Will the real David Cameron please stand up?

The Labour Movement column

by Anthony Painter/ @anthonypainter

Back in October a neo-Thatcherite leader of the Conservative party, self-confidently told his party conference:

“It is more government that got us into this mess.

Why is our economy broken? Not just because Labour wrongly thought they’d abolished boom and bust. But because government got too big, spent too much and doubled the national debt.

Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility.

Why are our politics broken? Because government got too big, promised too much and pretended it had all the answers.”

Last night, an equally self-confident, leader of the Conservative party delivered the Hugo Young lecture and called it The Big Society. Only this time he wasn’t neo-Thatcherite. You might even, in parts, describe the speech as Merkel-esque christian democracy:

“Galvanising, catalysing, prompting, encouraging and agitating for community engagement and social renewal. It must help families, individuals, charities and communities come together to solve problems.

We must use the state to remake society.”

David Cameron must be afflicted with a very bad state of cognitive dissonance this morning. It is just inconceivable that you can at once blame government for every ill in our society and at the same time call for more government to cure these ills. The damage caused by a little poison can’t be undone by drinking more if that’s your take on things.

And yet, last night’s speech was reminder of a David Cameron that has disappeared from the political scene. There was a time when he was interesting to listen to, constantly challenging, never letting the left settle intellectually. That all went out the window with the collapse of Northern Rock.

Before that rupture, you got a sense that he was trying to understand the nature of being progressive in a way that many of his colleagues, George Osborne being a case in point, just couldn’t. They used the language while it seemed that David Cameron might be trying to grasp the meaning.

And of course there was a large amount of intellectual dishonesty in the speech last night. In fairness, it’s politics and it’s just a few months before a general election so you probably wouldn’t expect anything else. For example, his analysis of what has happened to poverty under Labour was completely misleading- and deliberately so. For example, the Institute of Fiscal Studies has rejected the usefulness of ‘severe poverty’ as a measure as Left Foot Forward has explained. David Cameron stuck steadfastly to the concept despite knowing this.

The simple fact is that, according to the same IFS report, though 4 million children remain in relative poverty, it’s 300,000 fewer than in 1997. 900,000 pensioners had been taken out of poverty by 2008. It is true that the non-working, childless poor have been hit harder but that is partly a logic of active welfare- an approach that the Tories support.

But there is a sense beyond this that the David Cameron we heard last night does genuinely believe in some form of equality of opportunity- one that goes beyond the traditional Thatcherite notion of an equal opportunity to be unequal. He committed himself to early years provision for the poorest families; better education as a fall back for when families fail; and better adult education.

That’s all good stuff. Anyone who really believes that inequality is a severe hindrance to life chances and well-being would want to go much further than anything contemplated by the Leader of the Opposition. He bemoans poverty and inequality but is there really anything in his speech that confronts them in any meaningful sense? His re-orientation of the state could well improve things and there are some good ideas like bringing in the third sector where possible (and some ideas blatantly cribbed from Labour like performance-by-results welfare.)

The simple reality though is that poverty and deprivation are structural. They come down to things like class, your life chances heavily influenced by where you (or your parents) start off in the game of life.

Things like resources, assets, social capital, education, and political power all matter. The fashionable term for all this is capabilities. Equality of opportunity is fine but it is nowhere near enough. Even if a Conservative government did improve schools, invest more in skills, and provide early years support- much as the current government has done- it would fall short. A smarter, more responsive state that is more engaged with civil society in order to galvanise it towards social change sounds excellent. Unfortunately, the business of eliminating poverty and exclusion is far more onerous and expensive than that.

And because of this, it is also impossible to consider the social and political vision outlined by David Cameron last night without also mentioning his economic policy. One sure-fire way to empower the dark conference David Cameron over the light Hugo Young Lecture David Cameron is faltering growth. And yet, that is the risk that he would face if George Osborne followed through on his over-zealous and probably mistimed fiscal consolidation. The economy is likely to tank and that will be that other than for administrative reform.

Cognitive dissonance must at some point resolve itself in a consonance of some description. It is difficult to see the pre-September 2007 Cameron ultimately winning out. The Osborne-Coulson-Fox-Hague nexus will just be too strong. The fundamental challenges faced by economic circumstance- not least those engendered by his Chancellor- would be too great.

If the worst does happen and the Conservatives do win the next election, one very small consolation will be that somewhere, deep down, their Leader may just have a bit more intellectual sophistication than his colleagues- inadequate though that is. Which Cameron will emerge? I know where I’d place my bet. But you just never know.