Around three months ago I was talking to a back bench Conservative MP about what life was like being in a coalition*. Though the MP was generally supportive of the deal that was made with the Lib Dems – and the Government’s policy agenda – he had one major criticism. The Government was overly stressed about maintaining parliamentary discipline. He observed that even though the Coalition has a healthy majority of 70 odd the Whips were worried about almost every vote. An irritating aspect of this is that all backbenchers had to be in touching distance of Parliament more times than they needed to be. The more dangerous aspect he observed was that many foot soldiers were beginning to feel like neutered parliamentarians. No-one is allowed to place amendments, even if it is line with the spirit of the Bill. Everything has to go through the House of Commons in exactly the same form as has been signed off by the ‘quad’. To add insult to injury there were occasions when the Government agreed to an amendment proposed by the House of Lords after the whips had rejected something similar from Conservative MPs in the Commons. His belief was that everyone would benefit if backbenchers were allowed carry forward sensible amendments that added to the thrust of what was trying to be achieved.

It is understandable that, after what can sometimes be tricky internal negotiations between the two coalition partners, the Government doesn’t want to compromise any agreement. It is also possible that if Tory MPs started adapting legislation then Lib Dem MPs would want the same privilege. Both sides would want to ensure that Bills are not being “Conservat-ised” or “Lib Dem-ised” by the back door. Maybe there should be a joint committee of Lib Dem and Conservative MPs, or a convention that amendments will only be considered if they are jointly sponsored by both Coalition partners?

The problem for the Whips is that they are stuck in the middle between Government’s desire to enforce executive agreements and MP’s desire to have a role in scrutinising legislation. If a balance cannot be found then their is a risk that it will become the norm for backbenchers to grumble in unison about their masters.

*The conversation was conducted under the Chatham House rule

Then yesterday I read an illuminating piece from Dan Hodges in the New Statesman, discussing the Labour Party’s current policy reviews (which, by the way, sound incredibly unfocused and designed to delay having anything to say rather than any serious attempt to identify where Labour went wrong and what they should do to put it right, but that’s for another day).

Some of his criticisms chime with mine. The most important thing when you’re undertaking a policy review is, I think, that you still hold fast to your values and you make sure that you knit your policies around them to suit the times. Certainly that is what the Conservative policy review process did in 2006-8; and usefully as well, the point of them was to actively seek ideas from non-traditional sources.

So to me, it’s completely bizarre that one of the main complaints in the article is that only a small proportion of the responses have come from Labour party members. Now I could understand that if all the non-members send in is criticism of Labour’s record in government (and there’s plenty to criticise) but surely one of the fundamental problems of Labour in government was that they were convinced that they knew best and we knew nothing?

Given that that appears not to have changed, Labour’s policy review doesn’t look terribly likely to succeed…

More broadly though, is my presumption in favour of crowd-sourcing really a good one?

You can read page after page of complaints from people who’ve tried to get involved with, for example, the Budget crowd-sourcing, or with reviews of regulation, or with Big Society projects, or even the Great Repeal bill – and so many of them say that no-one centrally bothered to engage with them, that their ideas were ignored, or – perhaps worst of all – they were told that what they were making suggestions around was not up for discussion.

And then if I talk to some people who are involved in actually inviting opinions and responses, they too have their complaints – it’s always the same (few) people who reply, saying the same thing, with their corporate-speak and their lobbying campaigns; and if someone with a real passion for something but no vested interests does come along, too often they refuse to see that their issue is affected by and has effects on other areas.

So there are problems on both sides with crowd-sourcing. But it can and does work – though, as I argued in my czars piece – the participants on both sides need some ground rules.

I would suggest that both sides need to be clear on what is being asked for – is it blue sky craziness (which, as Tim Harford argues persuasively, sometimes can be what’s needed) or is it good, solid best practice? Is the Party prepared to fundamentally re-examine its policies, or is it just window-dressing? Are the fundamentals right in the first place (for example, when the Conservatives did the policy review, it was after 3 big defeats and a – slow but eventual – realisation that we had to operate in the modern world. I’m not sure Labour has got to the crux of their problem yet).

