Have you ever met anyone, anywhere, anytime who has mentioned the “Big Society”? Nope, me neither. What
is supposed to be David Cameron’s, and now presumably his fag Nick Clegg’s, “big idea” is the big non-idea because it’s failed to create so much as a murmur among the great British public. Which, in all honesty, is probably fortunate for the Conservative Prime Minister.
That’s because the very notion is fatally flawed. The Big Society, as I understand it, could only work if there’s a big, active, helping, interventionist (call it what you want) state. And the Big Society as outlined by this austerity coalition is a flimsy cover for savage spending cuts, the ultimate big con of a policy.
Cameron’s talk of “social responsibility” replacing “state control” is fundamentally dishonest. Now, I’ve nothing against social responsibility. In fact, I’m all for it. We must all take responsibility for our actions. But when did we have state control of life in Britain? We never have. We have laws. We have what’s left of the welfare state. We have local authority schools. We have the National Health Service, still the greatest of all Labour’s creations. But most of us work in the private sector. We’re free to do what is not specifically outlawed by elected politicians. Public bodies help, mostly, to improve our lives. Most of life, however, remains in a private sphere.
I was struck how by unformed Conservative thinking is on this area at a breakfast meeting organised by Edelman, the public affairs company which these days employs Stefan Stern, a former Financial Times writer who has occasionally graced the pages of Tribune and has one of the sharpest political minds I’ve met. Big Society minister Nick Hurd was also in attendance. Appointed to oversee civil society in the Tory-Liberal Democrat Government, he is an amiable “one nation” Tory and an Old Etonian – as was his father Douglas, the former Foreign Secretary. Eton runs in the Hurd family. As, I suspect, it will with the Camerons. Dave followed his dad to the £29,000-a-year school and I’ll give a tenner to charity if the Prime Minister’s son doesn’t end up in the place. But back to the Big Society. Hurd had the cheek to complain that “cynicism” was a “great British disease” without explaining what the Big Society really is – other than to give a few examples of people working in local communities, including a group on a troubled estate battling fly-tipping.
I’d bet another tenner the clean-up people were hard at work before Cameron’s Svengali, Steve Hilton, decided the Big Society would be a jolly good way of creating a positive Con-Dem narrative away from cut, cut, cut which will be the grim reality of the next couple of years.
The Con-Dems are nakedly attempting to nationalise, to co-opt as part of a political project, the activities of millions of people who help out in schools or are community volunteers, freely doing what they think is right instead of thinking “Ooh, Big Society – great idea, whatever it is. Must join pronto.”
I found myself at a school Christmas fair (state school, not Eton, you may be unsurprised to learn) wondering if Hurd would try to claim credit for their efforts, too. If he does, I’ll have to point out I never heard the words “Big” and “Society” uttered at the tombola or the stall selling little iced cakes.
At the Edelman event on the Big Society, the chair of the Olympic Delivery Authority, John Armitt, played it safe as befits a chap who is responsible for building the London 2012 venues. Armitt recognised the value of communities, but also the pivotal role of the state. Cameron’s Big Society, whatever it is, wouldn’t be capable of constructing a 100-metre track for Usain Bolt to dash along in less than 10 seconds. And as Armitt, the ex-head of Network Rail, acknowledged, train lines would zigzag instead of travelling in straight, fast lines.
Yet behind my scepticism about Cameron’s Big Society is a conviction the idea could only prosper with a big not a small state. A local authority groundsman is needed to cut the grass and mark the football pitch on which Barry and the other volunteers organise my son’s Saturday games.
Meanwhile, Labour needs a story of its own to tell. The complex of relationships between individuals, families and communities, with markets and public bodies, is the nub of politics. Lyndon Johnson had his “Great Society”. Ed Miliband speaks of a “Good Society” – a term more positive than Cameron’s, although equally vague. Miliband’s leadership is stumbling, but he’s a thinker and if he fleshes out what he means, the Labour Party
may be on to something the Conservatives are missing.
Miliband isn’t afraid to make the case for a strong state, Barack Obama-style. Cameron is. And without an active state, the Good and Big Societies are vacuous slogans.
