Could it be that builders are unfairly maligned? Talk to builders themselves and

Could it be that builders are unfairly maligned? Talk to builders themselves and you find there is a flip side to the cowboy builder image. Most have a horror story or two of their own, and these concern cowboy clients. It’s hideous.” The said builders, according to Ms Hurley, were “beastly”. In a concerted display of solidarity, every columnist on Fleet Street weighed in with their own horror stories; colourful tales of absconding, criminal, incompetent and otherwise useless builders

And yet. “We haven’t moved in because of a succession of lazy, inept, pretentious builders who have supposedly been doing the place up. Grant complained that, after two years, the house was still unfinished. His original budget will magically double, and then double again And he’ll never, ever, turn up when he says he will.

Along with estate agents and lawyers, builders are a profession that everyone loves to hate. Earlier this year, Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant had a run-in with the firm entrusted with the refurbishment of their pounds 1.5m Chelsea home. She is a member of the parental leave campaign, which can be contacted via Maternity Alliance, 45 Beech Street, London, EC2P.. The cowboy builder is the stuff of legend; a lazy, greedy, unreliable, tea-slurping, Sun-reading nightmare He’ll run over time: a week’s work will take months. It also throws into sharper relief than ever before the unresolved tensions and faultlines in the Government’s agenda, and looks set to reveal the gaps in New Labour’s thinking as much as its successes. The year 2000 is shaping up to be the year of delivery for New Labour in more ways than one.Helen Wilkinson is the editor of `Family Business’, a forthcoming Demos Collection. Perhaps it will make him realise that there are alternative models of modernisation – choices that need to be made as a society as we thrash out the terms of a new deal for tomorrow’s families.

For in the end New Labour’s family policy does not yet confront head on the really tricky issues: of production, and reproduction, who cares, time versus money, gender and responsibility, inequality between men and women, between poor families and well-off ones.The great irony is that the prospect of a millennium baby at No 10 not only moves family politics centre-stage. Above all, it means taking our care economy as seriously in the future as we have taken the formal economy in the past. And it means actively promoting male responsibility in the home sphere.Here too the personal may intersect with the political. It is possible that the Prime Minister’s experience of nurturing a new-born for a fourth time will radicalise him further. It means asking whether a tough regulatory approach is the way forward.

This means addressing some hard questions about business and its responsibilities for the care and nurture of the next generation. Although the Blairs are a privileged couple compared with many, the reality of adapting their way of life to the needs of a new baby may well reveal the limits and the sheer timidity of the Government’s agenda in this area, and highlight the need for root-and-branch reform. The Government is likely to come under pressure to deliver further tangible economic benefits to families in the form of paid parental leave, as well as finding more imaginative ways of valuing our care economy, and allowing people to take time off flexibly from the labour market during their working lives.The next key challenge for the Government will be to show that its work ethic, and the policy agenda that supports this, will be supplemented by a new ethic of care. They will need to seek counsel to ensure that the personal decisions they make resonate with the Government’s own political agenda Eyes will be on them. Will they use the NHS as they have said they intend to? Will the Prime Minister take time off the job and spend it bonding with the new-born? Will he champion new ways of working and opt for a sabbatical to be with the baby? Will he evolve a new leadership style and delegate more as a consequence, as he fosters a greater sense of teamwork in his Cabinet?A government which has truly mastered the politics of biography, and does not just exploit it, should understand how important such gestures can be in setting examples to the nation There are other implications.