Perhaps the key to crowd-sourcing though is asking the right people – or at the very least, identifying those people who have something useful to say. How you do that is open to debate, and it very much depends on what you want to know. People who are happy with services generally tend not to say much about them; it’s the unhappy ones who make a lot of noise, which of course is likely to give you an unbalanced view.

Part of how to identify the right people is something that the Big Society is all about – it’s about engaging many many more people in what goes on around them. Crowd-sourcing probably isn’t really a valid mainstream way to address big problems in society as yet. But it could be. Just look at how people ask for recommendations on Twitter, or at some of the examples in this article about specialised problem-solving. And then think about the power of having all the energy, brainpower and experience of a whole load of people brought to bear on the little things that make our lives worthwhile…

The speech did have one little idea worth a second look, though – the ‘British promise’.

This clumsy phrase is based on ‘the expectation that next generation will do better than the last, whatever their birth or background.’ Miliband observed that this

“is about what happens between generations. That the easy path is to take short-term decisions…. And if we really do care about the next generation, we will have to show it in the decisions we take.”

To fans of conservative thought, this may feel a little familiar.

Last year David Willet’s book The Pinch won attention for its argument that the baby boomers have ‘taken their children’s future’ and the idea they are ‘spending the kids’ inheritance.’

Or, here’s George Osborne speaking in 2008:

“The current generation should not make the next generation pay for its mistakes. There should be fairness between the generations, not just within them. We care for our elders, our children will care for us, and so it goes on from generation to generation.”

Sound a tad similar? Well, here’s Margaret Thatcher on the election trail:

“That’s the way society is improved, by millions of people resolving that they’ll give their children a better life than they’ve had themselves. And there’s just no substitute for this elemental human instinct.”

And moving from 1979 to 1790, here’s Edmund Burke, reflecting on the revolution in France, arguing that society…

“becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

So the ‘British promise’ isn’t new, and even if Miliband’s emphasis was obviously different it’s clear that the talking about fairness between generations harks to a rich vein of undeniably conservative thinking. It’s an important concept, that promotes a pragmatic meaning of fairness - and also allows a conservative to talk coherently about the future, providing intellectual ballast for policies from poverty reduction to debt reduction.

That means this is a serious philosophical battleground. When published, Red Tory was recognised as borrowing heavily from ideas more associated with the left – mutualism, local economies and so on – and Blue Labour, which Miliband’s speech gave a clear nod to, follows the ideological kleptomania-by-colours. This debate will influence thinking for years to come.

There’s also a more immediate political and electoral importance to Miliband’s musings.

Demographic change makes navigating relations between age-groups increasingly vital: those baby-boomers are a hefty voting bloc, and the younger generation a potentially angry one.

What’s more, intergenerational fairness (well, maybe not the actual phrase) resonates with people – it goes to the heart of what most people want from life.

No political party or intellectual tradition can assume it has a monopoly on refining, developing and benefitting from the concept. So this might not have been a great speech.

But precisely because it strayed into traditional Tory territory, if Miliband and Labour develop this theme, then it will surely merit a deeper response.

This movement is seeking to create a “Purple Book” in an effort to articulate its vision and is part of an attempt to woo back the Liberal Democrats. Sylvester states that “in fact it is possible to see scope for a new Lib-Lab alliance, grown out of the liberal Centre rather than the social democratic left”.

This is a possibility. But I think that the article – and the Westminster village – is ignoring how closely the Purple Book and the ‘Red Tory’ or Centrist Conservatives are starting to align.

The Purple Book will, the article says, focus on some common themes such as the “role of government and decentralisation” – decentralisation, of course, is one of the most radical parts of the Tory modernisers’ project. It will also talk about the “need to move away from reliance on a big State and redistribute power to individuals and communities” – again, that’s sounding familiar…

The truth is that the Blue Labour/Purple Book agenda and the Red Tory/Centrist Conservative agenda are converging very rapidly.

