Never mind social mobility. Poverty is an insult to us all | Zoe Williams

Perhaps the fall of Alan Milburn’s commission will remind our politicians that no child should go hungry

The prime minister’s Social Justice and Mobility Commission was no feet-to-the-fire unit, hand-picked with the self-flagellation of the strong to ask questions of the government that were as difficult as could be. Rather, it was boiled down to the well-disposed Alan Milburn, the diplomatic David Johnston, the academic Paul Gregg and the Conservative peer Gillian Shephard. It had been slowly eroded, with key posts left empty for the past two years, but the main problem was that it was tasked with an agenda that the government didn’t do anything to further. So all its members, with heavy hearts, have resigned at once. The government, Milburn concluded, “is understandably focused on Brexit and does not seem to have the necessary bandwidth to ensure that the rhetoric of healing social division is matched with the reality”.

It may be the note of sad kindness that makes Milburn’s letter to Theresa May so devastating: he does not doubt her “personal belief in social justice”; he merely sees “little evidence of that being translated into meaningful action”. This puts him at the far-centre of an opposition that typically found May’s equality shtick rather hard to swallow: but of course he is all the more dangerous for that.

It may be the note of sad kindness that makes Milburn’s letter to Theresa May so devastating

Related: The government is unable to commit to the social mobility challenge | Alan Milburn

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from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2zZTcNC