I’m not qualified to refute Helmer’s libertarian opposition to gay marriage because I am not a libertarian – it’s a condition I believe to be as worthy of medical certification as the most debilitating of mental illnesses.  I can, and do, however take issue with his nod to communitarian thinking in his attack.  It is because I, like Roger, believe that ‘marriage is a relationship between three parties: a woman, a man and society.  Society down the ages has recognised marriage, and offered married couples recognition, respect and often financial benefits in terms of taxation and inheritance, because society recognises the importance of the institution’ that I support extending the terms of that contract to men who marry men and women who marry women.  I too am a communitarian and, as a result of that communitarianism, I feel I must overcome my inherent conservatism about institutions and support reform to marriage.

If we believe that marriage is important, it cannot simply be – as Roger Helmer appears to believe – because it might lead to children.  All sorts of relationships aside from marriage might lead to the pitter-patter of tiny feet.  All sorts of marriages may never result in procreation. Yes, the raising of children is an important facet of what marriage provides society, but it is not the only benefit.  Rather, there are a myriad of other positives that come from committed relationships – it makes society more stable, it offers mutual and long-term support and companionship to individuals and it embodies the responsibility to one-another that we must feel in order to live in communities that are trustworthy, respectful and mature.  Marriage is a social good for all of those reasons and more.  And in a society where we do not force gay men and women to pretend to be straight – where we are welcomed into the open and respected for our life-choices – it is foolhardy to deny this section of our community the option of joining one of its most important institutions.

I want our society to promote marriage because it is better for individuals but also because it is better for all of us – that means that the same expectation, that adults settle down into monogamous lives of mutual love and respect, should be applied to gay people if we expect to benefit from greater freedom to live our lives as we otherwise choose.  Gay men and women should not be tolerated and yet never expected to conform to society’s expectations, we should be judged against the same tests as everyone else.

As on so many issues, Christopher Hitchens puts this much better than I (albeit with a very different take on the conclusions to be drawn) ‘it demonstrates the spread of conservatism, not radicalism, among gays’.  He’s right.  And thank goodness.  Gay marriage means placing the same expectations and responsibilities on people like me as on anyone else.  It’s about equality of responsibility.  And it’s both inherently communitarian and naturally conservative.

I was going to write some more about the need for such an operation, but in fact since then, my point has rather been made for me by Steve Hilton’s first public speech in… well, certainly since 2005. YouGov, the polling company, has set up a new venture with Cambridge University’s Department of Politics and international Studies, called YouGov-Cambridge, and Steve Hilton spoke at their inaugural conference.

The report on ConservativeHome is pretty comprehensive but there are some further thoughts prompted by it, by Steve’s presence and his speech, and by this morning’s news.

The first is that this new unit cannot just focus on business. While that is – of course – important, as I have said again and again, this government’s communications have ranged from average to terrible, and they really need to start preparing the ground better when they launch policies. Part of that is consulting with and briefing interested groups – and for that, you need an external relations function. So they need to be able to reach out to the right people, in the right organisations, at the right time. They need to have supportive voices who understand the policy, the intention and the process, and they need to get them involved from the start. The fundamental point of both this government and Steve’s speech is that their programme is a joint one – government, business, civil society, communities and individuals all working together – and part of what is needed is to knit together interested parties, not have them divided into silos.

The second thought is that while Steve’s speech sounded perfectly interesting, there wasn’t actually anything really new in it, which kind of disappointed me. I like what he said, I agree with it, but I have honestly heard it – from various people – a LOT. And this whole venture is supposed to be about potential, about the bigger picture, and about where we’re going.

My third point is related to that – there is a huge need, as I’ve said many times before, for these politicians to not only explain why the coming years are going to be difficult, but why it is worth it because we will be in a better place afterwards. Steve is probably one of the best-placed people to do that (though frankly everyone should be able to at least attempt it), and I think the government has missed a great opportunity, with a receptive and interested audience, to really set out the why, how and where of this government.

