We didn't ask to be born. Some got good luck. Some got terrible brute luck. But we're all amazing in our own very different ways.  

The lucky get a better chance to express their abilities and develop them. The unlucky struggle. It's why a good society recognises that we have rights simply by being citizens of that society.  

When we demand those rights, we collectively and equally ensure the basics of our existence. 

Putting a hot school meal on the table of every child every day, to nourish them physically and emotionally, is just a basic step any society should take.

This is why the campaign for Free School Meals for every child is not just vital in itself, to ensure that no child goes hungry and every child has the nourishment to focus, to learn and play to their fullest extent.  

But it’s the intrinsic value of Free School Meals for All – the signal that universal provision sends to everyone that we have obligations to each other that we can only meet on a collective and equal basis.  

And more important too is the signal it sends to the child. 

That an amorphous thing called society loves them, cares for them and respects them, and because of all of this, is willing to invest in them. 

We're telling children that they matter and they have as much right to the fullest possible life as anyone else. 

Now some will come back and ask why we should spend our hard earned money on Free School Meals for children and families rich enough to buy their own dinner. It's a good point. But it misses and dismisses so much. 

Services and support that are universal are so much cheaper to provide precisely because the exorbitant cost of means testing is eradicated. 

The bureaucracy of working out who qualifies and who doesn't, the poverty traps of parents trying to calculate whether working one more hour costs them more than an hour's wages in terms of lost benefits.  

And as soon as we means test, we meanly create the shame of being different, of feeling like you’ve failed before your life has even begun. We create stigma when what we want to do is create solidarity.  

Benefits and services for the poor always become poor benefits and services. 

The only way to guarantee the poor get access to a decent life is to ensure the rich are part of the same system. 

It's not that we can't afford to buy a rich child's lunch – it's the poor who cannot afford for us not to. And payments just for the poor tend to encourage the language of "shirkers" and breed a culture of division. 

When we separate child from child, those from poor families from those better-off, we reduce the space for awareness and empathy between kids who never had the choice to be born either richer or poorer. 

Universalism tells everybody: you matter. 

That as a citizen, you get this too, whether it’s child benefit or pension or in this case, Free School Meals. 

It's the sense that we might just all be in it together, that there are points of life, experiences, that we all share, that we have in common. That we’re all in this together. 

It is this binding spirit of universalism which matters at least as much as the material benefits. It is why we love the principles of the NHS so much. It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, how wealthy or not you may be - the system treats us all the same.  

In a rapidly polarising world, where in-groups are pitched against out-groups, we need every space and every place where we can come together. Not as consumers, not as competitors. Not as isolated individuals. But as citizens of equal worth and equal value.

We are an extraordinarily rich country, with more millionaires and billionaires than we know what to do with. Putting a hot school meal on the table of every child every day, to nourish them physically and emotionally, is just a basic step any society should take. 

In means testing meals, what is really being lost is something that money cannot buy: an opportunity to create a sense of social solidarity at a time when dark forces want to tear us apart. 

I'm old enough to remember queuing up with my mates for meals that I never had to pay for. The food wasn't always that great to be honest, but they kept us going and they gave us time and space to be equal to each other. 

Well done to the National Education Union for running this brilliant campaign and all who are part of it. I’m thrilled the organisation I help run - Compass - can do its bit to get this measure over the line. 

Let’s build a good society, one we can be proud of, and let’s do so starting with Free School Meals for All.