This article in the Sunday Times about Anthony Seldon, the head of Wellington College, is fascinating. His head of wellbeing, Ian Morris, caused a certain amount of scepticism when he was first appointed, but points out this key insight:

“Traditionally, PHSE [personal, health and social education] has been about telling kids all the bad things to avoid — promiscuity, drugs, etc — instead of trying to get them to think about how they can make their lives better.”

This seems to me to be an absolutely fundamental part of how we need to approach policy-making more generally. Endlessly having people telling you that this is bad, that that is forbidden, that something else is dangerous just wears us down and makes us disengaged.

Encouraging people to try, to make the right choices, to take advantage of the situation they are in, and helping them to do so, is exactly what the Conservatives’ social revolution is all about.

Clearly it is not a given that this will work in every situation, for everyone. But for example, while there’s a lot of over-interpretation of the marriage tax bonus (this article, also in the Sunday Times, tries to invent a revolt – but every single quote from those  supposedly revolting MPs who are named could be said by David Cameron or indeed me), what the Tories want to do is not moralise, or stigmatise, but to support people who make good choices for their own lives, and help those who, for whatever reason, don’t.

I get the impression that a lot of people are deeply cynical about whether the Tories mean what they say on such policies, and whether there is any point in them. But the point of the hugely ambitious Tory social revolution is not to shoehorn everyone into little boxes. It is to free and support people to make the very best that they can of their lives.

So that insight from Ian Morris, of the value of help to make good choices rather than just telling people not to make bad ones, is actually the key Conservative insight into human behaviour, and the fundamental requirement if we really want to change the way our society functions.

And it has the added bonus of lightening the seemingly never-ending doom and gloom to enable that sense of optimism – which is what Tory members voted for when we chose David Cameron as leader.

This morning, I listened to The Reunion on Radio 4 – today’s episode reunited the founders of Stonewall.

I have some very clear political memories of the 1980s – I remember the Falklands War, the miners’ strikes, the waves of privatisation (including the ‘Tell Sid’ ads), perestroika, the poll tax riots, the Berlin Wall coming down, Mrs Thatcher being deposed (even down to John Sergeant’s famous interview in the courtyard of the Paris embassy) but I have absolutely no recollection at all of anything to do with Section 28.  Maybe I have blanked that hideous prejudice in my party out of my mind – but I really don’t remember anything of it. I do remember Michael Cashman on Eastenders playing a gay character, but even then I don’t recall much of the detail.

I haven’t really thought about any of the issues discussed in Sue MacGregor’s excellent programme for a long time. For me and my generation, being gay is just normal. I have lots of gay friends, it’s not something I think about. But the fact that only twenty years ago, legislators were still trying to set gay people apart from everyone else shocked me.

Go and listen again. It’s a really good programme, it’s interesting and informative, and it shows just how far we have come – but also makes the point that there is much still to do.

Some fascinating opinion pieces in today’s papers.

In the Guardian, David Edgar, a former member of the editorial board of Marxism Today laments the failure of New Labour to help the working class.  In the article, he writes that:

“Since 1997, however, New Labour has cracked that alliance apart. It has presided over a growing economic divide between its two constituencies, abandoning its working-class supporters…  It has done nothing to reverse – indeed, it has continued to encourage – the emasculation of those institutions that working people built and through which they created a political alliance that created the welfare state.” 

The full article is worth reading.  Although his definition of progressivism is a pretty cliched and, dare I say it, unprogressive one.

David Aarnovitch is in typically top notch form in The Times today, pointing out the absurdity of the ‘compassionate’ release of al-Mehagri.  He points out the completely lack of repentance coming from the Lockerbie bomber and that the Scottish justice Minister would probably not extend his reasoning to allow the early release of other mass murderers. 

The full article can be found here and is well worth a read:

Geoffrey Lean writes in today’s Telegraph about why it is no accident that conservation and Conservatism are neighbours in the dictionary.

Thanks to Sam Coates at Red Box

The Number 10 Twitter feed is one of the best I’ve seen. Interesting (if you like that kind of thing) peek into the backroom.  Personalised and with personality.  Factual yet quirky.