So the Big Idea is that we can run our own lives. Apparently it is going to lead to a Big Society. And that is going to be really really nice. Not nasty like Thatcherism. Not nasty like the manifesto David Cameron wrote for Michael Howard in 2005.
Like a lot that David Cameron says, it sounds fine. But strip it away, and there are two very big holes.
One is the lack of a plan for securing the economic recovery. We should never tire of saying this – they got every major call on the recession wrong. Had we listened to them at the time of the crisis, it would have become a calamity. If we listen to them now, the recovery will be put at risk.
The second big hole is the one that will be created in the lives of people by the kind of DIY public services vision the Tory manifesto is putting forward.
There is no dispute about involving people in the running of public services. All three of the main parties are in favour of that. The greater involvement of the patient in the planning of healthcare, the parent in the running of schools, is one of the reasons schools and hospitals have improved under Labour. It is not just about the investment we put in and the Tories opposed. And yesterday Labour’s manifesto had further proposals for taking on vested interests in the public services.
But the Tory plan for DIY public services will still have to rely on proper funding. And if the Tories are going to meet all their promises on cutting the deficit, cutting taxes for the very rich, and paying for their plan to recognise marriage in the tax system, then they are going to have to make some very deep cuts to get there.
The Big Society will always depend on a strong economy. Labour has shown it can manage the economy in the good times, and in the bad times that followed the economic crash.
Cameron is hoping that the anti-politics mood of the country will lead to people thinking anything which gets government out of their lives has to be a good thing. But where would Britain have been without a strong government when the economic crisis came? And where would we be now had we left it all to the markets as he and Mr Osborne wanted to do?
If you put together the economic black hole, with his sink-or-swim approach to public services, you have but the latest evidence that for all his talk, he has not changed his party from the one that stood on his first manifesto five years ago.
** Buy The Blair Years and raise cash to help stop the Tories http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.
“It is not just about the investment we put in and the Tories opposed.”
I despise this word ‘investment’.
‘Investment in public services’, ‘investment in health’.
It is SPENDING and sometimes SQUANDERING, not investment. It would be an investment if we could get an equivalent or more-than return at the end, but we consistently don’t.
The Labour firehose has sprayed cash on public institutions with few reforms (and when there have been reforms, they have been poorly thought out, “relentless and ideological, which have misappropriated billions away from patient care” (to quote the British Medical Association).
We consistently lag behind counterparts in Europe for value for money in public services. We’ve matched health spending in Germany/France, but we receive a steady 20% less (in terms of life and survival expectancies, access to treatments, etc).
It is not ‘investment’.
Strange. Are the BBC’s clock wrong? Your messages was posted at 10:37. That’s 37 minutes into the future when i read it. So thats how New Labour did it. Time travel.
The labour party cant even tell the truth about the time.
Cheap trick, pathetic one at that.
Alastair – can you not understand that GB and the Labour govt made the UKs situation much worse in the recent crsis.
GB lead in creating a debt culture,made the public sector so enormous that the rest of us will be paying for decades for the pensions of these very lucky people…why should we??
When you yourself make few bob selling books do you go out and spend it all or put some by in savings or pay off debts maybe? Obviously you do like we all try and do yet GB decided not too in his wisdom,he spent it and them some ! – please dont keep going on how GB saved us from worse – anyone could have done what he done by spending 1 Trillion quid on it!
The point is why did we save Northern rock? North-east votes perhaps? It should have been closed down once the savings of people were transferred to a place like the Post Office say.125% mortgages should have been outlawed long before Northern Rock went t*ts – GB should/will be always associated with debt…thanks a lot Gordon
“There is no dispute about involving people in the running of public services. All 3 partties are in favour of that”.
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I am currently reading the impeccably sourced Andrew Rawnsley book on New Labour 2001-date. He reveals that the principal stumbling block to consumer choice in public service was …wait for it…..one Gordon Brown.
When asked why Brown was so opposed, you got a truly immortal answer, which really sums up Labour/Campbell’s attitude both to the electorate and so called public services.
“Brown does not think most of the public would be able to make an informed choice”.
In other words- ‘we know better’. Its time for change.
My own feeling is that the idea of the DIY public services will appeal to some but in practice they just won’t work out as planned.
The garages of the UK are full of unfinished DIY projects people abandoned once they found it was a lot more work than they imagined.
By and large people do like having input into the running of schools, hospitals etc, but they don’t actually want to run them themselves.
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I was a bit amused to see that Zac Goldsmith is beginning to get worried about the future of the BBC under the Conservatives.
He likes the BBC it seems but now he’s worked out that his party has it in for the Beeb. Rubert Murdoch needs payback for all that Conservative support in his papers.
I think Zac Goldsmith should have thought about things like this a bit earlier than now.