I don’t think any of this is necessarily anyone’s fault – I think the grind of day to day governing, the endless ‘this is a crisis!’ headlines when there really isn’t one, and the general unwillingness to believe what any politician has to say plays into it all.

But – to return to what I was thinking about this morning – voters want a competent government that makes sense to them; that’s why narratives stick in their heads, and not individual detailed policies. Having a coherent message, explaining why it wants to do something, how it will do it, and what it will achieve, is a key part of building a narrative. And part of building that narrative is to build coalitions of support – so that the government doesn’t get sideblinded by lobby groups that twist the truth, or super-minority interest groups, or indeed just general apathy.

Ensuring that all parts of our society understand what the government is attempting to do and can play their own part in making it happen is a crucial component in how successful this government will be. It’s important that this bringing together is not undermined by a lack of ambition, turf-wars between departments or institutions, or by a failure to get the nuts and bolts right.

As Max Wind-Cowie sensibly said yesterday, the rioters are looting and rampaging because they refuse to accept policing. In any civilised society, there is a contract between citizens and the state, with an understanding on both sides of both rights and responsibilities.

As Phillip Blond sensibly said yesterday, these rioters have lapped up the idea of their rights (to an extraordinary degree – how is it a right to have brand new trainers or a giant telly?), but have rejected the notion that they have any responsibilities.

And as Hugo Rifkind sensibly said last night as well, this is when liberal principles really count. It is possible – in fact, I think it is imperative – to have a criminal justice system and an approach to policing which is both tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, and which serves our wider society better than a mindless lock ‘em up, forget about them for a while, and release them to reoffend mentality.

Watching last night’s footage, I am all for the most aggressive policing we can achieve to deal with these riots. These criminals have utterly abandoned any sense of community, and clearly have little or no sense of responsibility to anyone but themselves. I do not think that there are any excuses for how they have been behaving.

At the same time, we need to understand why they are behaving like this. We do need renewal in society; people need to feel part of something bigger than themselves and that others are on their side.

This is somewhat trite, but that is exactly why the Big Society is important. We’re already seeing the great work of Riot Clean Up. Afterwards, we’ll be needing Society Clean Up as well.

Yet, as a recent Economist article demonstrates, it is conservativism, rather than liberalism, that is fast assuming the vanguard in sentencing and prison reform internationally. Indeed, it is the conservative, Republican-dominated states of Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and South Carolina that have successfully passed legislation to divert low-risk offenders towards rehabilitative programmes instead of custody, at no expense to political credibility or electoral standing. A recent Republican bill to mandate drug treatment instead of prison for non-violent offenders in Kentucky’s Senate, for example, was passed 38 votes to none.

The key to this nascent reforming zeal among conservatives is the unsustainable cost of incarceration. In an era of unprecedented budgetary constraints, the use of custody is viewed as an unaffordable response to low-risk offenders. However, the move towards community sentencing has delivered improved rehabilitation outcomes in addition to the predicted savings. In Texas, the investment of $240 million in alternatives to custody, in lieu of the $2 billion projected cost of new prison places, has seen recidivism rates fall by 7 per cent, from 31.9 per cent to 24.3 per cent, since 2004. Increasingly, it seems, budgetary impecunity is leading to legislative ingenuity in criminal justice, and with it improved value for money and outcomes for taxpayers.

The success of these initiatives demonstrates two things. Firstly, and most importantly, that precisely because conservatism has a historic reputation as the party of law and order, it has a genuine chance of introducing real criminal justice reform to improve both value for money and results. With the one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world and some of the highest reoffending rates in the OECD, this is long overdue in England and Wales. Secondly, it suggests that opposition to Ken Clarke’s reforms (radio comments aside) have more to do with personal victimisation from a recalcitrant Right than a genuine antagonism to the thrust of the policies. As it struggles to implement reforms to healthcare and policing, the Government must ensure that personality politics does not derail the right reforms in justice as well.

