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.