David Cameron should go back to his Big Society
David Cameron may or may not be returning to front-line politics, but one thing is clear: the former prime minister is bored with his shed-life. Perhaps he could finish a task he started but didn’t complete: fostering a society that doesn’t look to the state to solve every problem.
When Mr Cameron walked into Downing Street, he announced that his “great passion is building the Big Society”. Nearly a decade later, the only real achievement of the Big Society appears to be its selection by Oxford Dictionaries as “word of the year” in 2010 (apparently being a two-word phrase isn’t a barrier to this accolade: “credit crunch” claimed it in 2008).
One of the problems with the Big Society was that even those who instinctively cheer the concept of empowering local communities and decentralising spending decisions couldn’t quite understand what it would mean in practice. But dig through the gimmicky Cameroon language (“civic servants” to replace civil servants) and, at its core, the concept could just offer the antidote to an oversized, overambitious state that seeks – and inevitably fails – to provide the solution to every one of its citizens’ problems.
Brexit feels like a never-ending process now, but it will cease to be the dominating story in a few years’ time, when all too suddenly our leaders will find themselves being measured not just on their performance in negotiating with Brussels but also on dealing with domestic challenges bubbling under the surface, such as social care and productivity.
Ironically, for the man whose career will be defined by Brexit, there is no place for Mr Cameron in the debate surrounding that issue. Brexiteers are furious with him for refusing to prepare for a Leave vote after having called the referendum, while Remainers are apoplectic that he called the referendum at all (never mind that giving the British people the vote on the EU was an election pledge that he honoured, unlike some of his fellow politicians, who didn’t).
But might there still be time for the 52-year-old to build a legacy around Big Society after all, developing and delivering communitydriven responses to social needs? Mr Cameron failed to drive the Big Society agenda from within government, but out of Downing Street he may now find himself in a better position to build consensus across the political divide.
He may also find an ally in the increasingly socially conscious private sector. This is showing a steady appetite for leading on social issues through targeted policies such as shared parental leave to address the maternity wage gap and school-leavers’ schemes to help young people into employment.
If he can pull it off, Mr Cameron might be able to reinvent himself as a Michael Young of our time – the sociologist, social activist and politician to whose venerable foundation Mr Cameron paid tribute in the speech where he first laid out his vision for the Big Society.
As legacies go, that wouldn’t be too shabby at all. FOLLOW Dia Chakravarty on Twitter @DiaChakravarty;
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The Chief Constable of Hampshire police pretty much nailed it last week. Objecting to the pressure put on police to pursue an ever-greater catalogue of hate crimes, Olivia Pinkney said, with a succinct lucidity that professional commentators might envy, “… there are lots of horrible things that happen where police are not necessarily the first or best service”. In other words, not everything horrible that happens is a crime. Language that is hateful, behaviour that is hurtful (or even frightening), attitudes that are cruel or unjust, these are all deplorable but they are not – except in a metaphorical sense – criminal.
As Ms Pinkney’s statement implies, it is not just the police forces’ resources and their practical priorities that are in question here: it is the dangerous redefinition of their function. The police are quite rightly resisting being transformed into social enforcers who would be responsible for determining not only that a specific act had been committed, but what the motive of the actor was and whether that motive – or psychological state – contravened the values of the society which were now readerprints@telegraph.co.uk
Out of Downing Street, he is in a better position to build consensus