The Lib Dems’ Big Society big opportunity
The Lib Dems appear largely to be ignoring the Big Society. But it could be an opportunity to define themselves more clearly and create a wedge between progressive and traditional Tories.
Richard Reeves (my former opposite number at Demos and now political strategist to Nick Clegg) will have mixed feelings this morning. The DPM’s speech succeeded in getting across its core messages, but as a piece of rhetoric it was generally found wanting. It’s the message that matters, but any speech-writer hopes that their work will be appreciated as a political art form. Having said which, Clegg’s pre-conference speech calling for a ‘horizon shift’ in politics and policy making bore the Reeves imprint more clearly and was also much more intellectually nourishing than yesterday’s effort.
Not that I have much experience to go on. I was always singularly unsuccessful at getting more than the occasional one-liner into Tony Blair’s speeches. The only exception was in 2003 when he used three full paragraphs of mine to announce what came to be called the ‘Big Conversation’. The next day it was precisely these paragraphs which a number of commentators – I remember Jonathan Freedland in particular – described as being the low point of the speech.
My problem was usually over-intellectualising. While I always wanted to qualify or justify a claim or promise, the more effective speech writers knew it was enough simply to assert it. Indeed the habit of short verb-less assertions is one Clegg seems to have adopted from Blair. So, when today in Liverpool, at the first of this year’s RSA fringe meetings, I criticise the Lib Dems for a lack of intellectual rigour it might reasonably be viewed as simply more evidence of my political naivety.
I will argue that the conference seems – perhaps inevitably – dominated by the question of the relationship between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. This suggests that Clegg’s political options all lie on a linear continuum between political submissiveness and internal opposition. This is not good positioning. As the Government becomes more unpopular and the Party more restive, it could easily become a trap; staying in the same place being merely the least worst option to moving in either dangerous direction.
Instead, had I been a Lib Dem strategist, I would have tried to use the conference not just to pledge that certain of the Party’s policies aspirations would be delivered, but to underline the distinct intellectual and political contribution the Lib Dems make to the Coalition.
One example of this missed opportunity lies in the predictable, but not necessarily wise, blanket condemnation of Labour’s record. This is fine – and probably justified when it comes to civil liberties – but perhaps not so clever when Nick Clegg and his colleagues attack Labour’s failure on inequality, asserting that the gap between rich and poor grew between 1997 and 2010. Not only is this untrue (unless you are very selective with statistics) but, more importantly, it ignores the fact that the effect of Labour tax and spend policies were substantially redistributive. The conundrum is that despite a redistributive Government spending a higher proportion of national income on public services, inequality levels remained stubbornly high. If the Lib Dems are to have any chance of making an impact on inequality in the face of austerity, the natural tendency for cuts to impact hardest on the poorest, and the limited (at best) enthusiasm of most Conservatives for redistribution, they will to spend less time attacking Labour’s record and more time trying to understand why it made as little progress as it did.
A second example concerns the Big Society. The polling IPSOS/MORI’s Ben Page will present today shows three main findings. The first is that people broadly accept the idea we need to give back more to our local community. The second is a gap between, on the one hand, people’s support of the idea and their willingness to step forward themselves and, on the other, between their support for devolving power and their intolerance of ‘postcode lotteries’. The third finding is that unless politicians are talking about the Big Society constantly it soon slips from public imagination. Recognition of the idea seems to have fallen in the last few months.
Rather than ignoring it (which seems to be the present strategy), the Lib Dems need their own their own take on the Big Society. With the Party’s long standing commitment to localism and its powerful brand of pavement politics the Coalition’s junior partner has more credibility and expertise in this area than the Conservatives. The Lib Dems should be ‘Big Society supporters who mean it’. They should argue that a Big Society approach needs to be at the heart of all public service strategies (it is currently absent from health and welfare to work policy and only at the margins in relation to schools) and that the Big Society is not credible unless it involves investing substantially in capacity building in poorer communities. Given that David Cameron’s sincere enthusiasm for the idea is not as deeply held by other senor Conservatives, the Big Society also offers the Lib Dems a way of creating a useful wedge between progressive and more traditional Conservatives.
Anyway, this is what I intend to say at lunchtime. I’ll tell you tomorrow how it goes down.
