Tony Blair's fingerprints are all over the Government's much-delayed Youth Matters, the Green Paper on youth services (see 'A tough challenge', page 10-11). And that's the problem - the Prime Minister's meddling in yoof has been one of the founding themes of New Labour, and one of its sources of embarrassing, extravagant failure.
The youth service was shredded by Thatcherism. It has never recovered.
Under New Labour, the longing for the restoration of a universal youth service has enjoyed no champions at the centre of Government.
Young people are neither children nor adults. They lack the means of independent living and social space that would respect their relative autonomy. They exist in an institutional limbo.
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