Will Tanner is a political researcher, focusing on criminal justice issues

The Big Society is important in two ways. Firstly – and least interestingly, to most people – because it really is important to David Cameron. Secondly, and much more importantly, because it is a radical idea with huge potential to transform our lives.

I was veering towards agreeing with Nick on his point that we should simply stop talking about The Big Society and just get on and enable it, and talk again nearer an election. But this afternoon I’ve changed my mind. I spent the afternoon at the Big Society Network’s reception for Nexters – a programme to support the best innovations in social enterprise and technology that enables people to make the best of their lives.

I’ll come back to some of the ideas they featured – there are some amazing things.

I’ve written before about the need for – in shorthand – a sort of Google Map of big society ideas, so that people with an urge to get involved can see what is going on in their area, and can see where people who’ve done something similar have learnt lessons.

Every time I go to any Big Society event, I meet a number of people who are essentially doing the same thing. Now if all you’re interested in is making a name for yourself, having lots of the same project running is fine but not really scalable and probably involves a lot of duplicated effort and wasted funding and goodwill, and probably isn’t making the most of whatever their idea is.

As a dedicated localiser, I am reluctant to say this, but I think the time has come for some serious thinking to be done about how to encourage small enterprises to merge to maximise their effectiveness. Not everyone can set up the next big thing, and having lots of people chasing the same resources is a recipe for inefficiency. I have worked with a few charities and foundations, and one thing that has struck me over and over again is that at some point, the funders need to acknowledge that an organisation is too small to have any real impact, or that their model simply doesn’t achieve what it’s supposed to, or that the outcomes are not sufficient to justify funding.

Additionally, there has to be an acknowledgement that, yes, some ideas fail but it’s worth trying something that isn’t yet tested. Someone I talked to today said that in his corporate life, he asks his Board to keep an eye on his failure rate, and if fewer than about 30 per cent of his decisions aren’t successful, he considers that he’s not being brave enough – which I thought was an innovative and very different approach to the way we tend to do things in politics.

The other key thing that needs to happen – and it’s started – is that people need to be inspired and encouraged to do things. Not talking about the Big Society as a concept for the next three years is not going to encourage greater involvement – quite the reverse in fact. So the Big Society Network and Number 10 are absolutely doing the right thing in identifying great ideas and great people and spreading the word to people who don’t yet know, because if something becomes a cultural norm, it becomes entirely natural and second nature and we (nearly) all end up doing it without thinking about it too hard.

I repeat – again – what I’ve always said about the Big Society. It’s not just about volunteering, it’s not just about public services, it’s not just about nudging people into better behaviour. It is all of those things, but most importantly, it is about enabling all of us to live the best lives we can. And that is absolutely the most important mission of any government.

I’d like to chew over a little history before I come back to Bruce’s article. In 2005, before the leadership campaigns got going, there were broadly two views in the party – firstly, that David Davis would win, and secondly, that David Cameron was the right choice but then a subsection that thought perhaps he should wait for another Conservative defeat and run for the 2009/10 campaign. Even I, huge Cameron supporter that I was and remain, did wonder whether it was possible to go from where we were in May 2005 to victory in 2009/10. But because David Cameron is, for me, the person with the right ideas and values, I thought – you know what, I want this to work. I want him to be Prime Minister. Let’s be ambitious.

So here we are, nearly six years on, and he is Prime Minister (although in coalition). And I think he’s doing a pretty good job of governing. I’ve written before (a lot) about my concerns over communications; but in broad terms, I think this government is doing well in what is important – the governing.  I’ve also written before about my frustrations with consistency – I worry that in losing little battles, such as over school milk, they run the risk of losing the overall narrative of what this government set out to do. And finally, I’ve also written about why I think people are understandably concerned over the breadth of ambition of this government – but why I think they have to do a lot, in a short space of time.