Brighton team talk
Just back from Labour conference and the second of the RSA’s 2009 round of fringe meetings. The Labour speaker was Peter Mandelson who was in and out pretty quickly as his conference speech was this afternoon. Once again it was standing room only – which means of the five fringe events we have done in recent times every one has been full.
It is fascinating having Robert Chote from the IFS and Ben Page from Ipsos MORI on the RSA platform. Robert knows what must be done to get the public finances back on track and Ben knows what the voters are willing to accept. We could hand Government over to the two of them: the only problem being that – according to the RSA poll – there isn’t any overlap between the two answers!
I couldn’t help noticing an uncanny similarity between the mood and message in Brighton and the half time team talk given by the coach of my son’s football team yesterday morning. Balham Blazers under 17s were 3-0 down, mainly due to some goalkeeping howlers. The coach said what he had to say. ‘We’ve made mistakes. But we played the best football and we can still win. If we pick up our heads and our game we can still do this. We just have to put the other team under pressure, then we’ll see what they are really made of ’. Some of his message got through but you could see the players found it hard to believe their luck could change. And however much they tried to comfort him, it was impossible to hide that they had lost confidence in the keeper.
I’ve been asked not to use this blog for political commentary so I won’t explore Labour’s message except to say that it is just as predictable as the coach’s. Everyone on the conference floor is pretty much sticking to it and Labour strategists will hope that it gets through to the voters despite all the other distractions.
With Labour adopting a more traditional left of centre perspective it will be interesting to see how the Conservatives respond next week. Will they occupy the fairly large gap on the centre right now left vacant by the other parties (the position successfully adopted in Germany by Angela Merkel) or continue to try to occupy the centre?
By the way, despite a plucky second half performance Balham Blazers under 17s lost 4-1
PS I was, of course, delighted to see that I appear 55th in the Daily Telegraph list of the most influential people on the British left. An old friend came up to me in Brighton; ‘Matthew’, he said ‘it’s so unfair that you are 55th’. Before I could modestly reassure him that these things really don’t matter to me, he went on ‘no one in the Labour Party has thought of you as being on the left for years’. Too true, comrade, too true.
RSA on the fringe
The RSA held a very successful fringe meeting at the LibDem conference yesterday evening. Like last year we commissioned a special IPSOS Mori poll to help give the meeting focus (the findings are summarised here in the Times).
The keynote speaker was Vince Cable, LibDem Treasury spokesman and easily the country’s most popular politician. Justifying his plan to close the public spending gap over five years (not the eight argued for by the Government) he directly addressed the view that talk of a fiscal crisis is overblown. The danger of looking weak, he said, was that the credibility of the UK would be undermined, leading to a refusal of foreign investors to finance the debt at affordable interest rates.
I am half convinced by this argument. It is true that the Government needs to be credible when it says it intends to get public finances back onto an even keel. However, the key factor is surely the underlying performance of the economy. In a growing economy, tax receipts go up and benefit costs are stable. If the UK was going in the right direction I’m not sure foreign investors would worry that much about how quickly the spending gap was closed. As Vince himself recognised, the UK’s net national debt is far from the worst among the developed nations.
Two other notable points from Cable’s speech were the accusation that an incoming Conservative Government would raise VAT towards 25% within a few months of taking office, and this wonderfully self deprecating statement. ‘My pamphlet [about spending cuts] contains lots of ideas. Some people won’t agree with them all. In fact I’m not sure I agree with them all’!
The challenge for the LibDems is to get noticed and in this they are having a good few days. The polls tell us that we have a uniquely unpopular Prime Minister and an Opposition which still doesn’t entirely convince. Arguably, Nick Clegg’s success at capturing headlines has been won at the expense of some confusion about the Party’s core. I suspect his Bournemouth speech will be paid more attention than any by a LibDem leader for many years.
( PS Apologies for being so bad at replying to comments on my pages. I really will get round to it this week)
Mr Lansley’s tough assignment
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is speaking here in a couple of hours. I will post again after I’ve heard what he has to say. He has a tough job. In a system as big as the NHS there will always be problems, but Alan Johnson has less to worry about than any of his recent predecessors.
