Why has it fallen to Marcus Rashford to spearhead Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda?

A pattern is now clearly emerging when it comes to disenfranchised groups, says Ian Hamilton. If a ‘cause’ won’t win votes then it’s best left to celebrity philanthropists to deal with

Marcus Rashford has launched a new campaign to end child hunger in the UK (Getty)

You can’t help but be impressed by Marcus Rashford’s skilful off-pitch leadership on childhood poverty. After forcing the government to U-turn over free school meals, the Manchester United and England football star is spearheading a task force on the issue of child food poverty and is warning of “devastating” effects on the stability of the country if action is not taken quickly. He understands that it’s not just about ensuring food is available for families that can’t currently afford to feed their children. Crucially, it’s about reducing the stigma that prevents many from asking for help.

He eloquently draws the analogy between the way that there is no shame in a child asking for help with a maths problem, but the same child knows from an early age not to ask for food when their stomach is empty. Even though an empty stomach impedes learning.

Here we are in 2020 faced with Dickensian levels of childhood hunger, yet we have a government that consistently boasts about how it has reduced inequality and is determined to “level up”. Again, it is not a government minister, but a celebrity footballer who has taken the initiative. Marcus has used his influence to pull together a task force, including chief executives of supermarkets, to ensure this isn’t just rhetoric but something that will provide food and quickly.

The schools minister, Nick Gibb, has said the task force recommendations will be looked at with interest. Unfortunately, that won’t fill any empty bellies today, leaving it down to Rashford’s initiative to try and feed as many children as they can.

The government can react nimbly and effectively as demonstrated by the Eat Out to Help Out campaign. But this just adds to the sense of distorted priorities, where the economy trumps everything.

Unlike the Covid-19 pandemic, childhood poverty is not a surprise – the government has known for some time what the problem is. And if levelling up really was a priority then, using the intelligence they have on childhood hunger and poverty, the treasury would already have an active scheme in place.

A pattern is now clearly emerging with this government when it comes to disenfranchised groups. Like childhood poverty, the plight of refugees and migrants isn’t news to government ministers. Again, it is left to the artist Banksy to provide some humanity by funding a rescue ship to pick up stranded groups in the Mediterranean.

So, while an artist uses his money to save people, our government spends its time and resources thinking about how it can sound tougher in its efforts to protect our borders from immigrants. That’s despite having one of the largest naval resources on hand in the world and so far offering the fewest number of places of any developed nation to refugees fleeing war zones.

What both childhood poverty and migrants have in common, as far as the government is concerned, is that they view neither issue as of importance to voters. After all, this is a government led by focus groups and polling like no other. Make no mistake, if there were votes in either of these issues they’d be doing the rounds of TV news channels making the case.

Perhaps what all this really suggests is that there is no longer even an attempt to pretend we have a social care system that protects the most vulnerable. Instead, like so many aspects of life, we are following America where “causes” are attended to by philanthropy rather than the state. We may not have mandated this by electing this government, but given their worship and belief in the private rather than state sector that’s what we now have. To have any chance of levelling up the stark inequalities in our country we’ll need much more than a solitary principled footballer and artist to achieve that ambition.

Ian Hamilton lectures in mental health at the Department of Health Sciences, University of York