One Nation

Vulture

You are right. One nation. And that nation will be speaking Urdu. And Swahili. And women will be wearing sackcloth over their faces. And homosexuals will be thrown off tall buildings. Won't it be great?

THX1138

Statements like this and scrapping the new runway at LHR is exactly why I'm voting Tory at the GE. Dave just gets better and better.

Publius

Mr Blackburn doesn't know what "the progressive argument" is, so how on earth does he know who's winning it?

saddleworth

Don't get too excited. We have a grotesquely bad government and yet the opinion polls point to what - a possibly hung parliament. Acclaim for caring speeches does not appear to translate into election winning polling.

Nicholas

Er, call me an old septic - I mean sceptic - but doesn't "strong and concerted government action to make it happen" and "the state to remake society" sound a bit too much like the emergent proto-fascist national socialist New Labour "experiment" of 1997-2010?

Haven't we had our fill of the state trying to remake society in the image of Somalia on Thames or the bureaucratic totalitarianism of the GDR? I would really like to hear much more about how the present state is going to be made to step back out of my face first - rather than the implied threat that Cameron's state is going to use the same bully boy tactics but in a different direction.

Luke

David, would you describe yourself as "a progressive?"

I ask only because you confidently declare that the tories are winning the progressive argument. They are indeed winning a lot of arguments at the moment, but I would think the majority of people who describe themselves as having progressive values and politics probably think the tories arent winning any serious progressive arguments.

Verity

As usual, what Nicholas said.

Fergus Pickering

Sounds like bollocks to me, Mr Blackburn. Not what he said but what you said. What on earth do you mean by it? Restate it in easy words and short sentences that old chaps like me can understand.Otherwise... it sounds like bollocks, don't you know.

Andy Carpark

The big society …

Give me strength. Not even a prolonged burst of ECT would ever make me trust David Cameron. He is smooth, flabby and uses too many abstract nouns. A sure-fire way to diagnose a mountebank is his heavey reliance on abstract nouns. IMO Cameron is almost as much of a walking stylistic disaster as Brown. As and when he gets his hands on absolute power, he will probably start dressing like Grayson Perry.

Frank P

One nation

Those were the days.

Peter From Maidstone

I am trying to get excited but saying that the answer to big government is a strong state is not very appealing. Nearly everything the state does it does badly and in a way that makes things worse. I want a small government and a small state doing the things it needs to do with appropriate vigour. That's all. It does seem, rather worryingly, that the Conservatives want to do the same things as Labour but think they will do them properly.

Hysteria

What Peter from Maidstone said

Edmund Jerk

The One-Nation attitude to poverty, his (generally) realistic foreign policy and his sensible energy policy is certainly making me think about voting Tory.

Frank P

Four nations - one realm. In case you had forgotten.

Rainer Unsinn

"Peter From Maidstone
I want a small government and a small state doing the things it needs to do with appropriate vigour. That's all."
So, it doesn't matter if the state is weak, it just has to be weak with vigour, is that right?

Peter From Maidstone

Rainer, I don't understand your point. I said that the state should do what it should be doing with vigour. That means energy. How can vigour mean weak? In the speech reported DC does not suggest that the state will be smaller. That is problematic for me at least. If it is not problematic for you then I guess you will be happy whoever wins the next election.

James Murphy

Nicholas - absolutely! I nearly choked on my curried tofu as I read the words 'we need to use the stat to re-make society' - Just how, Dave, does that belief differ one iota from dear old Uncle Jo's convictions in the sunny Soviet of the 1930s?! Surely, Conservatism is defined by the opposite conviction, i.e., that individuals can only build society artfully, skilfully, scientifically and profitably together IF AND WHEN the stupid, ham-fisted state gets out of the way! Or have I misunderstood the last 300 years of political history?

AAE

As there is no argument that around 80% of our laws and petty regulations come from the EU, many of which criminalise behaviour which is no business of anyone let alone the state, how exactly will Dave free us from the predations of an "interfering monolith"? I only ask because he seems to be under some illusion that he has the power to do so . . . . . . . . . Even in these dog days of an evil government, totalitarian mechanisms continue to be put in place with not a word from Dave - is he really not chilled that 634, or thereabouts, public bodies can access our phone calls, internet activity etc? He still has not uttered one word which would even hint at a wish to reverse The Long March. That might explain his not unassailable lead in the polls.

Charles

Peter from Maidstone,

I think you may have misunderstood DC. He wasn't saying the answer to a big government is a strong STATE, but rather a big SOCIETY.

He is referring to community organisations, charitable endevevours, family, local cohesion, etc. However, so many of these have withered away in the last few decades (and the Tories were bad, if not as bad as NuLabour) that there will need to be an intervention to kickstart the process, and then hopefully the state can withdraw.

Remember what Thatcher really meant (not what people believe) where she said "there is no such thing as society, just individuals..." this is what DC is aiming at: individual responsibility replacing an interfering state.

Peter From Maidstone

Charles, I hope I have misunderstood DC. But what he said is that a Big Society needs a strong government and that the state needs to remake society. Actually I disagree with that entirely. The last thing society needs is the state trying to remake it, that looks like we are in for another 5 years of social engineering. He did not say what a Big Society needs is for the State to get out of the way.

Marcher Baron

One nation? Not after devolution, it isn't any more!

Michael Booth

Can you actually have a multicultural one-nation? How can the nation be 'one' when it is multicultural? Have we not in fact gone 'tribal' ?

General Zod

Cameron must be doing something right. On one side there is PfM complaining that he will allow the state to interfere too much and on the other Yvette Cooper trying to spread fear of a return to Thatcherism (Oh, the horror!).

Verity

To Hysteria: Hi y’all.

James Murphy notes that Dave said: "we need to use the state to re-make society'."

"Just how, Dave, does that belief differ one iota from dear old Uncle Jo's convictions in the sunny Soviet of the 1930s?"

That’s a very good question, and, of course, it doesn’t. Judging by the comments on Conservative blogs, including those in The Telegraph, there is absolutely no appetite for David Cameron. The Left, always disliked intensely, now nauseates us with its malicious perfidy, and the feeling seems to be that Dave is one of them. If the Tories want to win the next election, they’ll have to put in a Conservative as Leader.

Peter from Maidstone says it “looks like we are in for another 5 years of social engineering.”

Not if Tory high command has the nous to dump Dave now.