The Cameron project is more intellectually interesting than we appreciate

Tiberius

With each development of the responsibilty theme, we see how the country has an opportunity to change for the better in all areas of policy where New (and indeed Old) Labour has made things worse.

However I'm sure there will still be cynics thinking Cameron won't make changes for the better...

JohnPage

You have to laugh at this piece. Since when did Cameron reach this principled position about big government? This man who wanted to share the proceeds of growth? The ONLY thread running through the Cameron project is principle-free expediency (not always well executed, e.g. Dannatt). This may or may not make him a good PM, but to accuse him of any intellectual bottom, let alone of consistency, is risible.

Maggie

I'm a bit concerned about Cameron's pledge to roll back the state and replace it with the voluntary sector.
In 1982, shortly after the Penlee Lifeboat disaster, certain money grubbing elements in the Conservative Party used the vast sums of money that were flooding in from donations as an excuse to change the Charity Law. Charities and the voluntary sector overnight became less about charity and more about money. Charities became under no obligation to use donated monies for any particular purpose or in any particular country. Volunteers who were used to giving their services free were pushed out in favour of a new breed of sleazy professionals whose main interest was money, high salaries, property portfolios and investments.
There was a boom in the growth of charities with multiple charities all representing the same causes with the same property portfolios, the same foreign travel for their staff and the same tax avoidance schemes.
More recently the charity commission has been used as an arm of government to threaten crack downs on private schools while gazing benignly at the overt political activities of the Smith Institute.
There needs to be an overhaul of the methods and raison d'etre of the Charity Commission and a cull of dodgy charities before any responsibilities, and any more tax payers' cash, is handed over to them.

Irene

Interestingly Danny Finkelstein has a good quote from Blair's 2004 speech:

"I do not believe in a minimalist state. But I don't believe in Big Government either.

The Tories should use this.

Bert

Good stuff. Lets hope the man can deliver.

Olaf Rye

Many politicians have professed to entertain a deep antipathy to big government, but tend to be drawn into the trap of expanding certain arms of the government to enact their policy and to repeat this process. The policies of George W. Bush are a case in point: the government was expanded under his administration and this sat very uncomfortably with the more traditional Republican supporters. This 'doublethink' is prevalent on the left, too, where they express a suspicion and dislike of the police and security forces only to insist on their expansion to fight the foes that they believe will delay the realisation of the utopian society. Very few have the bottle to preside over the dismantling of much of the state apparatus and passing responsibility back to the individual. Although I wish Cameron well, I will not believe his commitment to rolling back the influence and power of this paternalistic bully-state until legislation enacted by Labour is largely torn up and their are queues of apparatchniks (middle managers) seeking employment in the private sector.

Florence of Arabia

So Brookes is praising Osborne for following his ideas. How very very of him.

Moraymint

Olaf Rye

Hear, hear!

John

JohnPage cites Camerons earlier commitment to sharing the proceeds of growth as evidence that Camerons more recent commitment to reducing government is unprincipled. However although I don't think that Margeret Thatcher ever used the phrase 'sharing the proceeds of growth' she significantly reduced the tax burden (and hence big government)over a number of years by following that approach i.e. growing public expenditure in real terms but at a slower rate than the economy as a whole was growing. Cameron is being entirely consistent.

Bill Rees

The problem with "rolling back the state" is that every time the state expands its operations it creates dependants, who then make much more noise when their short-term interests are threatened than anyone makes in favour of the dependancy being cut.
It is therefore very easy for a government to be portrayed as "heartless", and it takes guts to counter that argument.
The smartest thing Cameron said at the recent Tory conference, incidentally, was that we believe in society, but we don't think society is the same thing as the state.
That was a great soundbite that needs to be aired more often.

Ivy Eileen

I'm sorry Irene, but that quote is typical Blair flim-flam (third way etc tosh). Look at the words, what do they mean ? -- bugger-all.

The problem this country has is decidedly too much Government .... and with Brown we have an extreme top-down politician. As witness his view he knows how to spend our money better than we do.

Reagan had the best quote on this "The problem is [too much] Government".

JohnPage

John: increasing state spending in real terms but just at a slower rate is not rolling back the state - quite the opposite! It's just increasing the size of government a bit more slowly.

