn by 2015 on creating new school places — more than double the amount spent by the previous government in the same timeframe. We worked closely with councils on the reforms to school place funding so it is now more accurate than ever before - targeting money exactly where places are needed.

Seventy per cent of all open free schools are in areas of basic need, while all the open and planned free schools will deliver 130,000 new places. They will continue to open where there is demand from parents for good schools and help manage the pressure caused by rising birth rates on the school system.

Last week's changes to the energy billing regulations, represent the biggest regulatory change experienced by the industry since privatisation. In fact, they are some of the biggest changes to any regulation, in any industry, and are all the more ground-breaking for directly affecting the way that energy companies sell their products to the consumer. At first glance , this was a simple case of victory for consumers over the corporate world, but the situation is more complex. After all, there's something inherently wrong with the idea of a predominantly consumer "victory" - the right balance of market forces and regulation ought to result in a capitalism that works equally in the interests of producer and consumer. If that is not the case, then it's a clear indicator that something has gone wrong, and that the balance needs to be restored.

These new regulations will go some way towards achieving  that, but they certainly shouldn't be seen as a happy outcome. The costs of any regulation are commonly passed to the consumer, and these changes will be no exception. No regulation is ever set in stone, however, and business leaders in the utilities industry should not give up trying to make theirs the sort of industry that requires less regulation, and not more. Leaders in other regulated industries should also take note. There will be much to learn from how the industry deal with its new regulatory environment, but there is also much to learn from the circumstances that led to such drastic action.

Therefore, it makes sense to examine why the regulator felt compelled to act in such drastic fashion. Regulation may seem to be the lesser of two evils, but the point is that the industry's relationship with its customers should never have deteriorated to the point where that was the case. For business leaders in the utilities industry, the lesser evil really ought to be an investment in building a productive relationship - fuelled by more in-depth insights - with their customers. Indeed, businesses in any regulated industry ought to take this attitude. A more proactive approach to soliciting customer opinion means that management are aware of the strength of customer demand say, for simpler pricing.  The investment required to do so, and the potential losses incurred, will almost always be offset in the long term; if industry practices can produce satisfied customers, then they will have a satisfied regulator as well.

At first glance, it may appear that energy companies have simply played by the letter of the law, but it's really more a case of them forgetting that their fight is with each other, and not with the regulator. There's a lack of competition,  but that's not to say that there are too few energy companies for market forces to be effective - the UK telecoms industry is one of the best in the world, and has fewer major players than the energy market. Rather, energy industry leaders have come to focus on the regulator, and not their competitors. Accordingly, regulators should see promoting competition as a priority, and a huge part of that comes from seeing the voice of the customer as a business resource, not just a matter for the customer complaints department. In a sector with an ethic of genuine competition,  those companies that do not heed the wishes of their customers do not last long. For example, the OFT rarely chastises retailers for unreasonable pricing - consumers do a very good job of that themselves.

I have written previously for this magazine of how we as a public have a vital part to play in building better businesses, and the energy industry is no exception. While it may form a relatively mundane part of our consumer experience, it is nonetheless a costly one, and we shouldn't allow ourselves to be distracted from making our voices heard. Energy companies for their part ought to make a  greater effort to listen, and to act upon what they hear; not only might they find advantages for their business, but the regulators would no longer have to interfere so strongly in the industry. It is right that  the state should step in when business practices within an industry leave consumers with few good options. However, it is the proper function of businesses to provide consumers with as many good options as possible, and that is the case in regulated industries as much as it is in those elsewhere in the economy. If customers are not forthcoming with their opinions then business leaders should do more to obtain their input - surely companies would rather meet the demands of their customers, rather than leaving it to the regulator to do so?

There are two possible reactions to the news of Gareth Bale’s transfer from Tottenham to Real Madrid for £86m which will see him net £300,000 a week salary. The first is how did we get here? When did it become anyone’s idea of a good investment to throw a total of £176m, in transfer and salary, at a 24 year old to kick a ball? There’s no sillier money than that chucked out the transfer window and this summer the circus really was in town.

Purists bemoan the state of our national sport – players being paid more in a week that many receive in a lifetime, refusing to train and holding their manager and fans to ransom. Their antics seem childish and at times the whole shebang looks more like a crèche for egomaniacs that the pinnacle of professional sportsmanship. But as anyone who has seen Stephen Ireland’s taste in cars will know, football is unique.

Fuelled by billions from advertising and coverage rights, football’s free market has gone ballistic. (Perhaps, like the free market, it too suffers from short-termism.)

A shrewd investor will have seen that anyone who can grab that much of the public’s attention ought to reward their cash. As Spear's has written before, there are profits to be had from putting your money into them.

Money becomes the media’s measure: the media make sagas out of players moving clubs and rate their WAGS by decadence. Fans want clubs both to spend big to attract stars and to acquire young players cheaply who can then be sold on for millions. They don’t see winning and being profit-making as mutually exclusive: money needs money. At a recent Arsenal game a fan held a placard that simply read: ‘Spend! Spend! Spend!’