Both move beyond the legacy of Thatcher and the rampant free market fundamentalism/individualism which it represented. Both reject the Fabianism of the Blair years which embraced managerialist government with its targets, centralisation and command/control politics.

Both sides are converging (more so than the Liberal Democrats, who despite last week’s setbacks are wedded far too much to the special interests of local government) on the idea of breaking politics out of the traditional shackles of elections, parties and formal democratic institutions and directly empowering citizens, communities and their chosen organisations – whether they be charities, voluntary groups, social enterprises, co-operatives or unions.

In hushed voices you can sometimes hear modernisers speak of Cameron’s grand project to break the Liberal Democrats in two – bringing the “liberal” Orange Bookers into the fold and leaving the old “Labour-leaning” wing of the Party floating back into irrelevance. This is a bold strategy, but why stop there?

The really grand strategy would be to break the Labour Party in two. Divorce the centrist “Blairite” wing of the party (read – the electorally successful part) from the “Old Labour” wing.

This would give the Modernising Project the broad, centrist base that it has always wanted and needs if it is going to win future elections. Cameron used to call himself the “heir to Blair” and much of his success has been convincing voters who supported Blair to support him instead. So he should be focusing on generating intellectual links with the Purple Bookers in order to make his claim reality.

Sure, there is a great deal of partisanship, decades of prejudice, myth-making and suspicion, and this might take years to achieve – but this would be a true re-alignment of politics.

The Big Society will require decades to fully embed itself and needs years of electoral success – we need the broadest coalition possible. Orange Bookers, Purple Bookers and Centrist Tories – working together. This could be the future of British politics.

Ever since the early 1990s and the victory of Blair, it has been the Conservatives who have been on the intellectual back foot. Finally, Cameron & Co have given the Tories the intellectual advantage. The Labour Party from David Miliband to Jon Cruddas can see that the Big Society is a fantastic opportunity to build a new democracy and a new economy. “Blue Labour”/ Purple Bookers/New Labour – they all want to get in on the act – but fortunately for Conservatives, we currently hold the high ground.

So let’s at least starting trying to co-opt them in the early stages of the project, while Ed Miliband continues to dither.

If successful, it could see a radical centrist Government in power for the long term and give us the chance to build the new kind of Britain that we all want to see.

The legitimacy of Parliament as a whole rests on it being representative of the people and serving the people.  This lies uneasily with an upper chamber comprised of peers appointed on the basis of parentage, party-political usefulness, wealth or personal friendship.  There is no place for a wholly unelected House of Lords in British politics.

Changing the House of Lords is a Conservative action because it is part of a slow evolution.  The relationship between the two Houses has been changing in small ways for the majority of the 20^th century – in 1900 Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister, yet by the time of Sir Alex Douglas-Home it was unthinkable that a peer take Number 10, and today the circumstances by which he became Prime Minister are inconceivable.  Now is the right time for further change to the House of Lords.

The question of whether the upper chamber should be wholly elected or partly appointed rests on the characteristics and purposes of both Houses.  If the House of Commons asks “what must be done?” then the House of Lords asks “how can we do it”, thus fulfilling the roles of proof-reader, scrutiniser and editor.  A hybrid House with a small appointed component would relish this role and create a workable upper chamber, while an entirely appointed Senate could threaten the balance of Parliament.

A cross-bench group within a mainly elected chamber would benefit Parliament as a whole – the appointed cross-bench peers would bring expertise, broaden representation and strengthen independence.  While it’s certainly not the case that elected peers would necessarily lack these skills, appointment enables individuals to be chosen specifically for such qualities.

