Babies are beautiful. I always want to smile at them in the street, perhaps because they are a rarer and more precious sight in this ageing country or because they remind me of my grandchildren. There are about 3.5 million children aged four and under, while dogs on the streets are a more plentiful 13.5 million. Is the dog boom compensating for fewer children? As time goes by, there are going to be ever more grandparents and ever fewer children to beam at foolishly.

That is not only a sadness and a loss, but becoming an aged society is a cultural and economic threat. Older people, by and large, are not the innovators or new thinkers. An ageing society risks declining in optimism, creativity and, above all, risk-taking: a top-heavy preponderance of older people makes for a conservative and fearful electorate. We are there already – and it’s getting worse.

The low priority given to maternity services in England, revealed yet again in Lady Amos’s report today, would be astounding if it weren’t so familiar. Why are mothers and babies so low down the NHS priority list when they matter most? A third of trained midwives in the UK can’t find jobs, while cash-starved obstetric departments need them but can’t pay: the over-60s take up most hospital resources.

What an odd anomaly that it is the right, especially the hard right, that wants more babies. The Reform UK candidate for the Gorton and Denton byelection, Matthew Goodwin, has been hammering on about it recently, joined by Danny Kruger, a recent defector from the Tories, who would rescind no-fault divorce, with a return to household taxation, as though that would cement families and raise the birthrate. “We are suffering from having a totally unregulated........

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