A funny thing happened on the way to the polls. For the first time in history, childcare was an election issue. And yet it wasn't.
In 2005 all the parliamentary contenders acknowledged the strategic role of the public realm as a place for children, as a provider and regulator of childcare and as a collective contributor to the costs of raising children.
Chancellor Gordon Brown compared Labour's election manifesto on childcare to a historic settlement on the scale of the creation of the welfare state. The party's commitment to creating a national network of children's centres and a system of universal, flexible, affordable childcare is simultaneously of seismic importance, and yet so belated and obvious that it seems like the invention of sliced bread or traffic lights.
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