I don’t get it. Gordon Brown is promising a free daycare spot for every 2-year-old in what is billed as a scheme that “will play a central role in his drive for ‘upward social mobility’, which he intends to put at the heart of government policy.”

Huh? The only way that could work is by costing so much folks who are already upwards, social-mobility-wise, end up paying so much more in taxes to pay for this thing that they are dragged down to the level of, well, folks who are lower, social-mobility-wise.

Oh, wait. I think that’s the plan:

At present, three and four-year-olds receive up to 15 hours of free child care a week. The new plan to extend this to two-year-olds will take several years to introduce and could cost more than £1 billion a year, according to government sources. They admit that the scheme would need “significant additional resources”.

Ministers have already announced a smaller scheme aimed at the parents of 20,000 two-year-olds from the lowest-income families. The new policy, for which pilot projects will be announced imminently, could eventually include up to 600,000 children a year.