It's not just that they want to be photographed being nice to babies, although they always do. This time around, children are an election issue, you see. Not in the sense that one party favours them and another is opposed (unless it's the children of asylum seekers).
No, this is the election issue on which everybody agrees: children are a good thing. They deserve our taxes.
So much so that they are a focus for vigorous attempts by Labour and the Conservatives to out-bribe each other. Of course, bribes are expected at election time - a tax cut here or maybe some extra benefit there. But in the past you could generally count on the main parties also appealing on what is best for the country as a whole. You don't get much of a sense of that this time round. What we are seeing is more reminiscent of retail promotions than of coherent political policy.
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