Some thoughts on the above first: this government (and particularly the Conservative bit of it, as I don’t hold a torch for the Lib Dems), has to deliver the things it promised. It has to remember as well that – whatever is seen as the short-term imperative – we as a Party need to stand for re-election in 2015. Now it IS years away, and there’s many a slip betwixt cup and lip, and all that, but, as I’ve argued before, the Conservative Party today is a centrist, liberal, progressive one, and we should not simply hand off all our achievements to someone else and suck up all the bad bits. And finally, as I’ve also argued before, talking is not enough – it is about doing, so they actually need to tell people what they’re doing, then do it, then say, yes we did that.

Sorry this has turned into a bit of a greatest hits of my musings, but, I do have a point and I am returning now to the Telegraph article.

Let Cameron be Cameron was the cry during the Election debates. I’d argue that we need that even more strongly now. Part of Bruce’s 2005 article says this: [my emphases]

“He thinks that, in normal circumstances, the state should own a lower proportion of the nation’s wealth year on year and spend a lower proportion of its income. But he would never support a slash-and-burn approach to public expenditure. He knows that Britain’s wealth is created by its people, not its governments, and he thinks that as the wealth grows, the creators are entitled to a dividend. He also accepts that a lot of them would only be happy to receive a tax-cut dividend once they are reassured that the public services are properly financed.

“He would agree that Tony Blair was right to increase the percentage of gross domestic product which is spent on health and education. Thereafter, agreement would end. David Cameron is scornful of Mr Blair’s inability to ensure that the additional money is spent wisely. Indeed, Mr Cameron believes that New Labour’s bureaucratic procedures have guaranteed waste. He also thinks that Tony Blair has given up the effort to obtain value for money in the public services, and that this will be one of the most important tasks for the Tories’ first term.

“So will Europe. David Cameron has always been a Eurosceptic, though never a Europhobe. He believes in a Europe of free trade and political co-operation; he abhors federalism. But he is far too intellectually honest to lull his fellow Tories into the fantasy of an à la carte Europe achievable instantly. He knows how much hard and prolonged diplomatic work will be necessary to move Europe in the right direction…

“[Some] have forgotten the need for relentlessness, detail, small print and incremental successes… “

As Bruce says in the Telegraph article, this IS probably the most radically reformist government since at least Attlee, if not before.  He also mutters a bit about whether or not the Prime Minister should wear morning dress at the Royal Wedding (yes), and whether he should hunt (on balance probably not), and whether the Royal Succession is something that should be considered now (absolutely yes – I can’t believe we still have such ridiculously outdated laws as a first-born daughter comes behind a son).

But his overall point is a clear one – David Cameron, and this government, need to articulate why radical Conservatism is right. And I completely agree – does it all come back to communications, narrative and delivery? The article seems to say that ‘all’ that the government needs to do, as well as all its reforms and activity, is look competent, caring and in control. Again, I reiterate, this is a really huge task. But it’s also a necessary one for the long-term.

The debate about deficits is simple. It is about the extent to which they crowd-in, stimulating more economic activity, or crowd out, sucking money away from the private sector. In short they do both at once, but more of one or the other at different times.

The IMF Fiscal Report published on Tuesday was the final straw for me about whether our deficit is working: it has been subject to diminishing returns for a long-time. We have had one of the largest deficits for some time, but have reaped little benefit.

First: did the deficit help us during the recession? Let’s look at its impact during the deepest part of the recession in 2009 by comparing deficits and growth across the G7:

The first point to note is that Canada and the US are outliers: they have high population growth which will improve the overall growth picture

Most European countries though had about the same shrinkage, whatever deficit level. The French deficit might have worked. But Labour’s deficit didn’t.  Maybe we would have had a much worse recession if we had a smaller deficit: this is an indictment of Labour’s economic (mis)management though, and no reason to trust their judgement now.

Next question: Is the deficit helping us now? Again we can look at figures across the G7:

So the country with the lowest deficit is growing fastest, US and Canada are both growing well despite very different deficits. The overall picture is mixed, but very high deficits seem to deliver tiny benefits: Yes we are growing faster than France or Italy – but spending 4% of GDP for a 0.4% benefit isn’t really a fiscal multiplier.

