Comment: The overcooked big society
The coalition government has been dreaming up recipes for democracy: two spoonfuls of AV, a dash of participation here and a drizzle of direct management there. And the result? Cook it yourself, proclaims the government. Take power! Seize the cookbook! Make your own society! And make it a ‘big society’!
By Rebecca Burns
David Cameron’s ‘big society’ concept prompted complaints from both inside and outside Westminster that it was vague, incomprehensible or just plain “piffle” (as a certain mayor of London put it).
As Conservative MP Rory Stewart explained on his blog, “Big Society isn’t something you can get like a pot of money, or an officer: it’s an approach”. But even he admits “it’s very confusing”.
A senior Tory was more candid: “The ‘big society’ is bollocks. It is boiled vegetables that have been cooked for three minutes too long. It tastes of nothing. What is it?”
According to the coalition document, the goal is “to put more power and opportunity into people’s hands”. The vagueness may explain its popularity. This hearty conception of people-power seems to have found not only understanding, but outright support, amongst the most unlikely people: Labour party supporters. A recent Demos poll of 45,000 people found 55% who left Labour after the election wanted less top-down management of the NHS. These ex-Labour backers appear to agree with Cameron when says he wants “a government that gives away power, not takes power”.
This does not confirm that people turned up at the polls because they wanted a DIY government, however. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of the electorate do not harbour a deep desire to start their own school, run their local hospital or weed the flowerbeds of their local park.
Instead the popularity of the rhetoric is masking the big society’s real purpose. The coalition’s harsh reaction to the deficit means ‘big society’ is not a choice, or an approach; it is a requirement. If public services are to remain anywhere near current levels, people-power must take over the vacuum left by shrinking government budgets.
So, as admirable as it sounds in its vagueness, the concept of ‘big society’ is really only shorthand for public service cuts forcing local communities to take up what government can no longer afford to provide. This is a consequence of economic crisis rather than the ideological epiphany Cameron is trying to inspire.
This would explain the lack of passion at the polls for the Conservative party and their ‘big society’ rhetoric. People didn’t turn up at the polls so they could file their own library books. What people really turned up at the polls for was a change in management: there is not a desire to do it ourselves, but there is a desire for someone else to do it better.
The Labour party had attempted to do it better for 13 years, but ended up creating a stodgy dish of overbearing bureaucracy. Richard Darlington, head of the Open Left project at Demos, said of the current Labour party leadership contest: “What has got lost in the election post-mortem is the ‘listening’ bit of ‘listening and learning.” That is true of Labour’s entire tenure at No 10, where common sense seemed to disappear as petty health and safety legislation piled up and ineffective computer systems drained money away.
According to Lord Young, asked to review health and safety rules by Mr Cameron, police have three times watched a person drown because Labour’s health and safety rules prevented the police jumping into the water. People don’t want to be responsible for those in society who are metaphorically drowning because the government has cut social services. They want the professionals to be able to do their job properly.
The same applies to politicians. If someone is voted in, they have a duty of professionalism. That means no corruption, decisions made with sense rather than spin and the interests of the people, rather than the party, at heart.
The coalition has pledged to cook up a ‘big society’ to allow people to “build the Britain they want”. With Labour, perhaps their incessant intervention was a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Hopefully the ‘big society’ will amount to a dish more substantial than boiled vegetables, as long as the coalition government doesn’t exit the kitchen altogether.
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