Protecting Innocence, De-Aggressivising Interfaces

David Cameron continues to define his role as the acceptable face of New Labour with a speech to corporate leaders at the annual conference of Business in the Community today. Criticising British Home Stores for selling come-hither lingerie to under-tens, he expressed concern about "the impact on children of the increasingly aggressive interface of commercialisation and sexualisation". The protection of "childhood innocence", whatever that might mean, "against premature sexualisation is something worth fighting for." On the other hand, he has "no desire to wrap kids in cotton wool", which presumably means that premature commercialisation remains acceptable. The owner of British Home Stores claimed that the offending underwear was withdrawn within twenty-four hours "three and a quarter years ago", which proves once and for all that David Cameron is not as far behind the times as his party might prefer.

In the course of pledging to "stand up to irresponsible big business", as opposed to the responsible big businesses which fund the Conservative party, Cameron said that when he saw businesses behaving irresponsibly he would "speak out". He believes that "If a supermarket opens a convenience store on the high street and uses its financial muscle to drive down prices until small shops are forced out of business - and then immediately puts prices up again - we need to complain", though not, apparently, to pass any laws. On the other hand, "firms prepared to publicly commit to behave responsibly could be rewarded with a 'lighter touch' from government on enforcing red tape". This would mean that "The same rules would apply to them as to all businesses - but the presumption is that they are in conformity unless proven otherwise." In other words, once Tesco committed itself to a form of words promising to behave in a fashion which the Conservative party and its sponsors found acceptable, the Government would assume it was behaving well unless someone else went to the trouble and expense of showing it was not. None of this, David Cameron assures us, need constitute "socialism by the backdoor".