Expertise, experience and representation are vital for a chamber of scrutiny.  Appointing someone who has expertise in, for example, disabilities policy, can ensure that these issues are properly covered during debates.  The nature of expertise is often oversimplified or rejected by those who wish to see a completely elected House of Lords.  Unlock Democracy have suggested that experts should be invited in to consider specific bills, with the general argument often being that expertise is a narrow field.  The counter argument is that expertise in one field requires an intellectual curiosity and determination which is invaluable in other subjects.  Furthermore, few subjects stand completely alone, and while an expert in physics may not have the same level of expertise in education, such scientific knowledge can be applied to many areas of debate.

Cross-bench peers serving long terms can be independent of political advancement in a way that party-political members of the Commons are not.  Some individuals with much to contribute will not feel able to join political parties – such as those who gave their service to the country in military or civil service, or those who lead faith groups.  Elected representatives receive legitimacy through the democratic process, while appointed peers receive legitimacy because of past successes in the community or in their professions, or in a long career in the civil service.

If members of the upper chamber have no constituency pressures comparable to those of the lower house, they will not champion particular policies in the same way.  They have the space to carefully consider legislation solely on its own merits.  Peers, it could be argued, could come closest to perfect law-makers; while knowledge of a subject is valuable, self-interest is dangerous.

In 2008 the Conservative and Liberal Democratic Parties broadly agreed with the Labour Government’s white paper suggestions for reform.  The differences, such as they are, lie in the details.  While all parties support elections by thirds (much like many two-tier and all metropolitan districts) Labour and the Conservatives favour combining these with general elections, while the Liberal Democrats suggest the 2011 devolved national cycle.  The Conservatives proposed elections held by first past the post in 80 new constituencies comprising the counties and cities.  (An interesting suggestion, as it prioritises the community boundaries which the House of Commons constituencies will be moving away from.  It’s also worth noting that elections are run by districts rather than counties.)  Liberal Democrats prefer a single transferable vote in 24 roughly equally-sized constituencies.  While Labour and the Liberal Democrats suggested a total between 400 and 450 electors, the Conservatives recommended a smaller chamber of 250 to 300.

Labour promised to reform the House of Lords, and while they did much to demonstrate the need to do so, they ultimately failed.  This is an opportunity to prove that this Coalition Government is progressive and keen to support the right changes.  If the Government waits, it will be guilty of adding yet another link to the messy business that Professor Philip Cowley called “a compromise followed by a hapless white paper followed by a U-turn followed by a farce followed by another U-turn”.

The Coalition Government is right to be pressing forward with this issue.  The House of Lords can act as a veil of ignorance, but it needs careful reform to ensure that it contains enough independence, expertise, representation and legitimacy.

One truly ridiculous phrase was used by Ed Miliband at the launch of the ‘Yes’ campaign when he described the AV referendum as a “choice coming down to hope versus fear”:  clearly his speechwriters have been reading ‘The Audacity of Hope’ again. This phrase has no relevance to the argument at hand (though I may have got it wrong and in fact each Election Day in the UK sees municipal buildings filled with people angrily waving their voting slips and demanding AV so that they can stop cowering with fear under the evil yoke of FPTP). It is out of all proportion to the issue under discussion.

As well as irritating the occasional Platform 10 contributor, this kind of overblown and meaningless rhetoric has some more worrying consequences of which British politicians in all parties need to become more aware if they do not want the public to become increasingly disenchanted with the political classes.

Firstly, soaring rhetoric set expectations so high that reality is bound to disappoint – just look at what has happened to Barack Obama.  No matter what he has achieved so far on issues like health reform he was always bound to disappoint simply because his speeches were filled with the kind of inspirational phrases and words that Ed Miliband’s speechwriting team is clearly jealous of.  Obama’s team appear to have woken up to this just before he took office in 2009, with Obama saying: “I want to be realistic here… Not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on [sic] the pace that we had hoped.”

