SARAH VINE: Don’t have youngsters if you cannot afford to take care of them

Trigger warning: this column may contain several politically incorrect opinions. In ­particular, Keir Starmer should ignore all the hand-wringing and lobbying — and stick to his guns on the two-child ­benefit cap.

Not only does it make sense financially — saving the Exchequer ­billions — it also makes sense culturally and politically.

Truth is, having children is becoming a luxury. The only people who can afford to have big families these days are either the very wealthy — or those who are happy to milk the welfare state for every last penny.

For the middle-classes, two is ­usually as far as they can stretch. Three is a real push — especially if both parents work, which is invariably the case.

It’s virtually impossible to buy a home on a single salary, and childcare is often insanely expensive. Many young couples are swearing off having children altogether.

A friend of a friend’s daughter is ­getting married next weekend. She and her fiancé have already agreed that they won’t have children. They just don’t see a world in which it’s financially viable — not in a way that doesn’t severely impair their quality of life, anyway, or force them to rely on handouts.

No wonder the birth rate among middle-class couples is plummeting: it just doesn’t add up for them.

Which is a disaster waiting to happen, since the middle-classes provide this country’s financial backbone. Without them, and their hard-working progeny, there will be no one to pay for everyone else.

It’s also why having lots of children has become a kind of status symbol. The world is full of bankers (rhyming slang) flexing their loins as a way of asserting their financial dominance, their sprawling broods testimony to their financial success.

At the other end of the scale, it’s the same story — but without the gloss. There is a culture of baby-daddery which not only goes uncriticised, is also positively ­glorified in some circles.

Far from being a cause for concern (or dare I say it, embarrassment), a man’s ability to impregnate as many women as possible without accepting any responsibility for the outcomes, now hardly raises an eyebrow. Especially since the taxpayer picks up the tab.

The rich pay their own bills, and if they want to spend their money on armies of little Johnnies and Mirandas, that’s their business.

But for children whose parents — or parent — have no other means of support, it’s up to the state to provide it.

And rightly so. No child should have to suffer as a consequence of their parent’s poor choices, even if far too many do. It the mark of a civilised ­society that every child should have an opportunity in life, regardless of their background.

But it’s not always that simple. For years, and especially under the last Labour government, a system that was intended to help people in times of hardship morphed into a kind of career choice — one that positively incentivised people to turn ­children into commodities to reap state benefits.

It was a clever ruse to lock in Labour voters, rather like Tony Blair’s open borders approach with immigrant communities.

But while limitless child benefits gave Labour a political advantage, it didn’t necessarily translate into an advantage for those receiving them.

On the contrary, it made things worse, breeding a long-term culture of state dependency that straddled multiple generations and devalued whole communities, as well as stifling ­ambition and leading to a raft of other problems. Depression, obesity, substance abuse, gangs: ever-decreasing circles of hopelessness and lack of aspiration.

The introduction of the two-child cap was part of a wider attempt by the Conservatives to reverse those social trends and reduce reliance on a vast and unaffordable welfare state.

In simple terms, the cap prevents parents from claiming universal credit or child tax credit for a third or subsequent children, with a few exemptions.

One of the reasons the Tories came to power in 2010 was because many voters felt short-changed by what they perceived as a culture that rewarded failure and penalised hard work.

But those days are now gone. The Tories have been discredited, and the two-child cap has been cast by lobby groups on the Left as a wicked tactic dreamt up by George Osborne in one of his more sulphurous moments to spread misery throughout the land.

Which it never was. Sure, it saved money, but it was also about trying to encourage people to take personal responsibility for their life choices.

The real problem with it is that it hasn’t really achieved the desired effect. People are still having kids they can’t afford, and they are still the kind of people who already place the highest burden on the welfare state.

The only area where it’s made any sort of difference is among the struggling middle-classes, who have — as they always do — tightened their belts and crossed their legs accordingly.

That’s what makes the cap such a questionable policy: not the fact that it’s a Tory one, but simply because it doesn’t achieve the desired outcome.

Nevertheless, it would be madness now for Keir Starmer to cave in and reverse it. Politically, ­especially, it makes no sense. The blame for this rests firmly on the shoulders of the Tories, and that’s something he can exploit.

It’s one less tough decision for him to make — and there are going to be plenty in the weeks and months to come. Ultimately, you want people to make choices which are sensible for them as well as sensible for the country.

Having more than two children is a choice in the modern world. Contraception is widely available and we are not living in an era of high infant mortality. There is no need to have as many children as possible on the basis that only half of them will survive.

And the principal argument of the Left — that the policy disproportionately penalises ethnic minorities who often have larger families — is both patronising (assuming that they are incap­able of making informed decisions for themselves), but it’s also racist, when you stop to think about it.

There is a fine line between state dependence and state assistance. If you take the view — as many do — that having children is a civic duty, then it follows that the state would want to help those who do.

But I would argue that a far ­better way of doing that is to make it easier for parents to ­support their families themselves — via better access to good, affordable childcare provision and extended school hours, for example, and better maternity support — than by just indiscriminately paying more people to have more kids.

What we want is a system that helps struggling families — while discouraging bad parents. There are already far too many Arthur Labinjo-Hughes — the six-year-old killed by his stepmother and father during Covid — now lying in tiny graves, victims of pea-brained monsters. Not everyone deserves to be a parent.

Far too many people romanticise having children. They use parenthood as a means of self-validation — when it is emphatically not.

Having a child is the greatest and most serious responsibility you will ever undertake, and a job every bit as demanding.

If people want large families, that’s their business. But in a world of tough financial choices, the taxpayer must draw the line somewhere. If you can’t afford to look after your kids, in other words, don’t have them in the first place.

This is an important test for Keir Starmer. What he decides will be the biggest indicator yet of whether he is a serious man ­capable of making hard decisions — or whether he’s just another people-pleaser.