Sob story state sees reality as irrelevant

SENTIMENTALITY is the enemy of good governance, as the spectacular mismanagement of modern Britain proves.

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Our politics are now dominated by emotive manipulation, deceitful propaganda, invented grievance and assertions of victimhood. Too many decisions are now taken, not in the national interest but in response to spasms of outrage or self-pity. This pattern can be seen in the escalating mental health crisis, which owes its growth more to social fashion and the hope of state support than real medical problems. The same is true of claims about worsening poverty in our country, despite massive, unsustainable recent increases in welfare spending.

This week, a report from the Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza stated that many children in Britain are facing “real hardship and almost Dickensian levels of poverty,” in rat-infested, overcrowded accommodation, living off inadequate or rotten food supplies.

Her report is designed to tug at the heartstrings, but she undermines her case by exaggeration. It is an absurd hyperbole to pretend that our society is gripped by the same kind of destitution and neglect that characterised parts of 19th-century urban England during Dickens's time when there was no social security system at all.