David Cameron's campaign to reverse social breakdown through tax breaks for married couples pleases the Mail. A lot.
The Tory leader's pledge to strengthen traditional family structures with an overhaul of the benefits system is "a trumpet blast to shake the smug liberal consensus to its foundations" the paper, which leads with the story, applauds.
It details a litany of social blights - crime, alcohol abuse, drug addiction and vandalism - claiming just one thing, family breakdown, lies at the root of the malaise. Mr Cameron's new policy is a "welcome challenge to political correctness", it huffs. There is more of the same from Melanie Phillips on the comment page.
Saluting the Tory leader's decision to draw a line in the sand to end "the culture of dependency and appeasement of wrongdoing that the welfare state has fostered," she says poverty is a "moral issue ... it is all about behaviour and the choices we make". According to Phillips, Britain's social and moral health depends on whether our political leaders agree with her.
Janet Daley, in the Telegraph, certainly does. The statistical evidence for the value of marriage is "so crushing as so extinguish any rational argument to the contrary", she asserts. That's that, then.
Mr Cameron was speaking ahead of the publication of a report on social breakdown by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith tomorrow. The report will also suggest that an extra GBP400m be taxed on alcohol - adding around 7p to the price of a pint - to pay for treatment for alcohol abuse. This goes down less well with the Sun. "Political suicide," it scoffs. "David Cameron must tell Iain Duncan Smith he doesn't give a XXXX for his barmy idea. It's the dregs."
This is an extract from the Wrap, our digest of the daily papers.
