Six political slogans, used during this election. Can you match them up with the right six parties?
1. GET BRITAIN WORKING
2. BYE BYE, BUREAUCRACY
3. WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
4. PEOPLE POWER
5. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY NOT STATE CONTROL
6. BIG GOVERNMENT = BIG PROBLEMS
Answers here: no peeking!
Phil’s analysis:
The answer seems to lie in Cameron’s “Big Society†rhetoric and its intellectual fountainhead, the bizarre political philosophy of Philip Blond (recently dissected by Jonathan Raban). The sudden ascendancy of Blond is interesting in itself, but also in what it shows ex negativo about the Tories’ need for some sort of big idea. It’s a question of political power and who wields it. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Thatcherite Toryism is its hatred of political power being exercised by any institution other than the state: the unions, local councils and institutions like police committees had no place in the post-Thatcher order, their place being taken by business or by the government itself. This is a harsh and impoverished vision, which Labour have quietly rolled back in many areas. Hence a diffuse sense among thinking Tories that Thatcherism both went too far and didn’t succeed in going far enough; hence the Blond vision, whose peculiar distinction is to attack the intermediate institutions (a.k.a. BUREAUCRACY) while also attacking the central state (BIG GOVERNMENT). Moreover, their workings are to be replaced, not by market forces, but by a kind of extension of Neighbourhood Watch active communitarianism into every area of life (PEOPLE POWER). Or rather, every area of life that we might have expected central or local government to take care of (SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY NOT STATE CONTROL). Blond’s brave new world has no room for Thatcher’s hate-figures, but it’s got no room for the state or the market either. The vacuum thus created is to be filled by a sustained level of active citizenship – and unpaid work, not to put too fine a point on it – that has probably never been known anywhere in Britain, supported by intermediate non-political institutions (such as churches) which have been in decline for the last 40 years. Thatcher destroyed institutions that worked reasonably well and replaced them with institutions that work badly; Blond wants to destroy them as well and replace them with something that doesn’t exist. It’s an eloquent testimony to the self-consuming nature of Thatcherite radicalism – and to the exhaustion of its project now that everything solid has already melted into air.