Who’s afraid of the big bad society? No one, after the Lobbying Bill gets through

One of my earliest memories of how mad left wing politics got in the 80s is of listening to a group of adults arguing over whether charity is inherently right wing. That by stepping in where the state was withdrawing, charities were supporting the Thatcherite settlement. I didn’t care. I just wanted them to sponsor me 20p a lap on a sponsored walk round the local duck pond. To their credit, those on both sides did so.
I am reminded of that extremism now. When the Lobbying Bill was first published, it was generally assumed that the reason it was likely to catch so many charities was an accident of poor drafting not design.
No one could quite believe that the real motive of this government – one that contained both Liberal Democrats and Tories who had protested at the authoritarian excesses of New Labour – would offer a bill so blatantly aimed at suppressing dissent. “Sort it out at committee stage” became the cry as we assumed the Government’s accidents could be cured through scrutiny and amendment.

But in the days since the second reading of the Bill, it has become ever clearer that the subjugation of charities is no accident. It is as purposeful as it is pernicious and political.
In a Daily Mail piece on the use of judicial review Government Minister Chris Grayling opens:
“The professional campaigners of Britain are growing in number, taking over charities, dominating BBC programmes and swarming around Westminster.”
Meanwhile government cheerleader Ben Brogan in the Telegraph describe charities as “shadowy figures” (which is ridiculous, as a more open organisation than a charity – which is heavily regulated – you’ll be hard pushed to find). He also admits that the Bill’s real aim is “to address a problem that drives Conservatives mad, namely the way the Left now commands the heights of civil society, and from there lobs turnips at David Cameron.”

So now the pendulum has swung. The Tories are claiming that charities (a group that includes Eton College let us not forget) are inherently left wing. The difference is, they have the levers of power the far left never did, and are clearly more than happy to use them for their political advantage.

This is an old tactic, but one that has been extremely successful for Tories seeking to avoid scrutiny. If you can’t answer the charges levelled at you, discredit the source. It’s worked a charm on the BBC for example, which Tories routinely claim to have a left wing bias – despite recent evidence that the exact opposite is true – the BBC has been cowed into over representing the Tory point of view by the grinding down of years of carping about their so-called bias.

And this affects reporting. For example, Open Democracy found that the BBC failed the public in their reporting of the NHS Bill. Before a stitch of legislation had passed, the Tories and their Fleet Street cheerleaders had achieved a chilling effect on our national broadcaster.

Less than four years ago, the Tories ran as the party of the Big Society. Their coalition partners ran as liberal democrats. The lobbying bill shows how very far from either platform both parties have come.