What's the Big Idea, Dave?
- 8 May 07, 09:42 AM
There is much to cheer the Cameroons as they wait for the battle proper to begin. One thing, though, distresses them. It is the suggestion that they don't really believe in anything and that their man is nothing more than the "heir to Blair".
Today, David Cameron's one man think tank tries to answer that charge. Oliver Letwin is delivering a lecture in which he insists that we are now in a post-Marxist, socio-centric rather econo-centric world. Forgive the jargon. People, he suggests, only take you seriously as a political philosopher if you talk in such ways. In plain English, he goes on to explain that he's simply saying that politics is no longer based on arguing about rival systems of economic management but instead about how to make lives better. Perhaps I may be permitted to translate Letwinese into a glib soundbite - "It's no longer the economy, it's well-being, stupid".
Letwin goes on to say that whereas Gordon Brown believes in a "provision theory" of government, the Tories believe in a "framework theory". Again, plain English helps here. He is arguing that Brown wants governments to provide everything whereas he and David Cameron want government merely to set the framework to allow others - whether individuals or organisations - to do what's good for society.
This is not, he insists, a mere re-writing of our old friend laissez faire since the Tories are working hard to develop government initiatives which will, for example, help to develop social enterprises to tackle poverty rather than simply ignoring its existence.
There are, I believe, two big tests of Letwin's argument. First, will Gordon Brown as prime minister really act as if government should do everything or, on coming to office, will he discover that he rather likes state schools or hospitals run by voluntary organisations or private companies? Secondly, what are the Tories' specific policies which prove that they are not simply re-heating ideas from Tony Blair's policy unit or re-packaging Thatcherism? Watch this space.