“Labour has shown how it can manage the economy” It certainly has – total, total incompetence. Go into a recession, magnified by Labour policies, witha £40bn structural defecit. Squander billions of hard earned taxpayers money on crazy social engineering or just sell the country’s gold at a £7bn loss.
On the contrary, Gordon was, and is, absolutely right. I do not have the time, nor the inclination to ‘shop around’ for public services. I really don’t. It’s an incontrovertible fact that, one really can have too much choice. And be worse off because of it. I want accountable services, in a place where I know I’ll find them.
Accountability is absolutely essential, and that’s different. True inescapable accountability. The Tories just want to push all the responsibility for assessment and evaluation onto the citizen. How does that improve the lives of busy people who have better things to do? The answer is, it doesn’t. But it’s a classic way and formulaic way for the Tories to justify slashing, burning and hacking what have now become excellent and accountable services – certainly in my neck of the woods. And I’m in Hackney for Pete’s sake. 😉
After all these years of investment, turning around and filling the horrendous vacuum left by the last Tory government, I really really do not want to see ‘our’ public services being run like sodding Argos.
Dontmindme must be one of the paid up Tory Troll Army right? No?
Surely only someone with a brief to monitor and post under a specific daily-news-agenda instruction from Coulson would be so interested and so outraged by such time stamps?
Is that how you’re evaluated? If not, then why the OCD?
AC – a post on how they’re regimented please?
Really? Do even YOU believe any of that?
We have a huge structural deficit and our national debt will double thanks to Labour and Brown. Cuts in public service funding are inevitable – indeed Darling says they will be worse than Thatcher. So what can we do about it? Labour have no ideas at all – if you can’t chuck money at it there can’t be any other options surely!!
Cameron has introduced a very important idea. That all those of us who volunteer and work to improve things in our local communities will be supported and willed on by government in the future – not prevented from making progress as happens currently. There are so many perverse government led incentives and disincentives which prevent us now.
I would have thought that you would understand this – you crow about your grass roots network vs Ashcroft’s cash. Do you not believe in this?
We can all point to wasteful government spending we have all come across. The worst of it is that we can also see how if just a small portion of that money had been spent in the right places – encouraging people who know their communities – we would all be so much better off.
I will be voting for Cameron and willing him on.
poor old grayling
that was a public reshuffle planning meeting. also gove should be careful. methinks dave thought he talked too much
When Labour talks about ‘building public services’, what it really means is making more people beholden to its client state. Since 1997, Smoking Cessation Officers and Teenage Pregnancy Advisers have replaced steel workers and miners as Labour’s core vote. All paid for by the wealth creating private sector.
It’s more of the ‘Old Testament’ from the Tories, contrasted to a ‘New Future’ from Labour. From what I remember, there’s an awful lot of carnage in the old testament, so we can see where the genesis of Tory policy comes from.
It’s not a time to look to the heavens, cross our fingers and hope for the best. We need to follow the path to recovery, and not be distracted by empty promises.
The Labour manifesto is a fully costed programme of government, which is being honest and fair. It leads to not only recovery, but it builds a new economy for the next generation – the Tory manifesto, in contrast, is a shallow world play with no vision. It hands the rich and plaintive a loaded dice.
Cameron has missed the opportunity to show he is ready for responsibility – he’s not. His answer to fiscal responsibility, is to employ a Dickensian pick-pocket (Osbourne) as Chancellor. The ‘Artful Dodger’ will wreck havoc with the economy, give hand-outs to the aristocracy and filthy-rich, put millions out of work and increase poverty, given the chance. Like Cameron, he’s been raised with a superiority complex. He thinks it’s his inheritance to be Chancellor.
The truth is, he’s been discredited by the world’s leading economists, for his fickle response during the economic crisis; he’s been derided his lack of vision in the recover, and he will lead Britain into a charnel house, and leave us there to rot.
Anyone who has ever been involved with voluntary work knows that it is getting harder and harder to recruit volunteers and those that do willingly give their time generally have less and less of it to give. Nowadays most women work – many in very demanding jobs and many men are also doing extra hours or hold down two jobs to help to make ends meet for their families. So Cameron’s ‘big idea’ is to get ordinary citizens to volunteer their precious free time to run public services for the government – what world does he live in?? Somewhere back in the 1970s I think!
I was asked by our local labour candidate why I would not be voting labour and explained that more than 3000 new laws, and endless assualt on our civil liberties, more than 100 broken promises, creeping state surveilance, legislation that allows bailiffs into people’s homes without permission, an illegal war in Iraq, sending ill equipped boys to get blown to bits in Afghanistan, criminal mismanagement of state funds,a completely bonkers policy on Government spending and an UNELECTED LEADER was enough to persude me to tick another box.
She said I ‘must’ vote Labour. have I missed something? Its still a free country isnt it or have you lot managed to change that while I’ve been on holiday?
Dont let the door hit you on the way out
Will the real Cameron ever stand up?