It can also lead a cynical public not just ignore but actually discount any actual accomplishments as mere fabrication. One of the most widely criticised aspects of the later years of Blair’s government was the tendency of Number 10 and the Cabinet to spin what were often only minor achievements into glorious triumphs.  New Labour’s obsession with headlines obscured the very real progress that had been made on, for instance, education reform, the minimum wage or the Northern Ireland Peace process. 

Similarly, the various rapturous and high-flown speeches that Gordon Brown made as Prime Minister to try to re-energise his leadership were met with widespread derision, as were similar rhetorical efforts to kick-start an “economic recovery”; quite sensibly, the UK decided not to place their trust in a man who had, despite his talk of being “Not flash – just Gordon”, been so in thrall to headlines, pollsters and spin, that he fluffed the question of the 2007 election, made misguided attempts to talk about the Arctic Monkeys and tried to hedge his bets, media-wise, by arriving late at the signing of the Lisbon Treaty.

What the public actually wants is not highfalutin yet ultimately meaningless speeches, but honest and straightforward communication from a political class that doesn’t treat them like children yet respects the need for clear explanations.  So far, Cameron’s government has generally avoided the Ed Miliband “hope not fear” trap, perhaps having recognised that no matter how much you irritate the electorate by telling them hard times are ahead, you’ll irritate them a great deal more if you try too hard to dress it up with pretty words.

However, in terms of communication – as fellow Platform 10-er Fiona Melville has pointed out here before – the Coalition Government’s record has been less than exemplary.  Cameron and his Cabinet either appear unable to properly explain and lay the PR groundwork for complex ideas like health reform or the Forestry issue, or they sound like a bunch of policy wonks stuck in their ivory tower and completely disconnected from the public – like Letwin and his comments on the holiday habits of Sheffield residents, or Willetts and his easy-to-misconstrue remarks about feminism and social mobility, or indeed this morning’s outing for allowing universities to open up more places to people who pay for them privately. We need a senior MP or Minister who can go from media outlet to media outlet and explain complex ideas in workmanlike language.  Margaret Thatcher had her Norman Tebbitt. Tony Blair had his John Reid.  Cameron currently has no-one – despite the high hopes for Eric Pickles when he was Party Chairman. Now that he is Secretary of State at Communities, he has been very good at picking fights with councils, but less good at explaining why the localism agenda should matter to “the man on the street”.

This flaw is exacerbated by another long-running Conservative problem: no vision.  In the run-up to the 2010 election, the public remained unaware of what the party stood for.  We had dozens of policies and programmes, but no overarching narrative to communicate to the electorate, one that tied together all these individual policies into a coherent whole that they could really get to grips with. Very little has changed since then. Cameron has tried to create a storyline from his “Big Society” idea, but although there are some good policies here, it seems so far to have mainly consisted of empty sloganeering.  They have not yet managed to defuse voters’ suspicion that the Big Society is nothing but a cover for ideological cuts. 

Rhetoric is not communication. A glut of disparate policies is not a vision.  Cameron has so far avoided the pitfalls of the rhetorical strategies of Obama, Blair and Miliband by using workmanlike language, keeping expectations low and maintaining a space where future Government achievements can be recognised and absorbed by the public.  Communicating well with the public shouldn’t involve an appeal to the lowest common denominator or treating them like idiots, as has happened in the AV campaign.  We should instead trust the electorate to respond like adults to adult arguments and balanced rhetoric, delivered by someone who sounds like they have some empathy with the average UK citizen.  And if the Conservatives are able to join this to a gripping narrative, then we place ourselves in an excellent position for the next general election, regardless of the outcome in Thursday’s referendum.

In December, when I met the Yes campaign, I was keen to find a killer argument for AV.

In January, when I met the No campaign, I was eager to hear their killer rebuttal and why we should keep first past the post.

We do have problems with how our democracy works. I spent two years working on pro-democracy campaigns abroad, which really made me think about how ours operates. I think we have a body politic that generally isn’t very accountable, that fails to really explain what it’s doing (and be honest about why and how and what that is – the positives and the negatives), that only pays attention to voters when it’s election time, and that fails to take into account the changes in politics, awareness and issues since the 1950s.

