Hague cheerleads non-traditional families

News

Opponents of real marriage have been pushing back after the National Conservatism conference thrust family values into the spotlight.

Former Conservative Party leader William Hague wrote in The Sunday Times that, while the conference emphasised the role of “the traditional family”, families not based on man-woman marriage have “many virtues” and “they should not be sent the signal that conservatism is not for them”.

Warning against “abstract theories” and “excessive certainty of views”, the Peer advised Conservatives to focus on “what actually works” while adapting to a fast-changing world.

No wonder politics professor Matthew Goodwin has said that disaffected voters “got a party that is called Conservative on the tin but which over the last decade allowed an entire swathe of traditional conservative territory… to be repackaged as toxic ‘culture wars’ which too many Tories have refused to engage with”. Perhaps he had William Hague in mind.

The Conservatives missed their golden chance to be the standard-bearer for marginalised social conservatives, including many ‘Red Wall’ former Labour voters, says Prof. Goodwin. Instead they chose to dish up more of the same with the “routine prioritisation of the values and the voice of a liberal urban minority”.

Support for man-woman marriage is not some ‘abstract theory’. It is the epitome of ‘what actually works’, as all the data prove.

Encouraging men and women to tie the knot and stick together is not a way of excluding people. Evidence-based policy promotes what works best. It doesn’t demonise those who don’t fit the mould.

At C4M we can see the harm that is being done because of family breakdown and the decline of marriage. Support for real marriage is not a divisive foray into a culture war. It is an urgent moral imperative that many in our society, especially children, desperately need.