Quality | 2009.11.10
Softer rhetoric signals naivety | Michael White
David Cameron has softened his anti-state rhetoric in the month since he addressed Conservative activists at his party\'s conference in Manchester. Instead of simply declaring "it\'s more government that got us into this mess" and promising to cut back an over-mighty state, he wants to "re-imagine" its role – smaller, but also smarter, fairer and, he seems to be admitting, indispensable in hard times.
Perhaps his pollsters have warned him not to overdo the tough language, which makes many vulnerable citizens nervous. It may have been a courteous nod to the very different audience for his speech tonight, the Hugo Young lecture delivered at the Guardian\'s HQ.
The result was not quite – as the work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper, had said in a pre-emptive attack – merely a return to Thatcherite policies that tripled unemployment and doubled child poverty in the 80s. What the Tory leader offered was a more emollient formula for promoting local and individual responsibility, private and voluntary sector activity and shrinking big government.
It is a familiar cry, often uttered by Tory leaders in opposition. But not just them: Tony Blair could happily have uttered most of it and often did before and after 1997, although Gordon Brown would have been less comfortable. When Cameron claims that Labour\'s century-old co-operative and self-reliant traditions have been seen off by a command-and-control model he labels Fabianism, voters know who he has in mind.
What is striking in Cameron\'s revised narrative is what he omits. The evidence suggests state action had benign results – in terms of social justice and the defeat of poverty – until the late 60s, he conceded. It is not what Ted Heath and co said at the time, older Labour MPs are quick to point out.
More startling, he leaped straight to "the most significant extension of the state" since 1945-51, which he claimed had occurred since 1997. No mention of the roll-back of state activity from 1979-1997, let alone of the empowerment of the market – with only an oblique acknowledgment of its disastrous consequences for the poor and ill-educated as the wealth gap widens.
Labour MPs know they have been running up a down escalator trying to mitigate the effects of inequality for 12 years, with only modest results for our money. The question is, how likely are Tory remedies to create the fairer, more equal society Cameron says he wants?
The omens are not promising. Ken Clarke, a veteran of 40 years in Westminster, said today "the combination of problems" facing British politics were the worst he could remember. The welfare reforms shaped by Iain Duncan Smith to get the unemployed and not-so-disabled people back to work were quickly deemed too costly by the Cameroons. Those from David Freud – playing Frank Field to Teresa May\'s Harriet Harman – rely on private and voluntary sector payment-by-results that will be hard to sustain in a stubborn recession, let alone as a means of contributing to budget savings.
Cameron even cites The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Katie Pickett\'s analysis which suggests the fairest societies are also the happiest. Such talk is hard to square with the thrust of radical Tory thinking. Cynics are wrong to accuse Cameron of cynicism. Naivety may be nearer the mark.
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