Anything up to 20 points down in the polls, beset by critics and rocked by scandals. This Labour government needs a big idea; and the bolder the better.
The problem isn’t inactivity. Announcements still flow; often from seemingly stillborn fightback speeches. But if Gordon Brown is to pick his battered government off the mat, he needs a way to reconnect his policies with the things voters once thought they liked about him – a great reconnection big enough to claw back at least some of the great gap in his poll ratings.
It nearly came off during the G20. The prime minister’s steady summiteering for troubled times, his safe pair of hands, his economic grip; all of it momentarily seemed to chime with the public mood, only for months of work to come instantly undone with a casual, explosive email exchange.
So if not economic stewardship, what might form the basis of a Brown reconnection? In a recent essay in Prospect, Frank Field and I argued that the answer could be a mandatory programme of national civic service, in which every British young person would be mandated to undertake at least six months of service to their community.
A 21st century programme of national service, done properly, would be hugely expensive, complicated to run and arguably illiberal to boot. But it’s not as mad as it might seem. In one swoop, such a scheme could help provide social structure, common experiences to Britain’s young people, instill habits of altruism and service untaught in our school system and help to deliver valuable education, health and environmental services to the community.
It could be a great new progressive British institution, up there with the BBC, the NHS or the Open University. Philosophically, it’s justifiable on liberal communitarian grounds, as a mild corrective to the rough edges that came with our new era of economic and social freedom. And, if done now, it could stave off youth unemployment and stimulate the economy – just as was the case when Franklyn D Roosevelt sent hundreds of thousands of young men into America’s forests to build bridges and national parks during the Great Depression.
Indeed, since Frank and I wrote the piece, the idea of national service has begun to catch on. In the recent budget, Alistair Darling announced new plans for 20,000 16-to-19-year-olds to be able to do full-time community service. Earlier in April, Brown wrote an article in the News of the World announcing the government’s aspiration that every young person should undertake 50 hours of (mandatory) community service. This, Brown said, should become ‘a normal part of growing up in Britain’, with the hint of a manifesto pledge to follow.
President Obama has been in on the act too. As if his first 100 days haven’t been busy enough, the American president found time and money to sign new legislation launching the largest expansion in US service schemes since John F Kennedy, with a claimed $5.7bn over five years to promote volunteerism – most prominently through a big expansion of Americorps, including some $85m of grants to fund 10,000 people to serve ‘in distressed communities to meet critical social needs resulting from the economic crisis’.
But this isn’t simply territory for the left. In the US, helping people to serve is a bipartisan crusade, uniting bleeding heart liberals with ‘thousand points of light’ conservatives. And the same is true in the UK – where the idea can bring together progressives with social conservatives – just the type of issue to revive Brown’s fleetingly popular ‘government of all the talents’ narrative.
The downside of this appeal is that the Conservatives are in this game too – and, arguably, doing a good job. David Cameron talks frequently about social responsibility, claiming it as his most important political cause, a concept currently associated with the left that he is keen to co-opt for progressive conservatism.
And he already has well advanced plans for a national voluntary system of service for all young people. The scheme, currently being trialed in London by Boris Johnson, via an NGO called The Challenge, could offer three weeks of service to young people, in combination with other community work.
How can Labour respond? Granted, it might not be possible to go for a national scheme right now – money is tight, and such an institution would take a decade to build properly. But a bold manifesto pledge for a national scheme, perhaps paid for by delaying or scrapping either or both of Trident or the ID cards scheme, would certainly help. And it’s not just that such a gutsy commitment to service and social progress might remind the public what they once liked about the prime minister. It might remind him too.