George Bush Snr, never noted for his eloquence, called it ‘the vision thing’. And now, it turns out, Gordon Brown’s desire to set out his vision for the country before asking it to pass judgment is the reason that we won’t, after all, be going to the polls this month.
The prime minister’s real test thus now begins. He has asked the country to judge him on his vision and that will now inevitably join the criteria on which his leadership and his government will be assessed.
Brown’s task is complicated by the cross-dressing politics of the last decade: Labour’s Clintonian desire to go beyond the ‘false choices of left and right’ and the Tories’ more recent attempt – perhaps more, not less, questionable as a result of the tactics employed by David Cameron this autumn to lift his party’s ratings and put off that snap election – to convince the public that they share the values of progressive Britain, has done much to muddy the political waters.
In many ways, Brown’s first months as prime minister have an uncanny similarity to Bill Clinton’s attempt to rebuild confidence in American progressivism (and ensure his own re-election) in the months following the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and the ensuing ‘Gingrich revolution’. In the face of a widespread lack of faith in the efficacy of activist government – fed, in part, by the Clintons’ failure to deliver either healthcare or welfare reform during the president’s first 18 months in office – the president pushed a series of small micro initiatives designed, step-by-step, to counter that perception.
Clinton thus emphasised expanded family leave, school uniforms, anti-TV violence ‘v-chips’, connecting classrooms and libraries to the internet, tax breaks for college students, and portable healthcare. Large elements of Brown’s agenda – for instance, the crackdown on underage drinking and discussion about combating the influence of internet violence, promises to deep clean hospitals, expand one-to-one school tuition and build new youth centres, as well as to increase access to primary healthcare – have much the same feel.
But, as Clinton correctly recognised, such measures have to be drawn together by a wider narrative about government and its role. And, as Geoff Mulgan suggested recently, this is a particular necessity for progressives: ‘Some governments are re-elected for being competent administrations, so long as their oppositions are sufficiently implausible. But centre-left governments have to do more: to persuade people there is a task for government, something that needs to be done.’
So what should be the overarching vision that Brown commits his government to?
While both an essential and a laudable goal, promises to reform and invest in public services – especially at a time when the Tories proclaim a proclaim a similar commitment – do not amount to a sufficiently strong statement of purpose for a progressive government. And, with the slow down in public expenditure, the next election is already likely to revolve around questions about which party can achieve the best value from existing levels of spending. This makes it all the more important that Labour makes an explicit case for what ends it sees public services serving, thus avoiding the language of government deteriorating into a dull, managerialist tone.
The prime minister should, therefore, take as his starting point the basic and enduring division which exists between left and right: progressives believe that an activist government can and should promote a greater degree of both freedom and equality; conservatives, by contrast, believe that the state impedes the former and that the latter is none of its concern. Brown should thus commit his government to one simple aim: enhancing freedom and equality, making clear that the two are inextricably linked and that our conception of liberty is a positive one: about the ‘freedom to’, not simply the ‘freedom from’ of the right.
This is territory which, as the row over grammar schools in the summer indicated, Cameron enters only at the risk of provoking internal ructions in the Tory party, despite the more recent willingness of some on the right to acknowledge that not just poverty, but also inequality matters. At the same time, however, the pickled politics of the last decade has, as John Hutton has acknowledged, obscured New Labour’s commitment to this cause. ‘New Labour has been tentative about the language it uses to describe its poverty and inequality objectives. If ministers talk about it at all, it is through the language of meritocracy and equality of opportunity,’ he wrote earlier this year.
But by putting equality at the heart of his government’s mission, Brown will be tapping into a rich vein of British popular opinion and one which crosses political divides, as underlined by the Fabian/YouGov poll this autumn. It not only found 85 per cent of people believing that the gap between rich and poor should be smaller than it currently is, it also revealed that 94 per cent of Britons believe that children growing up in low-income families should have the same chances as children growing up in high-income families; a statement supported by 91 per cent of Tory voters, 96 per cent of Labour voters and 98 per cent of Lib Dems. The Fabians’ findings bear out research for the Equalities Review, published in the spring, which concluded that ‘the public commitment to equality runs deep.’
Such a vision, moreover, will provide the framework to explain the government’s other aims. A more equal society, Brown will be able to say, is key to increasing social cohesion, economic dynamism and social mobility; not a levelling down but a process by which the barriers to aspiration are systematically removed. He will also be able to argue that to compete in the new global economy Britain needs to be a high-skills economy and that means tapping the potential of all its citizens. The alternative, he could say, is growing inequality; fuelled by the nature of global competition and technological change, and a more ethnically diverse and ageing population at home.
But placing the fight against inequality at the heart of the government’s agenda will involve some tough questions for Labour. Despite the improvements in public services, increases in employment and reductions in poverty which have resulted from Labour’s decade in power, the massive growth in inequality which characterised the Thatcher-Major years has been checked but not reversed. Indeed, deep and entrenched inequalities – in educational attainment, infant mortality and life expectancy and life chances, and, indeed, in the treatment individuals receive from public services – remain. Social mobility, moreover, has ground to a halt.
A sustained attack on inequality requires more resources to be directed into early intervention and prevention, especially in terms of health, education and children’s services. But this may well necessitate a radical programme of ‘cut and invest’ – reducing or even eliminating programmes elsewhere – in order to free up the necessary cash.
The drive against inequality must, however, address inequalities in both wealth and power, recognising that one cannot be separated from the other. Thus, as Patrick Diamond recently argued in the Public Service Reform Group’s Public Matters, the spirit of Sure Start during its early days as a relatively small pilot scheme, with its strong emphasis on community development and participation, needs to be both recaptured and extended more widely in the public services.
‘Top-down’ solutions, delivered from Whitehall, must be replaced by a sweeping programme of devolution: to town halls, neighbourhood councils, and a whole array of other local and community institutions. Indeed, local services – like children’s centres – could increasingly be not simply operated, but also owned, by the communities they serve. Enhancing individual and community empowerment in such a way would serve not only to raise the responsiveness of services to ever more diverse and complex local needs, but also help to boost performance and, by increasing a sense of ownership, maintain and extend levels of public support for adequate funding. Critically, however, these services would operate in a nationally set framework to guarantee equity of access and entitlement.
The time has come for Labour to end its decades-old attachment to the belief that the fight against inequality can only be waged through the actions of a highly centralised state. At the same time, however, the hesitancy by which New Labour has appeared to approach that fight must also cease. By committing his government to new ways to accomplish Tawney’s vision of a ‘fresh start and an open road’ for all Britain’s children, Brown can achieve both.