Therefore I support the second reaction to Bale’s transfer: embrace it. If it proves anything it’s that markets can make anything profitable, even ball kicking. He’s one of the best in the world hence the big bucks.

A generation ago there was a tipping point when football could have remained a sport in the traditional sense; now it’s the sport of business, competitive and crazy. The recent big American investments in Premiership clubs is no coincidence. If we can accept the mandate of markets and media to blow everything out of all reasonable proportion then it won’t make it any less entertaining. Maybe then we can just sit down and enjoy the game.

This story first appeared on Spear's.

Alex Matchett is a writer for Spear's.

The news that 59 per cent of Mumsnet members identify themselves as feminist has seen a mixed response. That motherhood and feminism are compatible should of course surprise no one. It’s been this way since The Feminine Mystique took hold of the “mummy myth” and redefined it for a generation of white, middle-class, university-educated women. Motherhood pulls the rug from under you, no matter how plush.

As a feminist - and a white, middle-class, university-educated mother - I’m glad my peers still have that fury. And yet, as we enter what is being lauded as feminism’s fourth wave, I start to feel old. How relevant is my feminism now? Mothers like me might need feminism, but does a feminism that strives to be more open and inclusive really need us?

As Hannah Mudge has outlined, snide responses to Mumsnet feminism betray a disheartening lack of interest in issues that affect mothers of all backgrounds. The passion, activism and generosity of feminists I’ve met through Mumsnet is a million miles away from the self-centred Polly Filler stereotypes . Nonetheless, since having my own little rant about this, I’ve been challenged by women who find “mummy feminism” alienating for other reasons, ones that can’t be so easily dismissed. As a broad group mothers need defending, of course - but do some of us who shout loudest always do so for the right reasons?

Not all mothers are like me (white, heterosexual, cis, middle-class, able-bodied). However, those who are experience motherhood differently to those who are not. For many of us, it’s the first time problems we’ve only thought about in abstract terms become real. We notice workplace discrimination more when we’ve got a bump. Having a pushchair makes us resent public places that don’t have ramps or wider aisles. Poverty finally bites when our wages won’t cover the cost of childcare. All of those things that used to affect other people now affect us. And while for us a lot of this might only be temporary, we still feel anger.  We feel enough anger to recognise that we’re losing out because we’re mothers, but not always enough to see this isn’t just about mothers - it’s about inclusion full stop.

Our workplaces and public spaces are not built to cater for the needs of most people. It’s easy to ignore this as long as our own needs overlap, mostly, with those of the default person, who is wealthy, able-bodied and unencumbered by dependents. We only care about inclusion at one remove. Thus when we’re excluded too we don’t fit it into a broader framework; it feels too personal. It’s all about us.

The frustration I felt at using public transport with a baby, a pram and a toddler was only partly down to the fact that disembarking felt like a high-stakes version of crossing the river with the fox, the chicken and the bag of grain. It was also because I don’t think of myself as the sort of person who has to worry about space, accessibility and needing help. And then I’d think “a society that was more accepting of mothers would be more supportive”. To my shame, I rarely asked myself what riding a bus must be like for people whose children won’t ever walk or who’ll never walk themselves. I guess I thought “that’s just their lives and they’re used to it”. It wasn’t my life, though. At times I seemed outraged by the fact that motherhood was giving me just the tiniest glimpse of lives that would never be mine. I thought I was too special for motherhood, the great leveller, to cut me down in my prime.

While I can’t excuse it I don’t think I am alone in thinking this way. On the contrary, it’s this sense of entitlement that risks skewing the focus of mummy activism, making it all about the privileged demanding that their privilege be restored. It leads to groups like Netmums (distinct from Mumsnet) campaigning for supermarkets to “tilt the balance” in favour of parents, ahead of those registered disabled, when it comes to allocated parking. It leads women with higher-earning partners to see child benefit cuts as an attack on stay-at-home mothers rather than just one capricious cut amongst many (not to mention a cut which hurts higher-earning single parents the most).  It leads to this Telegraph article, in which the terrible impact of unpaid labour is illustrated by those in the “squeezed middle” struggling to pay their “high mortgages and inflation-busting school fees”. Most damaging of all, it leads to mothers who face other disadvantages feeling that their concerns are not “pure” enough for mummy feminism. It shuts them out.

I don’t think middle-class mothers are more selfish than other human beings. I don’t necessarily think we make worse feminists. What I do feel is that sometimes, the conditions of middle-class motherhood make it harder to hide one’s own self-interest. The shock of having children can make us pine for our privilege in a way that alienates others. We need to be more vigilant and we need to be more self-aware.

According to the writer Elizabeth Stone, the decision to have a child “is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body”. Parenthood exposes you and it exposes your feelings. It also lets you know just how morally immature you are. Mummy feminism at its best - such as in the examples highlighted by Mudge - can transcend this. So too, however, can listening to others and, regardless of whether they’re parents, creating more space for them.