This week saw the launch of the Big Society Network at Downing Street and a vision of progressive Conservatism at The Institute for Government

Downing Street

There were some familiar faces in the room that I managed to catch up with:

Stephen Howard (Business in the Community), Rishi Saha (Head of New Media CCHQ), Sir Paul judge, Emma Harrison (A4E, Board of the Eden Project) , Matthew Taylor (RSA), Geoff Mulgan (The Young Foundation), Karl James (Dialogue Project), Cliff Prior (UnLtd) and of course the ever present Steve Moore

It was an opportunity for the launch of the BS Network as well as set out some of its top line objectives courtesy of the Prime Minster and the CEO of The Big society Network Paul Twivy. here This is one of the Conservative’s central ideas and it seems as though the public have latched onto the term, but what that means exactly was unclear, and with the PM’s and Paul T’s address we had some more clarity of its direction.

I sense that the Prime Minster trying to avoid the mistakes of the Blairite administration and endeavouring to steer clear of a centralist, top down approach to government. Which may be spooking the Tory old guard who want a more old fashioned, traditional, paternal, growth and idea driven government, perhaps hankering for the ‘glory days’ of the Thatcherite years of some perceived certainty; however, different times require different approaches, and what was possible in the 70’s and 80’s isn’t possible nor wanted now.

I was speaking to Matthew Taylor who challenges (amongst others)the BS movement (see his blog here) by asking whether or not it is simply a meaningless catch all for anything the Government do - what does it mean? How does it work? What policies that will support it? Matthew was questioning where it might stop, for instance in the age of austerity, when you make cuts, are they just ‘big society cuts’?

What will the phrase come to mean, will it just represent anything to do with austerity? His next challenge was that when the government make spending cuts to Prison, Health, Education budgets, it’s usually the innovation departments that get cut first, which means very little change or new will happen, and those innovations are exactly the things we are looking toward to get us out of this mess.

The Institute for Government

Perhaps the beginnings to the questions may come from the debate that was held at The Institute for Government, where progressive conservatives were debating The Big Society amongst other things in their seminar entitled ‘The Future of Conservative Thinking’ on the panel were Lord Bichard, Nicholas Boles, Philip Blond, James Forsyth and Jonty Olliff-Cooper.

We are in a fascinating time in terms of the British ideological, economic and cultural wellbeing.

We are a nation in decline and we can’t follow the simple beliefs of yesteryear that growth is the answer, because it’s not. The internal levers of growth for UK Plc have stalled; North Sea Oil is almost spent, the financial services have spluttered and coughed, the housing boom is over, and we no longer lead the way in advertising or the creative industries. To impact the issues further we have an extraordinary deficit, low levels of savings and the potential of a double dip recession, and to really turn the screw the global situation is pretty dire. In essence, the UK has to learn how to become successful in a declining market and as a declining player on the world stage.

Some of the ideas discussed at the seminar were:

• · What to do when there’s no money left especially with massive costs in the pipeline, such as unsustainable pensions, an aging population and a projected quadrupling of NHS costs as a result
• · There’s an increase breaking down of social cohesion and community that is showing itself in acts of anti social behaviour
• · How can they charge the general public to engage and take responsibility and ownership for the community?
• · How can they target the early years agenda (which is being championed by IDS)
• · Creating more transparency and creating more local engagement and ownership
• · Given the lack of money and the current situation, can they afford to be an ideological party or rather one that needs to muck in and resolve the issues? How do you reform when you have little or no money to implement reform? Does it even want sharp ideological values in a pragmatist age?
• · The importance of supply side economics
• · An acceptance that individual wealth isn’t a good way to create a sustainable and healthy society – a linear connection in society, rather than verticals, based on hierarchical wealth generation, where people are more preoccupied in measuring money than the meaning of relationships
• · A desire to steer away from the big levers of economic or state directed capitalism – sharing the wealth and championing the real driver of UK PLC which is SME’s
• · The importance of free association economics
• · This was discussed in the model of mass mutual’s (could you imagine such an idea under Thatcher?) and the importance of open trust networks as they try to find the levers of wealth balance. The great hope being that civic society works as they try and rid suspicion, and bureaucracy. In essence we need to value and find more meaning in connections and community and less in just purchase, wealth and growth which will challenge many conscious and unconscious beliefs about our lives.

These are some very big ideas, that will take some selling and in particular with the media. However, these are extraordinary times. We are all going to have to make do with less whilst more is demanded of us and somehow find happiness and community in the process.