John Wilkes

My recollection of the election of Mrs. Thatcher is that she also promised to roll back the state and bring smaller government. When you look back this is the one area in which she failed. Economically the transformation was almost miraculous. However, because she was confronted with local authorities controlled by old labour and Militant labour, she centralised power. That centralisation has continued apace under the present government but a lot of the structure for it was put in place by her governments. If the incoming government can genuinely return control to people rather than central government institutions, then they may actually restore "society" to what Mrs. Thatcher actually believed it was i.e. all of us taking responsibility for ourselves.

John Moss

The project to personalise welfare and require people to take responsibility for how they use it is a crusade which should have been embarked upon by Conservatives from 1951 onwards. Instead, they bought in to the Atlee settlement and were happy to see Britain as a Tory-managed socialist country for most of the post war period.

Only '79-'87 saw any sort of row back from that and only then in the economic/private sphere. The state remained sovereign and supreme in the social/public sphere.

If Cameron can do it, he could well show the route out of societal welfare dependency in the same way Thatcher showed the way out of economic socialist dependency.

Olaf Rye

I think that John Wilkes makes a very good point: to enact any radical change, you have to centralise power so that the political appointees in bureaucracies and local government do not sabotage the policies. Most politicians, after having done this, succumb to the desire to appease their bureaucratic appointees and do not begin the dismantling of their departments. Indeed, if anything, they tend to expand to consolidate their gains but also to buy votes. This is why I support a flat-tax and a balanced budget policy--it may stop politicians from bribing us with our own money and creating clients that are bound to vote for certain parties because they benefit from handouts.

JohnBUK

The issue is really about bringing back "local" accountability as in USA. Presently we talk about the gap between the government and the governed and "Big Government" has been the cause of this, centralising decision making. So, yes, if devolving government closer to the people then I'm all for it.
Let us vote for the Local Police Chief, Judges and others and choose and run our own schools etc.

TGF UKIP

Tiberius, I recommend you to go to Martin Bright's post last Sunday 11th Oct "John Rentoul calls it right on Brown and Cameron."

This underlines how weak the Cameron Tories would be in power because of their pusillanimity in opposition. They have made no arguments for conservative values and in fact they have spent most of their time denying them. Small wonder, therefore, that Labour values remain in the ascendant and will so severely restrict their freedom to actually employ any conservative remedies to the countries chronic ills should, by some miracle, they actually attain office.

From Across the Pond

I am not sure where the author has gotten the idea that, "David Brooks is the most influential American newspaper columnist," from. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Perhaps this observation was made to try an validate the message of this article and the intellectual value of the Tories themselves.

Nevertheless, the state of the political strata within the Torie movement is rather interesting to this Yank. I am curious if any of my British cousins could answer how much influence do you think the Red Tories are having on Cameron, if any at all?

Thank you.

Tiberius

Considering the state the party had been in for the 13 years prior to him becoming leader, it would indeed be a miracle worthy of the name if Dave took the Tories back into power next year, Thank God For, and I'm pleased to see you acknowledge it as such.

May I be so bold as to suggest you lose the UKIP tag and switch it to Dave, a la Jeff Randall.

Verity

TGF UKIP – Cameron has been dire and ineffectual in Opposition because he is afraid of frightening the horses, as you know. He doesn’t, or doesn't want to, understand that the voters want radical change in the philosophy of governance. He and his friends in Notting Hill, or wherever he lives with his windmill on his roof, live in a fuzzy little world of cuddly pink Tories.

To say that he has been timid in Opposition is putting it too kindly. He has been a completely ineffectual Leader because he doesn’t really disagree with the Government on anything but a few minor points. So he and his cohorts have to try to think up ways that make them look as though they’re militating against socialist ideas when, if they were ever to be elected, they wouldn’t change a thing … except for possibly putting up new curtains and rearranging the furniture.

I am still utterly baffled that Cameron, with no background in politics, and not a terribly clever person, of no fixed beliefs, managed to get elected Leader over the seasoned, true blue David Davis and I still suspect some fancy footwork in the voting.

There is no hunger among the electorate for Dave or his ideas, if any, and I suspect that those who vote for him will be a few Tories who put hope over the evidence of their own eyes, and some socialists who are willing to give Dave’s brand of socialism a whirl. Tories in the main, though, will desert the party for UKIP, or they’ll stay home. I hope they don’t waste their vote. Parliament would benefit from having a few strong UKIP voices within.

Across The Pond: Cameron is a Red Tory.

Verity

The Cameron Project Is Intellectually More Interesting Than We Appreciate ...

Nice try, James, but no.