One of the low-level criticisms that we hear about the Cameron style of leadership is that there is a very tight inner circle and not as much collegiate decision-making as some would like. I don’t know the truth or not of these comments. What I would say is that one of the criticisms we have always made of the New Labour style is the way that government decisions were taken by a small group, un-minuted, not properly discussed, and not sufficiently chewed over by enough people to iron out potential problems.

So how do we get from this:

 To this:

Ideally with extra people contributing as well?

I would argue that many of the Tories’ initiatives or pledges for when in government will encourage this – for example, the precedent of the presumption for publication (of expenses, but I hope that minutes of meetings where decisions are made will be published too) or the crowd-sourcing of IT solutions.

But perhaps the most efficient lever is not a Conservative policy or a Cameron initiative. In government, there are literally hundreds – maybe thousands – of things to decide on every day. In opposition, it’s relatively easy to say you want to see and oversee everything.In government, and particularly as Prime Minister, as Gordon Brown belatedly discovered, it is basically impossible. No one person can control everything.

In fact this is quite a neat metaphor for how the Conservatives’ localism plans would work. I’ve always had my concerns about the practical implications of localism (though not the policy itself) – because you need enough of the right people to make a big and long-term commitment, and because you need central government to say ‘No, that’s not our job’ often. But if the Tories mean what they say about this, it would be an absolutely huge social revolution – the thought of a government minister not instantly responding to the ‘something must be done’ cry, or accepting that different police areas have different priorities, or that local health boards believe that they should spend more on social care for Alzheimer’s sufferers than on drugs and that all of these things are properly accountable to the people who pay for them is currently far-fetched, to say the least.

As a final thought, I came across this transcript of Oliver Letwin discussing the need for a social revolution – it is very Oliver and quite complicated but worth a read.

At the bloggers’ lunch yesterday (thanks Sam, Rishi and Craig!) I was asked how I was going to cope with the cuts that any government is going to have to make in the next Parliament. I think the person asking was of the often-expressed view that I belong in another party…

My answer was a bit rambly but went something like this: I am a Conservative. I don’t like waste, I don’t like spending for the sake of it, I think people spend their own money better than any government can. There are some things government has to do, but there are lots that it shouldn’t. There are lots of things that can be funded by the state but don’t have to be delivered by it. And that if we don’t have a functioning, stable, growing and sustainable economy everything else is moot anyway.

If the Conservatives win the election, I do think the Treasury figures are going to be frightening. I think there are going to be some very unpleasant decisions to make. But I also had talked with someone who was asking why, given all that has gone wrong for Labour, the Tories weren’t further ahead. There is the issue of trust in politics and politicians generally – after the surge of optimism in Blair’s government, people have been massively let down again.

I’ve been struggling to really articulate this, but here is my take: the age of austerity is being forced upon us all. The longer that  Brown’s plans involve spending and raising taxes, the harder it is going to be for anyone to return our economy and our society to what it should be. Given that, if we win, there is a certain amount that we will be able to blame Brown for. But there comes a point at which we will have to say, yes we have made things better. And in order to get to that point, we need to tell people why the pain that is coming is worth it. It comes down to giving people a reason to vote for us, in order that we have the mandate to do what is necessary.

It’s a difficult one to really get right – too optimistic and people aren’t ready for the changes that need to be made. Too gloomy, and even I might question why we would vote Conservative and bring all that pain upon ourselves – surely we should stick with what we know?

I think the Tories can get it right. I’m not sure they have managed to say it right quite yet.

David Nutt’s resignation, followed by that of two more members of the Advisory Council he chaired, was demanded by Alan Johnson, and welcomed by Chris Grayling.

Let’s set aside the rights and wrongs of drugs policy for now. What we should be clear about is what independent advisors are supposed to do. They should set out the scientific evidence in order that ministers have robust evidence on which to base their decisions. There is no point in appointing independent experts to report factual evidence if, when their conclusions fail to meet a political imperative, their evidence is dismissed out of hand.

This particular Advisory Council appears to be in a similar vein as the proposed Office for Budget Responsibility. I’ve previously argued that there could be a situation where ministers say that the political outweighs the evidence – for example, I would argue that the political imperative to keep the 50p tax rate currently carries more weight than economic arguments over how much it will raise.

Ministers always claim that they are making policy based solely on evidence. From what I’ve read of this case, I am not sure that is so here. But sometimes, I think that policy can and should be based on political judgement.

I want government experts to argue strongly for evidence-based policy. I want them to give us – the people who pay their wages – the real facts. I want them to be straightforward and honest with us. I can entirely understand that this is often politically unwelcome; and (while disagreeing with Chris Grayling’s approval of the sacking), I can understand why the politicians are closing ranks on this one.

I think the real answer is for politicians to be more honest. Why not say, “look – ideally, we make policy based on evidence, but we know that politically X is just not going to fly; public opinion is against it, and we just have no idea what the social implications would be. So we’re making a political decision on this one. ”

Remember the furore over knife crime statistics, when a political advisor released the figures before they had been fully approved by the independent statistician?  There is no point in having independent experts unless they are allowed to be honest.  And don’t you think that a politician who admitted that he was being political might not gain a bit more respect than one who ties himself up in knots pretending that he’s being entirely non-political?

It would be a radical change to the way politics works at the moment. Under Labour, it’s always ‘we know best, let us take the responsibility away from you, but it’s ok because we’ve got an independent expert to say it’s for the best.’  I think that voters are so sick of the way that politics currently ‘works’ that it would be a revelation for us to be treated like adults and for politicians to be upfront about why they are doing something. Because of the way that Labour in particular have spun their way through the last 12 years, no-one really believes that any advisor is actually independent any more anyway. Acknowledging that there are shades of grey and changing the way that expert advice is used might at least mean that there can be a real debate.

