Those who hoped they had heard the last of ‘the big society’ should look away now.
Those who hoped they had heard the last of ‘the big society’ should look away now. A fightback has begun. Normally, power shifts within No. 10 are visible only to those who read between the lines of prime-ministerial speeches. But since Andy Coulson departed, the influence of the big society’s biggest champion, Steve Hilton, can be seen in headlines. This week there was even a ‘big society’ Cabinet meeting — with the Prime Minister and seven Cabinet ministers in attendance — before the normal meeting. Hilton, Cameron’s closest advisor, is now free to pursue his belief that the big society should define his boss.
Hilton’s task is far from easy. Polls show that 72 per cent of the public say that they don’t understand what the big society is — and the more Cameron talks about the idea, the higher that figure rises. Even Tory activists complain that they don’t get it. In a review of the election campaign on the Tory conference fringe, not one of the hundred or so activists present said that they had found it useful on the doorstep. Many blamed it for the party’s failure to win the election outright. But Hilton is still determined to rescue both the idea and the phrase.
A large part of the problem, as No. 10 now admits, is that the big society has never been properly explained. It is, essentially, about three things. The first and most important principle is that public services don’t have to be provided by the state. They can instead be provided by businesses or voluntary organisations with the state paying these groups by results. A recruitment agency, say, can be hired to move people from welfare to work and paid by its success at finding clients jobs. The second principle is that power and information should be handed down to the lowest level possible. The last and least important part of the idea concerns encouraging volunteering and social action.
But because of Coulson’s unwillingness to explain the big society agenda, the few people who reckon that they know what it is about believe it is all about volunteering. This has backfired badly on Cameron. People who are feeling squeezed both in terms of time and money do not wish to hear that the solution to the country’s problems is for them to go out and paint a youth centre.
Coulson, a former News of the World editor, thought the phrase ‘big society’ was too woolly, and sought to limit its use, though he knew that Cameron would not abandon the ideas behind it. The Prime Minister planned three major speeches last year setting out the themes behind the big society. But after Coulson heard the first one, delivered in Liverpool last July, he had the other two dropped. In January this year, a speech by the Prime Minister was meant to set out how the coalition’s reform of the fitted into the big society. But Hilton was on holiday, and the speech ended up containing only two BS references.
Now Coulson is gone, the obstacle to selling the big society has been removed. The government’s public services white paper, due to be released on Monday, will make clear how its reforms fit into the big society narrative.
No. 10 now plans to integrate the big society into the everyday narrative of government. To date, little has been done to make sure that departmental announcements are fitted into the government’s broader agenda. When Michael Gove talks about letting teachers and voluntary groups set up new schools, he doesn’t do so in the context of the big society. This could be about to change.
The same is true of the Home Office. When it published data that allowed people to see where crime happened in their area it wasn’t made clear that this was all part of the big society agenda — that is, that information should be handed down to the lowest level possible. But this is all supposed to change with the appointment of a strategy director to Cameron’s Downing Street. Andrew Cooper, a moderniser who worked for the party under Hague before setting up an opinion polling firm, will be responsible for making sure that what the government does is fitted into the grand narrative arc about where Cameron wants to take the country. And he won’t act as a counter-balance to Hilton in the way that Coulson did.
One other product of the Coulson-Hilton divide is that Hilton came to be seen as a ‘wet’ or even a crypto-lefty — because he was at loggerheads with the supposedly right-wing Coulson. The narrative made sense to those who knew neither man very well because Coulson was a former tabloid editor who emphasised the use of the Union Flag and law-and-order. Hilton, by contrast, has New Labour friends (Peter Mandelson’s protégé Ben Wegg-Prosser exploited these connections to gain a march on Tory thinking during the long campaign). Hilton’s proposal for a ‘happiness index’ and all his talk of ‘social responsibility’ is taken as further evidence of his being on the Tory left.
Hilton has not helped himself by making little effort to get to know Tory MPs and, at times, letting his famous temper get the better of him. When an idea comes out of Downing Street that Tory backbenchers don’t like, they have two reactions: they either blame the Liberal Democrats or Hilton.
The irony is that Hilton is one of the more right-wing figures in No. 10 — even if he does come from a different, more anti-authority right-wing tradition than most Tories. He is, in the words of one friend, ‘the most get-government-out-of-my-life person you could ever meet’. It is this approach to life that drives Hilton’s growing and significant antipathy to the European Union.
Cameron’s decision to double down on the idea that he and Hilton developed together is one of the most significant of his premiership to date. The easy thing for the Prime Minister to have done would have been to retire the phrase gracefully. But by choosing to so publicly stick with it, Cameron has now identified himself so closely with it that he can never dare drop it.
The Big Society has become so integral to Cameron’s premiership that it will almost certainly form one of the prongs of his re-election campaign, alongside a warning not to let Labour wreck the economy again and a promise of tax cuts. The Big Society will be the cause that endures.
One of the rules of politics is that leaders acquire definition when they go against the grain. This is what Cameron has sought to do this week. For better or for worse, he will now be defined by the Big Society and whether or not it succeeds.
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