They can start to be addressed by proper recalls, proper open primaries, full reselection processes for all MPs every election, more localism, more transparency and frequent, proper boundary reviews.

They cannot be fixed by AV. Proper proportional representation might go some way to addressing some of them.

The Yes campaign told me MPs are lazy and venal. Given that I know a fair few MPs, I know that this is simply untrue. They work hard, they do a lot of incredibly dull and unnoticed work, and they really do have a desire to serve their constituents – even every single minister I’ve ever met has said that the thing they most enjoy is helping their constituents with their problems. They also told me that AV would remove the concept of a safe seat – which is just nonsense; we ourselves vote to make seats safe.

The No campaign told me that a different voting system was expensive and unfair. I disagree profoundly with both statements – if we value our democracy we should be prepared to spend enough money to make it work properly, and I can’t see what’s unfair about allowing people to express preferences; your first preference is counted in every round that your candidate is still in the voting.

The Yes campaign’s arguments are not arguments for AV – they are arguments for recalls, open primaries, full reselection for all seats every time – and no tactical voting. And their refusal to accept a turnout threshold completely blew out of the water any pretence they made of wanting majoritarian support for anything.

While I accept that they were running a negative campaign, by definition, the No campaign’s arguments were not arguments for FPTP until very late in the campaign – their change to one person, one vote was the best thing they did and they should have done it earlier.

I was seriously contemplating not voting today. I don’t care very much which system we have out of AV and FPTP – I don’t think it would make a huge difference. But I think if AV passes, and is shown to not make the sweeping changes the Yes campaign has been promising, that will disengage voters even further.

I voted no because the Yes campaign failed to persuade me.  The No campaign hasn’t persuaded me either (though they are the only people who’ve sent or offered me any campaign literature).

I voted no with reluctance. I want change. I just don’t think this one would make any difference.

Strangely, in the last few days, I’ve talked several times about the way the A-list was handled in 2006. Just to recap – when David Cameron was elected leader, he introduced a top 100 (ish – I think there were more than that) of more diverse candidates who we as a party thought were our brightest and best. We would require constituencies to select from the top candidates to ensure that more women and minority candidates were selected, and to ensure that we got the best people into the most winnable seats.

Let’s leave aside whether or not it should have been done, that’s not why I mention it. I think in setting up a top candidates list, we should have been proud to make it public, and to promote those candidates in the media and locally as our top people who we thought would be great MPs. But for some still misty reason, it was decided that we would not be allowed to confirm or deny who was on that list. Internally we argued against it; but someone somewhere decided not to – I still don’t know who, but more importantly I still don’t know why. It was almost immediately made public anyway, and CCHQ was on the backfoot, defending against accusations of double-standards.

In more recent times, I was very impressed by the Lib Dems’ way of approving the initial Coalition Agreement – they had an internal MPs’ meeting, a Federal Policy Committee meeting, and a special conference of members, all of which approved the Agreement resoundingly. We as Conservatives had none of that. I’ve argued before that the Lib Dem process has given a great deal of cover to their leadership, and that we should have had something – yes, it probably would have ended up as a bit of a Built to Last/Pravda-like nodding through, but it would still have given a seal of approval.

I’ve written before about how I think that the AV referendum (whatever you think of the merits of the argument) is addressing the wrong problems in our democracy, and about how I would very much like the great ideas of Douglas Carswell et al on open primaries and recalls to be properly implemented.

This weekend in Cardiff I talked with four others, all of whom I would describe as being on the liberal end of the party, about recent political events (rather than governing and policy). Even amongst us, we disagreed 3 to 2 on whether we should have put up a Coalition candidates in the two recent by-elections (for the record, again, I think we should have done).