Finally we need to look not just at the deficit but at how fast we are reducing it and whether “cutting too fast” is likely to do damage. The second column below shows the speed of “cuts” in deficit across the G7, the third indicates what this means as a share of the economy. Obviously, with a smaller deficit you can cut less in cash terms but still end up with a faster rate of reduction.

The overall picture is clear: the fastest cutters are the fastest growers. Japan is the odd one out, although obviously after recent events the picture there is likely to change a lot.

All these figures come with two caveats, I have mixed IMF and OECD data, and this sort of comparison can only ever be broadly indicative – economies grow and shrink for a range of reasons, and comparing Europe and North America in particular is tricky because of population growth.

The overall trend is clear though: Labour and their friends were wrong in 2009, they are wrong today and they will be completely wrong in a year’s time. The question I will address next time is – why?

The essence of his argument is a historical comparison: “Since 1750, there have only been two brief 30-year periods when our debt has been lower than it is now”

Well, he is right but the pattern is clear: outside of major wars debt has generally been going down. Also, the quantity of debt is not the key element: it’s about attracting the savings that fund that debt.

For much of the last 250 years debt was cheap to service because there probably was no safer investment on the planet than the British government. This is no longer true. Hari’s argument is, ironically, based on Victorian imperial nostalgia.

McKinsey recently highlighted that we now face a global shortage of savings. We will need to compete ever harder for the money we borrow.

Labour claim this is not a problem because we have low total debt compared to other developed countries: pure spin. Once you measure debt the same way other countries do – under the Maastricht treaty criteria, you find that our debt is 79% of Gross Domestic product, much like the rich country average of 80%. The real shocker is that developing country debt is 35% of GDP – with less risky opportunities out there the price of our debt will surely rise.

Hari then re-hashes Paul Krugman to claim we need the debt to save us. Hari tells us what he has learnt since the Great Depression, which ended because “Roosevelt was elected and listened to Keynes.”

In fact Keynes’ ideas, still embryonic until 1936, seem to have had little impact on Roosevelt, who called Keynes more a “mathematician than political economist.” There is also a heated, highly politicised, debate about whether Roosevelt’s New Deal actually helped the US economy.

That debate can be safely ignored because we have the evidence of what happened to the British economy in the 1930s. There was in fact a rapid recovery from the Depression.  At a time when we are struggling to grow 2% a year we might consider that Britain grew from 1932-1938 by an average of 4.7% year.

This was achieved with a tiny deficit of 1.3% of GDP at first, rapidly declining to nothing. The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain is clear: “fiscal policy played little role in the recovery.” The world economy was far grimmer then, international trade was collapsing. In contrast world trade grew 10% last year. A bigger deficit was got us a worse result in easier times.

And a note to Ed Balls next time he claims he saved us from disaster: average growth rates under New Labour – 2.3% per year – were identical to those in the Great Depression and its aftermath from 1929 to 1938.

The 30s recovery was not painless: pockets of deep poverty and unemployment remained, but this was structural not cyclical – Keynesian style policies would have been of little benefit.

So will austerity work now? Pick your respected international body supporting George Osborne but the International Monetary Fund gives a good summary of the challenges in delivering cuts and growth. Their conclusion is dry but good common sense:

The analysis presented here suggests that a policy of tight fiscal consolidation does not need to cause a recession. Sharp fiscal contractions can reduce interest rates and boost investment spending.

Ultimately you can choose that cool assessment, or you can choose half-remembered school history and the unread bible of Keynes’ General Theory.

There can be no more uncertainly regarding the Big Society’s place in the Government’s agenda. David Cameron has repeatedly given it his personal endorsement – he called it “his passion” and it is here to stay as the Government’s central theme.

