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Ten years ago today the British electorate voted for life to change. Not just politics: life. It is sometimes difficult to remember the gloom that had built up over 18 years: some changes had been necessary, some disastrous, but what drove many to vote pellmell for change was the toxic attitude of government. Every ministerial statement breathed disdain for us: just close your eyes and remember the voice of Brian Mawhinney . . .

The mood – rather than the rationale – of that election was summed up by Helen Fielding’s Pooterish Bridget Jones: “It is perfectly obvious that Labour stands for the principle of sharing, kindness, gays, single mothers and Nelson Mandela, as opposed to braying bossy men . . . going to the Ritz in Paris then telling all the presenters off on the Today programme.”

Well, new Labour proved every bit as able to bray, boss, and suck up freebies. But let us home in on that vague Bridgettian principle of “kindness” in the personal, domestic sphere. What we yearned for was a humane politics: less worship of money, less triumphalism from the rich. The sight of Tony Blair’s young family on the steps of Downing Street, commonplace and oddly vulnerable, was unexpectedly moving. After the upheaval of Thatcherite change, could this be a chance to be happier? Would it be a good decade in which to find a home, start a family, balance the tyranny of the purse with the needs of the heart . . . ?

A daydream. There have been good things, but the gap between rich and poor has widened and social mobility decreased; the property market means that two normal incomes barely cover a mortgage. Pious multiculturalism and incompetent immigration controls have fractured the social consensus, as even the Immigration Minister admits. NHS improvement is patchy, and ten years of educational tinkering leave us with 40 per cent more young people not in training or employment, watching with sullen envy as merry young Poles steam in and get down to work.

Equally unnnerving – for those who voted with the heart – is the erosion of parenthood. It may seem strange to say this when a government “parenting academy” has just been unveiled, but stop to consider how keen our leaders are to encourage parents to see less of their children. New Labour has always been in love with the nursery industry, badgering single mothers to hit the Jobcentre while leaving their babies with a roomful of unfamiliar infants and low-paid adults. Now, for older children, it promises “wraparound educare” in schools.

But after an obedient boom (particularly in the institutional care of babies under 1) it now seems that people don’t like this: it does not chime with the human heart. So we learnt yesterday that nurseries are suddenly massively undersubscribed, even as the Government plans to open more. Such overprovision suggests a regime keener on its systems than on the reality of its people’s lives.

More than 200,000 children under 3 go to nursery, many full-time, and some 15,000 babies under a year old. Economics – especially house prices and the fact that women who take employment gaps lose ground heavily when they return – make it necessary. Yet one research project after another confirms that parents are not happy. Being human beings, not statisticians, they believe the evidence that early full-time group care stunts emotional development. Nor does it make mothers happy, to hand over most of their pay so that strangers will lay their babies down in cots that stand in rows.

The Chancellor could have tackled emotional, as well as physical, poverty in ways far less dirigiste, less centrally controlled but more natural. He could have supported couples’ own choices by restoring transferable tax allowances; or smiled financially on personal solutions such as care by relatives or local childminding. Government could acknowledge, with humane good humour, that very early learning and socialising are not best served by ticking off 144 goals per baby, but flourish in the mildly chaotic cosiness that all but the grimmest, dimmest homes produce. It could have concentrated on spotting and helping the minority of real problem families, like the dim malevolent women sentenced last week for treating toddlers as fighting cocks. There aren’t many. Most families are to be trusted, if government would only believe it.

Instead, even though strides have been made in flexible working and maternity leave, public money mostly pours into founding and inspecting and laying down curriculums for hundreds of new nurseries; the principle being that once a place has been allocated to a child there is no excuse for its mother not to become a taxpayer. For children able to walk and talk, nursery often does fine. For babies under 2 it rarely does. Even some two-year-olds are not quite ready: it scares them, it depresses them, it reduces their confidence and hence their ability to deal kindly with others.

Parents know this. For some time there has been anecdotal evidence that, particularly among traditionally minded ethnic minorities, a significant group refuse nursery and insist on looking after their own children for the first two years at least. They want to keep their children close and let them approach the wide world at their own pace. Refuseniks also know that like most boom industries, the nursery biz often cuts corners: using unqualified, unintelligent workers, often with poor English and sometimes illegal. I have met several. The prospectuses and manageresses of the nurseries looked immaculate, with good Ofsted reports. The price was being paid by the babies in dull days, unnoticed wishes, lack of affection and attachment.

And now the bubble has burst. That is what happens when you engineer a boom for ideological reasons, and I cannot say I am sorry. The people, once again, show more humanity and sense than government.

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