The real problem is the lack of openness on the part of the Party in all of these situations. I don’t think it’s necessarily a wilful desire to trick people; I think it might just be that institutionally, the party hasn’t yet caught up properly with the public mood and demand for transparency and accountability. I think as a government, we’re talking a great game on transparency and local control and so on, and I think that Francis Maude’s Cabinet Office is delivering. But I worry that we might not be quite there internally – which for the sake of politics really should change.

The Big Society finds its roots in traditions of both the left and the right. As David Willetts has argued, Conservatism believes that people are mutually dependent on each other.  Labour, as Nat Wei and Dave Skelton have argued, are ignoring their heritage if they disown Big Society – mutualism, co-operatives and communities once shaped the beliefs of the left.

So, with all this going for it, the Big Society should be a darling of the nation; but it isn’t. The reasons for this are many – as well as complicated – and I don’t believe this blog will do them all justice. Danny Kruger touched upon a few in his excellent FT article, but here are five things I believe the Government could do to ensure that the idea of the Big Society is both understood and believed in across the country:

1. Promote a constant and clear definition: For the public to know what Big Society is, a clear and consistent definition of it needs to be hammered home, in ministerial  speeches, in interviews, on websites and on government broadcasts.  The Cabinet Office description is a good one “The Big Society is about helping people to come together to improve their own lives. It’s about putting more power in people’s hands – a massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities.” Headline definitions such as “Helping people help people” are also important in helping people grasp what Big Society means.
2. Highlight more examples of the Big Society: I really like the Prime Minister’s Big Society Awards that are given out weekly; they highlight examples of people coming together to improve their own and other people’s lives. Speeches, government websites and interviews should be full of these and other examples, powerfully illustrating the Big Society to people across the nation.
3. Enable more participation in the spending of taxpayers’ money: If the government really wants people to come together to improve their own lives, there should be a new settlement between national and local government and communities, giving local people more of a say in how their taxes are spent. There are some encouraging signs here with programmes such as the Big Society Network and NESTA’s Your Local Budget and community matched funding announced in the Government’s Giving Green Paper but for the Big Society to work, participatory budgets need to move from the fringes to the main stage of public sector funding decisions.
4. Have more Big Society fixers inside government: A director of a grant making organisation told me last week that they thought that Big Society needed a Louise Casey type figure to be the government fixer on the inside; I agree with this – and I would go further! If there was a team of senior civil servants reporting directly to the Prime Minister, committed to Big Society and working across Whitehall, perhaps we would see more decisions that look more at their social impact, as well as a more coherent narrative across government of how communities are going to be supported.
5. Have more Big Society ambassadors outside government: Something Tony Blair did brilliantly was to get high profile supporters from across society to support his policies and ideas; celebrities, senior business executives and high profile community leaders were in and out of Number 10 regularly and formally or informally became ambassadors for key policies. The Government needs people who aren’t from the Government articulating a vision of empowered communities and societal transformation. For example, why isn’t someone like Richard Branson championing the Big Society, it does after all encapsulate everything he has argued about business for decades?

A common reaction to the Big Society has been to welcome the message of community empowerment and choice of how to deliver local services, but to fear the implied responsibility for doing so. Communities need to know not only that there are good ideas they can seize, but that they are being supported to build the capacity to deliver them. Labour, instead of offering solutions, are shamelessly mocking the Big Society and in doing so disown their heritage. This next stage of Big Society requires a more coherent Big Society government strategy in terms of its policy making and budgetary decisions as well as a consistent message that people inside and outside government can grab hold of and run with.

* By Big Society, I mean the governing philosophy of the Coalition Government and not civil society itself.

The origins of the Big Society as an idea extend back way before the term was coined, and has roots from multiple political and philosophical traditions over the centuries. At its most fundamental level, Big Society harks back to when communities were stronger, and more interdependent, and more mutual, and when the welfare state was less overbearing and stifling and more focused on genuinely helping those in dire need.

More recently, David Cameron and his team have coined a phrase, which has often been controversial, but which has led to debate and conversations about what kind of society we live in, that have gone on far longer, and been circulating far more widely than its originators ever expected.

