At the heart of politics is the choice between competing interests – we look at the different interests through the prism of our values and we make a choice. And at the heart of government is the question – ‘when should we act?’. Whether local or national, the question is the same. Sometimes governments don’t act because doing something would achieve nothing, and sometimes nothing is done because to act would infringe that government’s ideological make-up.
At their very core, some governments are ‘do something’ and some are ‘do nothing’. This government – its Cameron trunk, its Boris branch and its Clegg twig – is resolutely a do-nothing government. It is liberal (if not Liberal), deeply old-fashioned and almost Whiggish in its aversion to government action. It is its liberal do-nothingness which holds together its Cameron part and its Clegg part – and which divides the Clegg rump of the Lib Dems from the Charles Kennedy-like rest of the party.
Sometimes the government justifies doing nothing because of the cuts – there isn’t enough money to do anything. Sometimes doing nothing is justified by ‘localism’ – ‘government shouldn’t do this, you/the community/the self-appointed coven of village elders* should do this’ (* delete as applicable). Whatever the justification, the result is always the same – doing nothing.
Do-nothing economic policy says that big business will thrive when government gets out of the way. Do-nothing social policy says that ‘big society’ will thrive when government gets out of the way. The enemy is government and the answer is to do nothing. So, the health secretary is no longer responsible for the NHS – their role shrunk to reporting on progress once a year. Government withdraws the EMA and rejects its responsibility for keeping young people in education. The work programme – ‘a step change for welfare to work’ – is actually the government saying to providers: ‘over to you, this is none of our business’.
Some may think that this stance by the government is regrettable but clever – after all, doesn’t everyone hate big government? Yes and no. People may hate ‘the state’, but they love schools, libraries and hospitals. And this isn’t a call for a new statism – it is simply a reflection that life is pretty tough for many people from the squeezed middle to the squeezed bottom. The very least they can expect is for their government not to abdicate all responsibility for doing their bit to make things better.
And that’s where we step in. Our future lies in recognising the difference between big government and active government – successful Labour governments are always do something governments. Whether in Whitehall or town hall, we win when we are innovative and active, not when we are scared and managerial. Where the coalition have taken their historical marker as classical liberalism, local Labour must take ours to be the true localism of Joseph Chamberlain (when activist mayor of Birmingham, not imperialist Westminster statesman).
In his own words, Chamberlain reversed the do-nothing attitude of the previous regime and left his city ‘paved, paved, assized, marketed, gas & watered and improved’. Not a bad record. And not a record that could have been achieved by a do nothing government, or a government that wasn’t confident in its ability to bring about change. When we are out of power in Westminster, the national party must look to town halls where we are in power for policies and inspiration. We’re no use to our residents if we shrug our shoulders and spend the next three years saying ‘we’d love to help but we can’t – it’s the cuts you see’. And Labour’s local leaders will be of no use to our future national leaders if we follow the Tories’ and Lib Dems’ shrivelled, spineless view of government’s power to do good.
We can be confident in our ability to help without underestimating the scale of the challenges facing us. But that requires us to plant our can-do Chamberlain attitude in place of the government’s defeatist, do nothing Whiggishness. Chamberlain was an imperialist Tory and I’m certainly not advocating either of those character flaws. However, unlike his current successors, he understood his power and his duty to make things better. We could do worse than to remember that ourselves as we chart these stormy waters.
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Mark Rusling is a councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest
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the Tories do think they have a duty ‘to make things better’ for those who make money,big money ,who they see as the ‘providers’ .The poorer people are to be kept out of their way whilst they do this, as much as possible,where the Tories come in —– unless they can turn them even more into ‘customers’ (not that they don’t already buy stuff en masse ! so they ARE part of the provider bubble actually !)