Big Society is starting to decouple from the cuts agenda. Minette Marrin wrote powerfully on this point in the Sunday Times – “it is a great shame that people confuse it [Big Society}, both innocently and cynically, with cuts in state spending and with local authorities cutting funds to charities…the Big Society is a great idea, an expression of what had traditionally been best in the Conservative Party and in the human spirit.” There is still work to do hammering this point home but the fact is that David Cameron was talking about individuals taking responsibility five years ago. The Big Society would still be on the agenda if our country’s finances were in tip top shape.

The Big Society has momentum – yesterday, the PM pushed the agenda further forward by introducing the principles that will underpin the Open Public Services White paper. Writing in the Telegraph, the PM states “our plans to devolve power from Whitehall and to modernise public services are more significant aspects of our Big Society agenda than the work we’re doing to boost social action.” I would completely agree. This signals the end of the old fashioned one-size-fits-all public services model. Front line professionals are to get their discretion back and will spend less time box ticking and more time focusing on solving the individual problems of service users. There will be a “new presumption that services should be delivered at the lowest possible level… it will be up to government to show why things should be centralised, not the other way round.” This anti-Fabian set of reforms will have wide appeal among front line public service staff and it will be interesting to see how others, including the Labour Party, respond.

On that note, there seems to be an emerging consensus that what the Government is trying to achieve under the banner of the Big Society is right. More and more left of centre thinkers accept that there is a good idea in there. The Guardian’s Jackie Ashley, a regular critic of the Government, claims we have “perhaps become too state dependent.” She then goes onto claim Big Society as a centre left idea, saying “The big society is out there, a vague but powerful notion, related to our deep desire to help our neighbours and be part of something greater than our own pay slips – but it is an idea that properly belongs to the centre-left.” Hopefully this and other (somewhat uneasy) endorsements will make it politically easier for Labour-led Local Authorities to engage. After all, their front line staff and communities deserve the same opportunity as others.

So all in all I think Big Society has emerged from its roughing-up in an enhanced state. I’d be interested to know what others think…

Patience is a virtue – sadly, one not generally held by the media or indeed by the public who eagerly consume the daily news. The media industry favours a steady flow of announcements and decisions and they have had years of plenty – but the truth is many of these announcements and decisions never made it outside the Westminster bubble. Big Society is the antithesis of this approach. It is not press-release friendly, and the Government is getting a pretty hard time because of it.

This does not make it a flawed idea.

Writing on these pages, Nat Wei rightly said there needs to be “an acknowledgement that the Big Society will take time to foster and grow”. I have made a similar point on the Big Society Network blog when describing the Emergent nature of Big Society.

This will be very different from the familiar top-down approach to Government, which is usually driven by a small group of Whitehall policy advisors and then imposed on the rest of us (if it doesn’t get lost on the way somewhere). For sure, Government should set out a direction of travel and desired high-level outcomes – but it is then up to communities and those delivering front-line services to define the details in a way that best suits local needs. This activity won’t fit nicely into a timetable or central grid but the good news is that it is starting to happen.

Let’s take an area of Big Society reform with which I am particularly familiar – the mutualisation of public services. This is about letting front line staff form their own independent mutuals and other forms of social enterprise to deliver public services. This genuinely frees up front line staff to deliver services in a more flexible and responsive way.

Francis Maude and the Cabinet Office have been running a successful Mutualisation Pathfinder programme which has seen clusters of public service innovators popping up all around the country. A nurse-led therapy unit and a further education college are among the most recent pathfinders to begin the journey to independence. These are the Trailblazers who are prepared to step up to the mark and accept the risks and rewards associated with being the first movers.

To ensure that these and other groups of innovative staff aren’t thwarted by the system, Francis Maude has also established a Mutuals Taskforce, led by Professor Julian Le Grand. The Task Force, which has the personal support of the Prime Minister, will work to ensure central departments are doing all they can to facilitate other front-line staff groups to follow the same path.

This is a concrete example of Big Society reform and of how Central Government can effectively facilitate bottom-up action. I personally don’t think the Government has received enough credit for facilitating the considerable progress that has occurred in such a short space of time.

There is much more to come – we just need a little patience…