Now is the right time to have this conversation, as our population ages, as we try to deal with a huge deficit, and as technology changes our expectations of how we interact with the state and bureaucratic institutions in general. It is a debate, despite continuing controversy over the term “Big Society”, which is largely won – few serious politicians now dispute that citizens and communities must play a central role in the future of our public services, neighbourhoods, and in how we tackle entrenched social problems. Labour have coined their own term, the “Good Society”, and the focus of debate is now more on the relationship between austerity and Big Society, and crucially about how such visions of society will be realised, given the financial, temporal, and geographical constraints faced by citizens and families in today’s Austerity Britain.

For Big Society to continue to make an impact it will need to tackle a number of myths that its opponents, many of whom are motivated by vested interests, have attributed to it. The first is that it is a way of masking cuts – untrue: it originated far before the start of the recession. The second is that it is about getting volunteers to do the work of the state. The reality is that it is about enabling citizens to play a part, however large or small, and creating a culture of shared responsibility that acknowledges that the state cannot do it all on the one hand, and that equally citizens cannot do it all on the other. There will need to be collaboration, often facilitated by third parties such as social enterprises, as well as businesses, and other local institutions. The third is that it is a cure for poverty. While it is important that those from deprived backgrounds are not excluded from the opportunities that the Big Society will create, there remain fundamental and distinctive roles for government, business, and the social sector in tackling social injustice. Big Society can provide some of the tools, connect people to help tackle social problems, and enable those from lower income backgrounds to be more resilient in the face of poverty – but it is not a replacement for state, voluntary, and business action.

There also needs to be an acknowledgement that the Big Society will take time to foster and grow. David Cameron acknowledged this in his Hugo Young Memorial Lecture in 2009, saying that this “is not the work of one parliamentary term, or even two. Culture change is much harder than state control. It will take more than a generation.” I also stressed that there will be many setbacks along the way.

There will be three distinct phases in the process of building the Big Society. The first phase, which is ongoing and which has been the focus of most activity since the General Election, is to re-engineer parts of government so that more power is shifted to the localities and to the frontline and so that it plays more of an enabling role through policies such as the Big Society Bank, community organisers, and neighbourhood budgets.

The second phase is to encourage the development of platforms for civic action by public entrepreneurs – be they organisations, chains and franchises, or digital portals – that make it easier for citizens to come together, find out what they can get involved with, and make a start – and which help them overcome the constraints they face, whether relating to time, money, or place. So these might be chains of schools, or libraries, or timebanks, or ways of combing matched financial and other resources – harnessing technology, as well as local leadership.

The third phase will be when citizens start interacting with these platforms and the new powers they have in innovative ways that cannot be predicted today, just as the internet and web 2.0 has spawned an infinite variety of homegrown content and apps – in which Big Society becomes a part of individual and collective self-expression, tapping into our passions, interests, and creativity, rather than being boring or a burden.

The final truth to acknowledge is that Big Society will break out in different departments, geographies, and organisations in different ways and at different paces. It is essentially viral in nature – and neither purely top-down, nor purely bottom-up. Some government departments will rightly focus on the massive shift in power needed to localities, local officials, and local institutions – this is true in health and education. Others will focus more on enabling those local officials to work more closely with their communities to share responsibility. And still others will find ways to encourage action between citizens in peer-to-peer ways.

All, in their own way, will help build the Big Society, as well as performing the ongoing functions that all governments must. Some non-government institutions and geographies will instantly grasp what the Big Society means and run with the agenda, whilst others may resist it until a new generation of leaders emerge, or will need more support to engage with it. But the general direction of Big Society, the sense that power will increasingly shift more to citizens and localities, whether overnight or over a longer period of time must and will permeate our culture until one day we will each encounter it in our daily lives wherever we live, and work, and play – at which point we will instinctively say “That’s Big Society!”