Will Brown choose Harman or Dacre in the great marriage debate?

The Tory-Mail relationship hasn't been great of late so there'll have been a few smiles within Team Cameron at this morning's Daily Mail front page splash...

The Mail's enthusiasm for Iain Duncan Smith's likely recommendation that action is taken to reduce the disincentives to marry within the tax and benefits system will be a test for Gordon Brown.  Our new Prime Minister has courted The Sun and Mail ever since he set his eyes on Number Ten.  He will be concerned that he may lose Paul Dacre if he goes too hard against the Tory marriage policy although Harriet Harman et al will be pressing him very hard to do so.

This is how today's Mail leader column concludes:

"Duncan Smith's report is a welcome challenge to political correctness. Though some of his proposals may prove contentious - for example, swingeing taxes on alcohol to fund treatments for drug addicts - his case for strengthening family structures is compelling.  As David Cameron says, mending Britain's 'broken society' is the biggest issue of our times. It will be instructive to see how other parties respond."

Ms Harman's political correctness means she despises any hint that one form of family structure is usually better for children than any other.  That political correctness forces her and her ideological Labour colleagues to ignore the evidence that poverty is almost certainly unbeatable if public policy does not support two parents and marriage.

Comments

[Andrew Woodman]

I'd be shocked if he didn't go down the Harman route. He was the Chancellor who scrapped the allowence and has always insisted that's the best policy.

[TomTom]

Harman is irrelevant...she was not particularly courageous when she had a spendinf department to run - she could not back Frank Field nor could she resist Gordon Brown when he wanted benefit cuts introduced....he knows now that he has to curtail spending on Tax Credits or face big tax rises....so he will "reform" and "modernise" and she will smile sweetly

[Peter Hatchet]

Tomtom 12:36

And she didn't have the spine to admit she supported withdrawing troops from Iraq when she was running for Deputy Leader, but doesn't do so now, because it would affect her political career.

Spineless, dreadful woman.

[Alan S]

I think Harman speaks for many in the establishment who see marriage in religious terms and hate it for that reason.

[socialy just Conservative]

DC target must be to end this liberal cultural consensus,n Marriage is good its safe and must be Celebrated

[malcolm]

I suspect that Brown will want to please Dacre. All that we have seen from him since he became PM is that he is more interested in electoral calculation than anything else. Whether Dacre or Harman is right will be very secondary in Browns' mind in my opinion.

[Pete]

I think Dave will find his hands tied on this by EU law on equality and the like. Actually, I guess he knows that really...