It’s a general rule of politics, as it is in life, that when you’re backed into a corner and have nothing else to say, you should mention the children.

When Hillary Clinton was asked, during the final televised debate of the 2016 presidential election campaign, to name a single positive quality possessed by Donald Trump, she said his kids.

The reason Tony Blair’s “education, education, education” mantra – in response to a question about New Labour’s top three priorities – was so effective is because it emphasised his party’s commitment to equip voters’ children with the means to do better than them.

Tax breaks for the owners of Formula One, cutting benefits for single parents and invading Iraq might not have sounded so effective.

It’s the political equivalent of Miss World contestants being asked what they desire most in life, and them responding “world peace” when everyone knows that what they really mean is a Rolex.

Read more by Carlos Alba

Communicating that we are dedicated to improving the prospects of future generations tells everyone how wonderful we are.

It’s why celebrities whose careers are on the slide are snapped handing out sacks of grain to starving African children, and why everyone’s social media scrolls are stuffed full of self-satisfied images of their sprogs graduating from agricultural college and passing their grade eight exam on the glockenspiel.

The closest thing to a “gimme” in UK politics is the issue of child poverty because every party wants to claim that they are ending it – or at........

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