Dad's nose. Mum's eyes. The Conservative Party's chutzpah.

There's a new Conservative advertisement, which you can see at their website if you wish (http://www.conservatives.com/), but which is also up on a vast billboard on the street where I work. It says 'Dad's nose. Mum's eyes. Gordon Brown's debt.'

Every time I go past it I think of another reason why it's genius, and why I don't like it. It's a reasonable complaint that the country's in quite a lot of debt, but this ad relies on some assumptions about babies and parenthood which I find problematic.
(Problematic is a weasel word I overuse so much in my writing that near the end of any editing project, I go through with find + replace and a thesaurus. Shoddy but necessary.)

Below the cut is an extended meander which is more about my particular cultural studies obsessions than decent political debate - if you don't like people reading too much into things, then skip it, because I love reading too much into things.



Firstly, parenthood. It positions Gordon Brown as some kind of sinister interloper in the inheritance of the child - genes from Mummy, genes from Daddy, random bad stuff from WHO IS THIS MAN? What has he to do with the FAMILY UNIT (which is two-parent and closely biologically related)? Is Brown some form of intruder, inserting his loathsome inheritance into the otherwise closed system? Yes! Into homes, into the delivery ward, into the very genetic make-up of your child. (The Conservatives wouldn't ever do that.) Mmm - hints of Dad being a cuckold? Analogies with evil stepmother at Sleeping Beauty's christening. Also, possibly, of the unnaturalness of the inheritance - nose, eyes, debt - it makes the poor kid sound a bit cyborg.

Secondly, and connectedly, the ad seems to rely on the idea that babies are somehow too gorgeous and squidgy and innocent to be part of society. I saw a baby this week and it was great - chuckly, liked having its fingers nibbled. I certainly wouldn't hold it responsible for anything - it's had no personal input into the political or economic process, yet. But it's not somehow mystically outside all the systems the rest of us live in. Cuteness doesn't insulate you from culture.
So babies are born with noses and eyes, and also into a particular political system, and in a country which has a pre-existing place in the world, and some of them are born with certain forms of privilege, and with inherited wealth or poverty. Some of that stuff's excellent: when I think 'baby' and 'free healthcare' I'm delighted. When I think 'baby' and 'national debt' or 'economy dependent on sweated labour', I freak out. I think what the Conservative ad does so well is build on my sense that any association of babies and politics is unjust - 'But those tiny hands are too frail to be burdened with such things (and, incidentally, are initially made entirely of cartilege - the bones grow later, how amazing is that? Nom nom tiny baby fingers!)!'.

I'm not clueless - when generations through carelessness or malice run up debt that their grandchildren pay, it is infuriating. This ad expresses that. And babies are indeed too tiny to be held responsible for things they have, by definition, had no part in. However, a lot of adults are also currently being disadvantaged by political decisions they don't get a say in - I think that's nearly as infuriating, but not as resonant as the 20 foot of babyflesh I can see from my office window.