Pre-holiday ramblings...why the Tories need another Cameron
The Conservative Party is in a mess of its own making. It isn't just the melt-down over Boris but a policy platform that betrays the Party's foundations. This is unforgivable.
The idea, David Cameron’s Big Society, that there’s a bit of human activity that isn’t private space, business or the state, remains are really important idea. The idea of ‘social action’ (another of Cameron’s favourite things) remains at the heart of conservative values, not just noblesse oblige but the broader concept of a duty that we owe to our neighbours, community and society. Tom Jones in The Critic discusses why this idea of social action and civic duty is so atrophied and points the finger firmly at big government:
“…the more power the state gathers, the weaker civil society becomes. The weaker civil society becomes, the more difficult the pursuit of ‘the common good’ becomes, because civil society is the vehicle by which the common good can most effectively be pursued.”
This observation reminded me of some research that Joseph Rowntree Foundation did looking at loneliness. Part of this research was undertaken in Denholme, one of the villages that make up the ward I represented on Bradford Council. The publication of the research was accompanied by presentations in the communities that JRF had studied. With the usual trepedation given JRF’s achingly trendy lefty nature, I turned up to the presentation in Denholme’s Mechanics Institute. I was, as I wrote at the time, pleasantly surprised by agreeing with some of what JRF had to say:
“It's a rare day when something from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation strikes me as profound and significant so this simple statement - regulation kills kindness - again made me sit up. Especially, as was the case today, it came as a refreshing moment in a depressing conference about 'public health' and health inequalities.
The context is a study on loneliness - a real killer, as bad as smoking and worse that obesity - and the finding that one barrier to people doing stuff like befriending projects, running events and, in truth, just being a good neighbour is the annoying rules, forms, bureaucracies and general jobsworthiness of public agencies.
However, the simple observation that people don't feel able to help because of "the rules" represents a more profound criticism of the modern state. The consequence of officials and their agents moving into spaces previously occupied by voluntary actors hasn't been enhanced service (as was probably expected) but the withdrawal of those volunteers into peripheral roles of little significance.”
It is less profound than Jones’ discussion of civic society but the undoubted truth that people don’t help out for fear of ‘the rules’ (or because they perceive that those rules make helping out harder, even to the point of impossibility). The research went on to talk about how well-meant regulation, things like DBS checks and health and safety reviews, acted to create a situation where people perceived that they required ‘permission to care’:
“That's right - permission to care. That professionals in the employ of the Council, the NHS or their satellite agencies needed to allow people to look out for their neighbour. In this I saw a dead culture - one murdered by the good intentions of public agencies. That we might not be allowed to pop in on Mr & Mrs Jones to make sure they're OK, maybe make them a cuppa and have a chat for half and hour. Unless we've undertaken the official "befriending" course, got the required clearances from the state and been attached to an organisation that "delivers" looking out for the neighbours.”
At the heart of Cameron’s insight is the idea that our lives are not all about work, things other than economics. This is, when you think about it, a repudiation of the individualism and utlilitarianism that dominates liberalism. The danger for conservatives, however, is that we throw the economic baby out with the utilitarian bathwater. Yes, Cameron was right that there’s more to this life than work or money, but we must still want to make the lives of ordinary men and women better and that means economic growth.
“…conservative political movements thrived by challenging the Left’s appeal to the working and middle class. Virtually all the successful movements on the democratic Right—Disraeli’s Tory Democracy to Thatcherism, Reaganism, and even Trumpism—won by establishing a link between conservative policies and upward mobility.”
Today, at least in the UK, the conservative establishment seems to have forgotten this message, forgotten Disraeli’s pact with the working man. Instead we have a ‘you have to suffer so we can control inflation and save the planet’ approach:
“British households and businesses “need to accept” they are poorer and stop seeking pay increases and pushing prices higher, the Bank of England’s chief economist, Huw Pill, has said.”
That target of Disraeli’s optimistic message, the ordinary working family, now faces rising taxes, constricting regulations, delays and obstructions from the elite’s campaigners and inflation sapping away more value from their declining income. The moment when the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer said he was comfortable with us all getting poorer was the moment the Conservative Party - regardless of the ongoing Boris Johnson saga - gave up on any prospect of winning the election due in 2024.
Alongside this economic disaster is the assocated disaster of levelling-up where genuine local government is britally shoved aside by the financial realities of councils and a profound ignorance of localism’s purpose among those liberal utilitarians advising ministers in London (plus a power-trip from some leaders in top-tier councils).
What we get is the sort of programme put together by the new and enormous, North Yorkshire Council where what was previously a district council is now to be replaced by a ‘community partnership’:
“The idea of community partnerships has been at the heart of the pledge to ensure that local priorities and challenges are addressed as effectively as possible, so I am delighted that we have quickly taken the first step towards making them a reality.
The backing for community partnerships shows our clear commitment to build North Yorkshire Council with local at its heart. It is a major step forward towards bringing together many partners and organisations to make sure that people have a stronger voice to tackle those issues that mean the most to them.
We will work closely with town and parish councils, public and voluntary sector partners, businesses and communities so that local issues drive decision-making and action via the partnerships.
About 30 partnerships are set to be introduced, centred around market towns and their surrounding areas. However, these will be phased in, so initially we will see a series of five pilots established before the programme is rolled out across the county.”
Where once there was accessible, accountable local government, we have partnerships directed by a distant authority and demoted to mere consultees rather than independent authorities with the capacity and power to act.
British conservatives are, in policy terms, in the worst of all possible worlds. Not only has the ill-fated Truss leadership resulted in rejecting any form of growth-based economic policy, but also the Party has adopted a development strategy that could have been written by Michael Heseltime in 1992 - centralised, state-directed and founded on huge, distant sub-regional authorities rather than genuine local government.
I began with observing that the big state excludes people from decision-making and discourages people from playing anything more than a walk-on part in civic society. This exclusion began many years ago, my Mum used to complain that the assumption that day centres like the one she ran needed full time staff acted to put off volunteers. This culture of individual and corporate dependency on the state pervades everything we do and especially anything within civic society that might be change-making, creative or different. Without the official stamp of big government nothing can be allowed, you must seek permission to care.
David Cameron, for all his faults (most notable running off after the Brexit referendum) captured a modern conservatism that was largely positive, fitted with the Party’s Burkean origins and recognised Disraeli’s deal with the working class. All of that is gone, lost in endless rows over Brexit, the behaviour of Boris Johnson before he secured the leadership, childish media hatred of Boris Johnson and a terror of doing anything that might frighten the shire horses that make up the party’s membership base. Above all British conservatives look like losers, scrabbling out lame policy problems, and believing that Penny Mordaunt would be a good leader because she looks good holding a sword.
Anyway. I’m off for some sun.