There are debates to be had about the best way to achieve the ends we all want – and I’d rather we had them openly rather than stitching up backroom deals or fudging the issue by pretending we all agree all the time. We don’t, and that’s why there’s more to politics than a purely managerial approach.

We elect our representatives to assess evidence, to assess public opinion, to assess the overall effects and to govern in a way that does the most good (or at the very least, the least harm) to the greatest number of our fellow citizens. Otherwise what’s the point of elections and manifestos and campaigning and ideas?

We might as well just appoint a bunch of bureaucrats to manage us rather than wasting all this time and money electing people with ideals and beliefs.

Jenni Russell’s articles were highly recommended to me by someone at the Conservative conference last week so when I spied her byline today in the Guardian I thought brilliant, I’ll pay a bit more attention than usual.

And you know – I liked her article. I get why she wrote it. But I think she’s misunderstood some fundamental things about today’s Conservatives.

She starts out saying, “For a political obsessive, party conferences are a treat.” No complaints there – people always laugh at me when I say this, but they are basically my favourite bit of the year, especially now I am no longer stuck in the bowels of backstage unable to talk to anyone.

She continues, “What you hope to hear are policies that make sense of the world, and give you some faith in the future.”  Absolutely right. Obviously which party offers you that changes over time. And clearly some conferences are more successful than others. But yes again.

But then she says she’s depressed because the good, uplifting policies don’t all belong to the same party. Whaaaat?!   Now I only heard one properly uplifting speech (and even then it was only a bit at the end) but I know for a fact that amongst the doom and gloom and austerity, there is a stubborn thread of optimism about human beings running through Tory thinking.

Sadly Jenni Russell has, I think, fallen into the trap of believing that Conservatives are ’slavering’, in Harriet Harman’s offensive word, to slash public spending.  Not a bit of it. Seriously. Remember all the disagreements over ’sharing the proceeds of growth’? Remember the ranting about the Cameron team’s refusal to offer upfront tax cuts? Just because we are serious about getting the country’s finances back on an even keel does not mean we’re setting out to damage people and their livelihoods – we certainly don’t want Nick Cleggs’ ’savage’ cuts, nor do we think it’s a choice between which group of society we harm as Yvette Cooper does.

Where she is right is on her diagnosis of the ills in our society. Spraying money at special interest groups doesn’t work. Helping communities to take control of their environments (I mean that in its broadest sense) does.

I went to a lecture by Phillip Blond on Monday. One of his big ideas (he has lots) is to simply hand budgets back to groups of people – so for example if residents are unhappy with how their estate is looked after, give them the money and let them run it themselves. As well as empowering people – and yes, it’s a dreadful word, but find me a better one – it reduces administration costs and means that they can run their lives in a way that suits them.

The key thing about Blond’s argument is that it is not about the individual. It’s about communities (of whatever size) and reinforces the concept of returning power to the lowest possible level. One stark statistic he gave is that the smallest unit of formal government in France has an average of 118 people. In the UK, the smallest is made up of over 100,000.  Extraordinary.

The real challenge ahead, as I have said many times before, is making sure that power is devolved to people who will wield it effectively. It’s no good if it’s the same old people who are already on countless unaccountable and pointless bodies – it needs an infusion of fresh thinking and enthusiastic newbies.

So Jenni Russel’s near-final paragraphs are absolutely correct:

“He’s asking people to come together in a spirit of responsibility not only for themselves, but to one another, whether it’s intervening to stop a crime, or form a school. He wants a cohesive society, but he’s essentially arguing that concentrating too much power in state hands has sapped human dignity and pride.

“The Conservatives plan to reverse that, in a way that is much more radical than is yet understood. Targets will be torn up, replaced by a new focus on results, and on what the public think of what they’re getting. Anorganogram of every public service, along with details of its spending, will be placed online. The idea is that public scrutiny – why does this police service spend seven times more than that one on cars? – will become a powerful tool in making services responsive and accountable. Public servants won’t look inwards to Whitehall, but outwards to their users.

“This is a much more exciting approach than Labour’s worn-out centralisation.”

Then she goes and spoils it all by claiming that Conservatives are hardwired to underfund “important social needs, and more likely to leave the economy dangerously adrift.”

Just nonsense. No Conservative government has ever abandoned anyone (indeed, no government ever does. It’s not what governments  do). I do seem to have an impression that every time Labour nearly bankrupts the country, Conservatives are elected to clear up the mess. But leaving that partisan point aside – these Conservatives are making some very specific policy pledges, and some very specific pledges on openness and transparency which mean that anyone will be able to check up on what they do if they are elected to government. And vote them out if they don’t deliver.

She finishes, “I want a grown-up party, devoted to human flourishing, that understands the power of the state for both good and ill, and uses it judiciously, rather than ideologically. And while it doesn’t exist, millions of us will feel dispossessed.”

But I think it does exist. I think it’s today’s Conservative party. And the more centrists join the Tories; the greater the concern in the party for society as well as your pocket; the higher the proportion of people who care about others as well as themselves that join in this endeavour, the more likely it is to succeed.

Yvette Cooper and Ian Hislop had the most fantastic barney on inheritance tax on QuestionTime this week (thanks to Guido for the clip, I’m now off to watch the whole thing in iPlayer).

She says the defining difference between Labour and the Conservatives is who each wants to hurt and who each wants to help.

I don’t know about Labour but certainly in my experience Conservatives don’t WANT to hurt anyone.