But what if the people don’t want to do it?

Experts have criticised a “lost decade” of progress on parental rights after Guardian research suggested that fewer than one in 60 public sector workers are sharing leave with their partners when they have a baby.

Ten years after the introduction of shared parental leave in the UK, the policy’s architects said it had failed to deliver on its promise of “culture change” and called for bold measures necessary to allow more men – including middle- and lower-earners – to spend time with their babies.

To us this is a useful illustration of democracy.

One definition of which is that folk get elected - democratically - to decide what everyone else should do.

Another definition is that folk get elected - democratically - to allow people to do what people want to do.

That is, in the one democracy is a forced collectivism in which - whether we consider it to be the elite who defines or the popular majority - all should be doing what is decided. Or, in the other, liberty is maximised and each gets to choose from that palette of what democracy allows.

It’s not difficult to follow that into that idea of the “truly democratic economy” so touted on the modern left. Everyone must do what has been collectively decided. Or that vision we maintain maximises liberty, here’s the vastness of a free and market economy and each individual picks and chooses as they desire.

But we can all see where that collectivism is driving us, yes? More must be done to make sure that more fathers take shared paternity leave. Even if the evidence is really rather clear that the people, when making their decisions by and for themselves, don’t really want it. That they have the option increases liberty, but so also is liberty increased by people not taking up that option.

Tim Worstall