Patient satisfaction rates are at an all-time high, long waits – for so long the scourge of the NHS and the target of its critics – have been virtually abolished; improved scrutiny and data collection has made it much harder to hide bad practice and failing management (which was previously rife); and there is even progress on hospital infection rates. At a time when the public and the media are loath to give Whitehall any credit, there is a general acceptance that the Department of Heath is managing the threat of swine flu effectively.
Of course, the real challenge facing the NHS is the coming squeeze in public spending. Will a system which has been developed in the context of substantial real term increases cope with standstill budgets? I don’t know whether Mr Lansley plans to broach the spending issue today but it’s difficult to see the upside for him of doing so.
The Conservatives have to plug away on health – emphasising their commitment to the founding principles of the NHS and to tackling health inequalities helps to cement their moderate, modernising image. But health has slipped down the voters’ list of priorities – the number telling Ipsos-MORI it is the most important issue facing Britain is as low now as it has been for over twenty years.
Andrew Lansley will no doubt say this morning that he wants to challenge the Government on its record on the NHS, and, of course, there are things that could be a lot better. But the reality is that Gordon Brown would like nothing more than for health to be the battleground of the next election.
Democractic reform: we still aren’t having the right discussion
David Cameron’s lengthy Guardian essay about democratic reform is welcome, even if there isn’t much in it that is both new and a concrete commitment. As a long standing supporter of electoral reform, I also supported Alan Johnson’s call this weekend for a referendum on the day of the next General Election – indeed, I advocated exactly this policy in my blog a few days days earlier.
While it is important to debate the rules and procedures of politics I continue to believe that the bigger issue is the content of democratic discourse. My first RSA annual lecture, back in 2007, was about ‘pro-social strategy’. This is what I said:
“The way we do politics not only reflects but reinforces a loss of confidence among citizens and communities about solving problems ourselves. The most disabling aspect of political discourse is the paradox (exploited by the news media) that Government is seen simultaneously as omnipotent and incompetent….
By creating a vibrant debate about common problems, aims and responsibilities, pro-social strategy seeks to reinstate democratic politics as the process by which citizens give permission to their representatives to act on their behalf.
This shift in thinking is not simply about rolling back the state or taking politicians down a peg or two. The implications for government are not so much about its size but as about its ways of working. The implications for politics are not so much about politicians letting go as about citizens taking hold.’ Pro-social politics’ would not be seen in terms of conflict between us (citizens) and them (politicians). Politics would be about us and us and us.
‘Us’ because it would be about what we as citizens want to achieve and what we need to do to achieve it.
‘Us’ because it would be about recognising the different interests, views and resources of different parts of society and accepting the challenge of reconciling these differences rather than simply asserting our own demands and resenting any attempt by politicians to sort it out.
‘Us’ because this would be a process in which we would need to confront more fully the truth that we each of us have our own conflicting interests, views and aims. The apparent incompatibility of our own individual preferences is a growing characteristic of modern policy problems. For example, we want to fly cheaply and protect the planet, to see our children as home-owners but to protect the green spaces around our towns and cities……”
As Ben Page from Ipsos-MORI often says ‘the British public demand Swedish welfare provision on American tax rates’. The real problem with politics is not the expenses claims of MPs, nor even the power of the Executive, it is that we are unable to have a grown up conversation about the challenges which politicians can only resolve if we work with them: notably, public spending restructuring, population ageing and climate change.
We the citizens are stuck in a bad place; increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet willing to govern ourselves. Proposals for reform should be judged by whether they are likely to move us towards a more realistic and responsible democratic discourse.
RSA Animate
RSA Mobile
RSA Comment- RSA Projects Blogs
- Twitter @RSAMatthew
- RSAMatthew: Matthew's blog: Developing development http://t.co/hhhUGYX1
- RSAMatthew: RSA Xmas Party was huge - my whole life I have been a snobbish git about ceilidh type fun - now I want to dance every night
- RSAMatthew: On my way to RSA Xmas party - I won't stay too long as it spoils the fun to have the boss around
RSA Bookshop
The RSA Bookshop, in partnership with Blackwell's the UK's leading academic bookseller, offers Fellows and friends an opportunity to purchase books and to explore our speakers’ ideas in greater detail. Visit the RSA Bookshop.