Today's Sunday Times reveals that Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman's latest attack on the Conservatives will be to grotesquely distort the party's backing of marriage as rewarding "philanderers on their second or third marriages with tax breaks, while stigmatising former wives left to bring up the children."
The piece states:
In an early salvo in the run-up to the general election, the deputy Labour leader will argue that the Tories, who plan to reward married couples with tax breaks, will make single people and divorced women feel as though there is something wrong with them. She will also accuse Cameron of implying that people whose personal relationships fail are responsible for the breakdown of society and for wrecking children’s lives.
Harman will use a wide-ranging speech on family policy to say Cameron is stigmatising people who are not married, including single women, while rewarding men who leave wives and marry again. “[The policy] would give tax relief to the man on his third marriage but deny it to his first and second wives bringing up his children,” she will say.
She will be giving the speech later this week to the IPPR.
Jonathan Isaby