“Leading the most daring government in the rich world”: Cameron delivers a speech to social entrepreneurs at London’s Somerset House
And to think we had him down as a middle-of-the-road kind of Tory. Cameron’s years in opposition lulled many into underestimating his radicalism. There was his consensual tone, his Butskellite matching of Labour spending plans and a policy on the NHS that, as surreal as it seems now, renounced structural tinkering. Even something about his ruddy cheeks and gilded backstory promised the kind of patrician managerialism perfected by Harold Macmillan.
Cameron is leading perhaps the most daring government in the developed world. States come in all shapes and sizes, and he wants Britain’s to be smaller and less centralised by 2015. It is a goal worth fighting for. But he really must fight: against popular scepticism, trade unions, bureaucratic inertia and the enervating slog of events. His first year as prime minister has left mixed impressions about his taste for battle.
There is nothing wobbly about the government’s pursuit of its main mission. Its alacrity is contentious, but Osborne’s fiscal pruning is something other debt-burdened economies will have to emulate eventually. The US still lacks a credible plan to restore budgetary sanity. But, unlike Britain, it at least has the safety of a reserve currency.
Still, austerity might not be Cameron’s most enduring legacy. That accolade could go to his parallel project to make the state more local, democratic and open to competition. It is easy to picture a future government rebuilding the case for more public spending. It is harder to imagine one recentralising power that has been given away.
More of Britain’s public spending comes from central government than any developed country bar New Zealand. The state has tightly controlled not only how schools are run but whether and where new ones can be set up. Despite presiding over a festering dependency culture for decades, the government monopoly on helping the unemployed into work was only starting to be broken up when Cameron took office. Citizens had little democratic control over the police, and data on government spending and public service outcomes were patchy and opaque.
These are the rigidities that Cameron’s plans for city mayors, free schools, more academies, welfare reform, elected police commissioners and data transparency were designed to loosen up. Of all his big ideas, only the overhaul of the NHS could be described as a solution in search of a problem. The Big Society is easily caricatured as a synonym for volunteering, but the core of the idea is simply a more local, plural and open state—much like that envisaged by Tony Blair after he got over his own command-and-control phase. Opponents of these policies can summon vigour and mobilise significant sections of public opinion, but can’t offer many alternative ideas.
Yet it is not enough for the government to win the intellectual battle. It must also prevail in the war of wills. If the past half-century has taught reformers anything, it is the folly of incrementalism and half-measures. “In Place of Strife,” Barbara Castle’s 1969 white paper for the reform of trade unions, was smothered by wilier opponents. Ted Heath entered power with proto-Thatcherite economic ideas but was bullied into an ignominious U-turn in 1972. Blairite policies to shake up public services, above all education, were pushed too tentatively to overwhelm the intransigence in the civil service, the unions and 11 Downing Street.
The coalition’s mettle is being tested, and is too often found wanting. It had a strong case for privatising state-owned forests, but buckled in the face of adverse opinion polls. Both sides of the coalition were happy with the NHS reform bill until the medical professions began rallying against it. Only recently has Downing Street strained to back school reformers against the educational establishment and an obstructive bureaucracy. Ministers privately wish Cameron would throw more of his energy and political capital behind his reforms.
He has started to respond. The recent overhaul of Downing Street, with its beefed-up policy and implementation staff, should provide a stronger tailwind behind free schools, police commissioners, open data and other promising but vulnerable ideas.
Cameron is becoming less of a chairman and more of a chief executive. He is too radical to be another Macmillan—but is belatedly alive to the danger of becoming another Heath.
Also in this month’s Coalition Britain special:
Stryker Maguireon the Coalition one year on
Charles Kennedy explains why he has come round to the coalition.
Anatole Kaletsky argues that the cuts will ruin the economy—but for Tory benefit.
GP Catriona Chatfield says the NHS reforms imperil the fundamental basis of the health service: trust between doctors and patients.
And to think we had him down as a middle-of-the-road kind of Tory. Cameron’s years in opposition lulled many into underestimating his radicalism. There was his consensual tone, his Butskellite matching of Labour spending plans and a policy on the NHS that, as surreal as it seems now, renounced structural tinkering. Even something about his ruddy cheeks and gilded backstory promised the kind of patrician managerialism perfected by Harold Macmillan.
Cameron is leading perhaps the most daring government in the developed world. States come in all shapes and sizes, and he wants Britain’s to be smaller and less centralised by 2015. It is a goal worth fighting for. But he really must fight: against popular scepticism, trade unions, bureaucratic inertia and the enervating slog of events. His first year as prime minister has left mixed impressions about his taste for battle.
There is nothing wobbly about the government’s pursuit of its main mission. Its alacrity is contentious, but Osborne’s fiscal pruning is something other debt-burdened economies will have to emulate eventually. The US still lacks a credible plan to restore budgetary sanity. But, unlike Britain, it at least has the safety of a reserve currency.
Still, austerity might not be Cameron’s most enduring legacy. That accolade could go to his parallel project to make the state more local, democratic and open to competition. It is easy to picture a future government rebuilding the case for more public spending. It is harder to imagine one recentralising power that has been given away.
More of Britain’s public spending comes from central government than any developed country bar New Zealand. The state has tightly controlled not only how schools are run but whether and where new ones can be set up. Despite presiding over a festering dependency culture for decades, the government monopoly on helping the unemployed into work was only starting to be broken up when Cameron took office. Citizens had little democratic control over the police, and data on government spending and public service outcomes were patchy and opaque.
These are the rigidities that Cameron’s plans for city mayors, free schools, more academies, welfare reform, elected police commissioners and data transparency were designed to loosen up. Of all his big ideas, only the overhaul of the NHS could be described as a solution in search of a problem. The Big Society is easily caricatured as a synonym for volunteering, but the core of the idea is simply a more local, plural and open state—much like that envisaged by Tony Blair after he got over his own command-and-control phase. Opponents of these policies can summon vigour and mobilise significant sections of public opinion, but can’t offer many alternative ideas.
Yet it is not enough for the government to win the intellectual battle. It must also prevail in the war of wills. If the past half-century has taught reformers anything, it is the folly of incrementalism and half-measures. “In Place of Strife,” Barbara Castle’s 1969 white paper for the reform of trade unions, was smothered by wilier opponents. Ted Heath entered power with proto-Thatcherite economic ideas but was bullied into an ignominious U-turn in 1972. Blairite policies to shake up public services, above all education, were pushed too tentatively to overwhelm the intransigence in the civil service, the unions and 11 Downing Street.
The coalition’s mettle is being tested, and is too often found wanting. It had a strong case for privatising state-owned forests, but buckled in the face of adverse opinion polls. Both sides of the coalition were happy with the NHS reform bill until the medical professions began rallying against it. Only recently has Downing Street strained to back school reformers against the educational establishment and an obstructive bureaucracy. Ministers privately wish Cameron would throw more of his energy and political capital behind his reforms.
He has started to respond. The recent overhaul of Downing Street, with its beefed-up policy and implementation staff, should provide a stronger tailwind behind free schools, police commissioners, open data and other promising but vulnerable ideas.
Cameron is becoming less of a chairman and more of a chief executive. He is too radical to be another Macmillan—but is belatedly alive to the danger of becoming another Heath.
Also in this month’s Coalition Britain special:
Stryker Maguireon the Coalition one year on
Charles Kennedy explains why he has come round to the coalition.
Anatole Kaletsky argues that the cuts will ruin the economy—but for Tory benefit.
GP Catriona Chatfield says the NHS reforms imperil the fundamental basis of the health service: trust between doctors and patients.
