I tried to write about Cameron’s appalling Hugo Young lecture yesterday, and failed. That as partly due to work pressure. Partly because I was just so angry at what he said.
Madeleine Bunting has said it better anyway this morning, and I’m quoting at above average length because it is just so good:
It was astonishing intellectual bravado — and utterly duplicitous. David Cameron has taken 15 years of thinking on the left — Naomi Klein, Zygmunt Bauman, Richard Layard, Richard Sennett among others — and put the whole back catalogue on its head.
The critique of our present atomised, individualistic, fragmented lives was all there. As Cameron lamented, what matters most is "our personal journey and our right to pursue our own happiness regardless of others around us". But having hijacked the leftwing analysis, he stripped out every reference to the corroding force of a free market economic system predicated on persuading us of a good life defined purely in terms of material goods because "we are worth it". He resolutely ignored the billions poured into an advertising and marketing industry that grooms us to believe in our own sense of entitlement.
In the place of this powerful amalgam of economic and cultural imperatives which have insisted that the individual's primary purpose is the fulfilment of their own desires, who does Cameron blame but, unbelievably, the state. It is all the fault of the beleaguered, derided public sector painfully trying to hold together basic standards of decency and social solidarity.
Who can he be thinking of? Replace his frequent and dismissive references to the "big state" and think instead of thousands of teachers trying every day to tell children to share, and respect each other, thousands of nurses trying to care for the frightened and frail, or thousands of park keepers and street cleaners trying to create liveable environments. It is all their fault.
This is the reality. He’s blaming people you know. People you trust — indeed some of the most trusted people in society — for bringing the country to its knees.
They’re people you depend on too. Wait till you have to do without them when Osborne tries to make millions unemployed and then see what it feels like.
So let’s be blunt about the assumptions that underpin Cameron’s vision. I suggest they are:
There are hoards of people just waiting to volunteer
I simply don’t believe it. Because of the pressure of consumer society and bank driven house price increases many families (my own included) depend on two incomes. The amount of time over when two jobs, a household, the needs of children, some socialising with friends to remind yourself what adult conversation is like outside work, is small. In the vast majority of households from whom Cameron is going to want to recruit his volunteers from there is no capacity to give.
Volunteers have the skills that voluntary organisations need
I have a long history as a school governor — a lot of it as Chair. All of it from the time before I had children. The time required would not be available now. And my experience taught me most volunteers were charming, well meaning and utterly unable to deliver the leadership, budgeting, management, decision making and other skills that ere needed to lead committees, monitor curricula, run budgets, sit on interview and disciplinary panels and much more besides. It all fell to a tiny minority. The assumption that people have the skills to do what he wants is absurd. If they have they use them all day — and don’t want to do so again out of work.
People are going to give up consumerism
Madeleine Bunting is right on this: the whole neo-liberal market based model the Tories espouse is based on selfish consumption. That’s the cause of most family break up — the perpetual dissatisfaction created by advertising that says to a person ‘leave behind what you have - there’s a better model for you over here’. This is what has created the corrosion in society: you need look no further than that. Unless you eliminate the whole mechanism that puts consumption for self-gratification at the epicentre of the economic model and price the advertising that promotes it out of the market — which you can be sure Murdoch is no going to let Cameron do — then there will never be the change in society Cameron says he wants. The entire assumption of Cameron's approach — that the state has promoted not social solidarity, but selfishness and individualism — is wrong. The market did that.
Reform can be done without money
Cameron assumes there is a rentier class of benefactors — or at least their wives (sorry — but we’re talking Tory here) who have nothing better to do than volunteer time because they don’t need to work. I don’t believe that if they exist they think they are either a) benefactors or b) volunteers. They lunch. In that case people will need to be paid to do this stuff. And he won’t pay.
People are queuing up to doff their caps to the great and good, be boundlessly grateful and copy their ways
Most of the ‘great and good’ seem to be bankers these days. Cameron should note the contempt with which those from the City are rightly held in society these days. There are no better exemplars of selfishness and individualism.
I could go on, but do I need to?
This policy is madness and so utterly unhinged from reality you have to ask two questions (especially when linked to Osborne’s economic inability). The first is what will be the terrifying cost if the Tories really try it? The second is, what’s the hidden agenda — because surely no person of right mind can really believe they think this — can they?
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Richard,
Most of the ‘great and good’ seem to be bankers these days. Cameron should note the contempt with which those from the City are rightly held in society these days. There are no better exemplars of selfishness and individualism.
Are we not including MPs in the formulation?
Georges
Your leaps of logic and unevidenced conclusions are breathtaking.
