Why do the Tories always let themselves be seen as cold, child-eating monsters?

Follow Marcus Rashford, the young football striker, on Twitter (3.5 million followers) and you will witness the most astonishing outpouring of support for his free meals campaign coming in from charities, councils, restaurants and cafés from around the country, from top to toe.

In Wigan, owners of the Courtyard cafe, say they will be offering free lunches when half-term breaks next Monday while the Lillies Coffee Shop in Rotherham is doing the same. The owners of two bridal shops in Silsden and Colne, Lancashire, say they will be providing free lunches at their reception desks and a special delivery service if needed. The owner – Ava Rose Hamilton – says in a social media post: “No children should be hungry in this day and age.”

The Midland Mencap is going to have packed lunches ready while the manager of the Dukes Head in Great Yarmouth has posted on Facebook that 20 packed lunches a day will be ready each day for children in need.

On and on the offers are flowing and still flowing in: from Greenwich in London, Birkenhead, Harrogate, Liverpool, Birmingham to Millom in Cumbria.

Meanwhile, Rashford – who will be 23 next week – was earlier today working at the FareShare food bank at New Smithfield Market with his mother, Melanie, in Manchester. The Manchester United Striker has described before how his mother relied on free meals and worked 14-hour shifts to feed him and his four siblings while growing up in Wythenshawe.

In an interview with the local paper today, he said: “When we stumble, there will always be a community to pick us up. For many that’s a foodbank.”

Talk of an own goal for Boris Johnson and his team. How could Johnson – usually so good at spotting the right photo-shoot – have allowed himself to fall foul of Rashford’s campaign to ensure all children are fed during the holidays?

The incompetence of No 10’s communications team for not spotting that Rashford’s campaign would spin into a national spectacle beggars belief, particularly after the summer’s U-turn when ministers backed down and followed up on his plea for school meals throughout the holidays.

Do these advisers learn nothing from experience? Do they not, at the very least, try to get ahead of the game? If the Prime Minister had been smart, he would have grabbed hold of Rashford and invited the footballer to No 10 to discuss not only the campaign but how the UK should tackle ending child poverty.

That would have allowed the PM to own the campaign, made it part of his stated ambition of levelling out inequality and levelling up the country.

Dash it all, the PM might even have been tempted Rashford to kick a ball around the Rose Garden behind Downing Street – and erase lingering memories of that excruciating interview with Dominic Cummings.

As it is, Boris Johnson and his Conservative MPs who voted against Labour’s motion to extend free meals, inspired by Rashford’s campaigning, have once again ended up looking like child-eating monsters – heartless, uncaring, cruel and out of touch muppets.

As the bridal shop owner said, no child should go hungry in this day and age. Yet some Tory MPs went even further, reinforcing that well-trodden and mistaken trope that the Tories are heartless. Indeed, the MP for Bassetlaw, Brendan Clarke-Smith, actually said: “Where is the slick PR campaign encouraging absent parents to take some responsibility for their children. I do not believe in nationalising children, instead we need to get back to the idea of taking responsibility.”

Only five Tory MPs backed Labour’s motion on Wednesday to extend financial support for the most disadvantaged families during the holidays. They rejected the motion by 322 votes to 261, making the Tories look mean as well as incompetent.

One Tory – Caroline Ansell, the MP for Eastbourne and Willingdon, had the dignity to stand down as a parliamentary aide in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Good for her.

It’s hard to figure out why Boris Johnson did not see this disaster coming. Yet more disturbing is that the government has a good case to explain why it does not believe it necessary to extend free meals, given that benefits should cover the holidays.

By not doing so, the government has lost the moral high ground. It’s not only those on the right who believe that it is better for disadvantaged families to be self-reliant rather than depend on hand-outs. Many on the left are of the same view. But by not putting its case – and arguing that getting more people into better-paid jobs – the government is now well and truly on the back foot.

With the furlough schemes coming to an end this month, and unemployment about to go shooting up, the situation can only get worse.

Around one million children are estimated to be living in child poverty in the UK, and regularly going without nutritious food. There is not one single government department that is dealing directly with this tragedy, which is one of the reasons why it’s been allowed to slip through the net.

For someone who is supposed to be a man of the people, to the extent that he is often accused of being a “populist”, Boris is not very good at doing the popular thing. But he has time to redeem himself. It’s not too late to invite Rashford to No 10, introduce him to Henry Dimbleby, who has been working on the National Food Strategy report, kick some ideas around and appoint a minister directly responsible for tackling this blight on modern Britain.

It is the right thing to do – and it would annoy Gary Lineker who, of course, is having another field day.