The government will score an own goal by rejecting Marcus Rashford’s call to extend free school meals

In a national popularity contest between Marcus Rashford, gifted young Premier League star, and Steve Baker MP, self-styled “Brexit hardman” and former chair of the European Research Group, it is not difficult to imagine who might win. Mr Rashford’s advantage is amplified, of course, by his being on the side of hungry children looking for a meal over the school holidays. Mr Baker has monetarism on his side. 

And yet it seems Mr Rashford will not produce a repeat of his stunning campaign in the summer, which saw Boris Johnson order a swift U-turn on the issue. Now the mood in government seems to have changed. In short, it is getting tighter over money. The furlough scheme to protect jobs will end within days, to be replaced by a less generous support programme. Local authorities, such as Greater Manchester, forced into tier 3 restrictions are being given inadequate resources on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. And the concession to hard-pressed families facing food poverty during school holidays is not to be repeated, even though many face the same financial hardship that they did in the summer.

As The Independent’s Help The Hungry campaign has demonstrated, many families did not have enough fresh, nutritious food on the table even before the coronavirus crisis. As short-time working and unemployment have risen, so has the incidence of hardship. Dame Louise Casey, a former government adviser on homelessness, predicts a return to Victorian levels of destitution.  

If Mr Baker and, presumably to a lesser degree, the monetarist hawks in the Treasury are right then they have saved Britain from a burst of inflation, with all the costs for the vulnerable in society that would involve. Yet there is little evidence of such a surge, with inflation currently running at 0.5 per cent. For now, legitimate concerns about debasing the currency look overdone.  

The logic of the situation, as the country moves into a second Covid wave and a creeping lockdown, is no different from what it was in the summer. A public health crisis requires a public health response and an economic policy response. Mr Johnson is right to say his previous support – delivered through the Treasury, the social security system and the Bank of England – was unprecedented in peacetime. Though some programmes were ill-designed, overall it was one of the few things ministers got right.

Mr Rashford, on behalf of the children he has been fighting for, deserved to score his second goal in this particular match, and his opponents have done themselves no good in denying it.