Now we know what the Cameron party manifesto is, I still am left asking will the real David Cameron stand up.
Citizen Cameron, now says power to the people, but what effect will his struggle actually achieve? Nothing on the economy, not the recession but a lot on Power to the people.
What happens after giving power to the people, and it fails, as it will, where do people, communities, and what is left go then. Cameron know where they will go, but isn’t saying, whole communities will become divided and just like the Thatcher years we will see more social divide, riots and fringe groups hyjacking local issues.
His manifesto doesn’t give any confidence on how the Cameron party will manage public spending, the recession and the hope of building on what has been achieve not only over the last few months but the last thirteen years.
He promises to defend bus passes, disability living allowance, attendance allowance and no up front charging for care, but why say he wil save them, when no one has said anything about cutting them, what is the hidden agenda.
What is his future for VAT, taxation in general, education including student fees.
Be careful what you wish for and the Cameron Party, as we have learned in history any Dictorial Leadership, Cameron has become the Conservative party, if he isn’t topman there is nothing and that is frightening very frightening.
How many of Hitlers henchmen were ever heard in the early years, and look what happened then. I am truly afraid who he will use as scapegoats, after the sick lame and lazy, and equally worried about who will be left to speak for me.
Just remember DIY Cameron, if he does get control you did Do It Yourself.
‘they got every major call on the recession wrong’
Let’s not forget which party led us, totally unprepared, into the worst recession for decades. Which party was governing the last major economy to ‘limp out’ of the recession and which party now presides over ‘the economic black hole’.
A reminder ? the LABOUR PARTY.
How can you seriously boast about Labour’s economic record. They inherited an economy in it’s best shape in living memory and after 13 years of mismanagement and incompetence leave it in it’s worst.
What sort of fool would vote for another 5 years ?
So happy the polls are narrowing once again. Despite Tax evasion money and an extremely bias media who never question the Tories and always take a negative slant on Labour policy people are not convinced by the Tories.
I have been canvassing in Putney for Stuart King and in Keynsham for Dan Norris and the response I get is definitely not positive towards the Conservatives and luckily I have rarely encountered people such as the one who just commented on your blog and calls himself an average voter. More like ignorant and daily mail reader to me.
Hope you continue the good work Alastair in showing the pitfalls in Tory policy because the likelihood of the media doing that is the same as William Hague’s hair growing back and Chris Grayling saying he doesn’t mind gays.
ps: and please make sure Brown doesn’t sound to boring and look to frightening for the TV debates !
Ps
Inheritance tax: why not have Gordon say “If you’re in one of Britain’s 2000 wealthiest families then, absolutely, vote Conservative, it will save you a fortune”.
Would highlight this quite emblematic Tory policy ie help the rich, screw everyone else.
regards,
Patrick McMurray
DIY NHS?
Yeah – lets go back to ’45.
1945?
1745! Reunite the Surgeons with the barbers and hairdressers!
“Can I have a new hip and a short back and sides, please?”
“Yes we have a special offer for NHS patients – 20 haircuts before we can fit you in for the operation, guaranteed.”
“We’re in this together” ??????????????????
First image to mind is being stuck in a lifeboat waiting to be rescued. By Gordon and Alistair one has to assume!
Who is coming up with these appalling slogans at Tory HQ?
Sorry have i missed something…..What short memories we have!…. Am already preparing an emergency escape route in case MaggieRoon gets into office…Like i had to when the Tories were in charge in the eighties, i spent years working abroad away from my family because there were no jobs in Britain…and thats skilled jobs we are talking about….Rather like the Eastern Europeans coming here, be prepared to travel to avoid a Tory “Price worth paying”. I only hope “Dave” hasnt upset our European neighbors too much by then and they slap a quota on us all…Remember your History Britain and beware!
“The truth is, he’s been discredited by the world’s leading economists, for his fickle response during the economic crisis; he’s been derided his lack of vision in the recover, and he will lead Britain into a charnel house, and leave us there to rot.”
Sources for these allegations please?
What I don’t get is, if Britain is so broken, and hardly anyone votes how is it supposed to wake up on May 7th and form a Big Society? The Tory vision is aimed at those with money and time to vote in a government and then vote on the minutiae of local government. A soccer mom may have the time to sack a school board and build a new secondary school, but what of the single parent families where the parent is working two jobs? When is he or she supposed to do all this? I’m not a dyed in the wool Labour supporter but I want to elect a government that will govern! I don’t have the time or inclination to do it myself. I want a government that’s efficient and effective. I don’t want to join it.
Cameron”s manifest sounded like something written by Enid Blyton: “Five Try to Run the Country”. Cameron, Osborne, Hague, and er…. …..
“Labour has shown it can manage the economy in the good times, and in the bad times that followed the economic crash.”
Hahahahahahah. Joke, right? Abolished boom and bust and all that. Yes what a fool. Wait, you are serious? Really? REALLY??