Speaking at his party's Spring Forum in 2008, David Cameron signalled his intention to place the family at the heart of Conservative social policy: ‘My ambition is to make Britain more family friendly.… Not just because it is the right thing to do, not just because my family is the most important thing in my life, but because families should be the most important thing in our country's life’ (Cameron, 2008c). Of course, it has become more or less mandatory for political parties in Britain to proclaim themselves as ‘the party of the family’. Arguably, no other aspect of social policy in recent times has been so suffused with rhetoric and empty platitudes. For those on the right of the political spectrum, in particular, ‘family’ conveys an image and an emotional resonance that politicians are keen to exploit. Beyond the rhetoric, however, Cameron went on to emphasise that this was a policy issue where he believed that there was a clear differentiation between contemporary Conservatism and its predecessors – both New Labour and the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major – claiming that British politics had ‘got the family wrong for decades’.

More specifically, the theme that Cameron's Conservatives have chosen to make the central theme of their family policy is support for marriage. Drawing upon Iain Duncan Smith's analysis of the factors contributing to the ‘broken society’ (Social Justice Policy Group, 2007), family breakdown has been highlighted as a key issue, so that ‘Sticking together and raising our children together has shifted from being seen as just part of the natural order to being thought of as more like climbing Mount Everest – a triumph of heroism and endeavour accomplished by few’ (David Cameron, quoted in The Daily Mail, 2009). In Cameron’s view the policy of successive governments has for too long failed to address, or even actively contributed to, a decline in marriage. New Labour, in particular, he accused of a ‘pathological opposition to supporting marriage’ (quoted in The Daily Mail, 2009). This issue then, above all others, was to become the most high-profile and contentious topic of the period running up to the election campaign – at least until the collapse of the banking system and the economic crisis came to dominate all else.