“Heaven preserve us from pundits and experts” begins Paul Coleridge, in his recent opinion piece in The Telegraph : Brexit is an opportunity to reverse the tragic decline of marriage in Britain.

Indeed.

I’ve got a right strop on.

You’ll be relieved to hear that I am going to spare you my views on Brexit itself, and will focus on the main hypothesis in this piece, which is basically that in Brexit lies the cure to the social malaise that is epitomised by the decline in marriage and the epidemic of single mothers.

For those wondering whether this connection between Brexit and marriage is entirely opportunistic, it is apparently National Marriage Week. So, whilst for the other 51 weeks of the year Brexit is more commonly described as a metaphorical divorce (a metaphor that has endless potential), this week the tables are turned :

So, with that in mind, let me explain why our decision to exit the European Union and revert to full self-government of the UK might revive marriage and enhance family stability.

Oh, go on then. Hit me with your hypothesis…

Apparently it boils down to national psychology. We joined the EU out of weakness not strength. And the EU has caused our “traditional independence and self-confidence [to] wither”.

Also, there’s some statistics and a graph. We are told that before EU 90% of new parents were married, but now we’ve got 2 million single parents – we are presumably intended to infer some sort of causal relationship between our membership and this devastating social decline. I’ve no quibble with those statistics, but I will eat my wig if this trend is not replicated in pretty much any western country you care to name whether inside or outside the EU.

If you are wondering how it is that the EU has had such a corrosive effect on us, its all to do with the EUs “behemothic” ambitious legal nannying tendencies. Remember that stoned, satiated look when a baby has just drained the last dregs out of a massive feed? That’s how I imagine poor Britannia, bloated and unable to do anything for herself, swaddled in EU regulations (sorry my metaphor key got stuck down).

Anyway, this particular passage is just my bestie favourite in the whole piece :

And this “State will provide” attitude infected our national domestic life too. The generous welfare system did nothing to discourage family breakdown and it became economically possible for a woman to support children without financial support from herself or a husband. More and more items of our household expenditure were picked up by the State. Notions of individual family self-reliance faded.

Dammit, how I *wish* we could go back to those good ol’ times when it was economically impossible for a woman to support children without financial support (and permission) from her husband. If only it weren’t for women’s pesky notions of individual self-reliance we could go back to those happy days where people were forced to stay in unhealthy and abusive relationships that damaged themselves and their children.

I’ll confess that I’m struggling here to reconcile Coleridge’s enthusiasm for our national spirit of independence with his apparent wistful regret about the development of women’s independence. I don’t think he’s noticed the massive contradiction at the heart of his article. Do you think this might be the point where I’m supposed to suggest Sir Paul should “check his privilege”?

It’s pretty clear from Coleridge’s description here that his vision is of a vast population of single mothers (not fathers) all happily claiming benefits and lounging on sofas. Look at the passage above – it’s not men who unfortunately also become economically able to leave, thereby wrecking society with their selfishness and the emergence of “individual self-confidence” to leave abusive relationships. It’s just women. In this dystopian landscape there are no self-reliant working women or feckless fathers, and probably no benefit dads with care. It’s just us girls spoiling things by not letting our husbands provide and be independent for us.

Quite apart from my feminist rage, there is another huge non-sequitur in Coleridge’s argument. The capacity of a parent or family to be independent (or not) is nothing to do with marital status. It is to do with wealth, and to do with the economic on-costs of relationship breakdown (whether married or cohabiting) – two households cost more to run than one. Marriages break down too.

Coleridge neglects half of the equation. It is basic logic that for every single mum there is a single dad somewhere. And when I last checked, being unmarried or separated did not relieve the absent parent of his (or her) obligation in law and conscience to maintain a child where that parent is financially able. Much (though not all) benefit dependence is a function of the failure of an absent parent to honour that duty (sometimes wilfully but sometimes because it genuinely cannot be done). A failure to maintain is something that in my experience both formerly married and former cohabitants are equally likely to be guilty of (indeed many with assets and a decent income may resist marriage precisely to ensure their poor partner never acquires any marital rights).

I’ll skip over the usual Marriage Foundation marriage propaganda about how children of marrieds do better blah blah blah (completely unconnected to the fact that marrieds tend to be better off, and entirely down to the magical magickness of marriage as a thing).

Coleridge finishes with this :

Of course, no one could sensibly suggest that Brexit is a magic bullet for the restoration of the stable married family. 

(says the man who has just written an article pretty much saying that exact thing).

I prefer to switch that around and say that no one could sensibly suggest that marriage is a magic bullet for our social problems. And my humble prediction is that the only impact Brexit will have on marriage rates is probably those poor families including one parent is an EU citizen from another member state who are desperately trying to work out how to secure their right to remain together with their family post Brexit.

Feature pic courtesy of Eivind Barstad Waaler on Flickr – thanks!