Can I suggest a course on Human Behaviour 101? Here’s a start:
1) You can’t tell people what to do. No matter how much money is spent or topics added to the school curriculum or initiatives taken or non-conforming behaviour criminalised, it doesn’t work. And if you can try and make people do what you want, compliance will be begrudging or circumvented. After 12 years, isn’t this becoming obvious?
2) You can inspire people (with suitable role models) – we are very influenced by other people’s behaviour.
3) You can oblige them. People respond to what they think other people are thinking or doing. A good example is the smiley face speed monitors which are 3 times more effective than punitive speed cameras.
4) You can motivate them by providing attainable goals or suitable carrots. You don’t motivate people with easily obtained handouts though (although you can make them dependent).
5) You can appeal to our innate altruism (which is the point that Cameron is rather clumsily trying to make). People will help others in their ‘group’ (hence his references to community). The difficulty is making these groups inclusive.
You need to listen to what Cameron is saying rather than adding your own ‘evil-Tory’ subtext – imagine that Polly Toynbee is reading the words if you have to. What Cameron is suggesting is astonishing (for a Tory leader) and is neither of the left (everyone must be saved) or the right (everyone must be flogged).
Don’t forget Osborne’s promise to restrict all public servants to a salary of less than the PM, which if enacted, is revelatory. I don’t read this as malicious, but rather as setting a good example. I think he must have read The Spirit Level (by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett).
The Tory party has a bad record and has some/many ‘bad eggs’. It looks like Cameron is trying to change this. Blair managed this with the Labour party after all. So is Cameron trying a something similar (with a ‘fourth way’?) or is he lying through his teeth to get in power? We’ll find out soon enough 😉
Mary
Your leaps of logic and unevidenced conclusions are breathtaking.
Can I suggest a course on Human Behaviour 101?
You said it: I reciprocate
I think I know this stuff. Do you? I mean, know it – forget your mumbo jumbo
As for imagining Polly reading this – she wouldn’t, so I can’t
Richard
Personally I think you are wrong on where Cameron is coming from, and I think you are missing an understanding of the damage Blair/Brown/Mandleson’s nanny state has done to this country.
Whether he will solve the problems he identifies remains to be seen, but in misrepresenting and misunderstanding what he is saying you are doing no one any favours.
Alastair
I think I ma being accurate
Tell me where I am wrong, please
Politely, of course, with reasons given
Richard
I don’t intend to unpick your polemic in any detail, but I think there are 3 themes where I disagree.
Volunteers. You seem to have a somewhat misguided view of people and a somewhat simplistic view of how people manage their lives. But as a very wise person once said to me – if you want to get something done give it to a busy person. I know lots of busy households that are able to juggle and give of their time, and I think you wshould reflect that there are lots of different ways in which people volunteer – not all are time consuming.
Volunteer skills. Actually I think you are getting close to worshipping at the alter of management science. Having spent some time auditing college boards of governors I think you are not alone in this, but then a good board requires a mix of people and skills – not just leaders (or loudmouths as they are sometime called).
Reform on the cheap. Actually I think his message is that the problems he identifies will not be solved by money alone. So you are just missing the point.
Alastair
Three reactions:
a) Naive – I think I’m entirely accurate – the army of necessary people is not there
b) Wishful thinking – re skills
c) You miss the point on cash – this is pay in kind to avoid tax – and people will just avoid instead
Sorry – but until we get rid of consumerism this just won’t happen
When Cameron calls for a serious tax on advertising, the end of tax relief on advertising and restrictions on the power of the media to limit such absurd publications as the FT’s How to Spend It you’re just living in cloud cuckoo land
And another Tory disaster is on the horizon
Richard
PS But you can always tell us what you will do, what you will give up to do it and how much lost earnings it will create
Free labour is the last thing we need. The share going to labour has been reduced. We need to reverse this trend by increasing paid employment and the minimum wage. It is revolting to hear this encouragement of those who have plenty to then usurp the jobs of the unemployed
@Richard Murphy
“Cameron: terrifyingly wrong” – I think you started the hyperbole!
And it’s not “mumbo jumbo”, it’s science. Points 2 to 4 are well established, point 5 is contentious (Dawkins for example stills back the ‘only family’ selfish gene) but there is good evidence to back it up. I can take cite the research papers for each one if you wish.
(I know how inconvenient science and evidence is to belief – just ask Alan Johnson!)
“I think I know this stuff” – but without evidence, it’s just shrill rhetoric.
Mary
Points 2 to 4 are bleeding obvious – but don’t for one moment prove Cameron’s case
You can inspire people but they still won’t do things if they haven’t got the time and are in constant need of cash to meet the needs of advertisers targeting their kids
Sorry – try living in the real world – not one of ‘papers’
Richard