Commentaire en anglais du discours de Cameron sur la Big Society

Commentaire en anglais du discours de Cameron sur la Big Society

David Cameron, "Big society can ficht poverty. Big government just fuels it.", The Guardian (Tuesday 10 Nov 2009)

Commentary (cf text at the end)

The Hugo Young lecture is organised by The Guardian in the memory of a famous British journalist and columnist. On Thursday, 10 November 2009, it was given by David Cameron, then leader of the Conservative Party (since 2005), in Opposition. The speech took place at Kings Place in London, in front of Highly Qualified from The Guardian, a daily newspaper with a centre-left political alignment. David Cameron took this opportunity to extend and deepen the argument he had made in his party conference speech during the same year. He identifies as a one-nation conservative, a notion historically linked to Disraeli and involving a special attention to the poorers. He begun with a position of political advisor, writing speeches for Margaret Thatcher and then John Major. Cameron describes himself as a "Thatcher fan", altough this does not make him "a Thatcherite". In fact, his main objective during the 2010 general election campaign was to help the Conservative Party distance itself from Thatcherism. After more than a decade of Labour government, David Cameron had to convince the British electorate that the Conservative Party was no longer the “nasty party”. The Conservative Party was actually considered to aim at privatising health and education and not meeting with the difficulties of the less favoured. In order to renew the image of his party, Cameron relies on the Big Society Programme : in this new conception of politics, the government is to help society regenerate itself by giving British citizens the means to take care of their communities. Cameron's vision of citizenship implies obligations that include helping the other citizens by giving time or money to charities. Citizenship is linked to the notion of responsibility that has to be develpped by the state. He therfore breaks with the vision of T. H. Marshall for wich the first attributes of a citizen were his rights. On this point, there is apparently very little difference between Thatcher’s active citizen and Cameron’s citizen of the Big Society. However, he takes his distances with Thatcher's vision sum up in her famous sentence : “There is no such thing as society”. Margaret Thatcher was a neo-liberal Conservative whereas David Cameron is, arguably, a One-Nation Conservative, but they both criticize the model of the welfare state developped by the Labour Party.

This therfore enables us to wonder how David Cameron is promoting an original vision of the role of the state, far from both Thatcherism and New Labour, in order to modernize the Conservative Party.

Firstly, he criticizes the welfare state and the whole Labour model. However, he tries to modernize the image of his party by taking his distances with Thatcher and introducing some brand new notions. We can therfore argue that he enters an electoral logic.

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To begin with, David Cameron criticizes the whole Labour model which has been developped over more than a decade, especially the welfare state.

First of all, he rejects the importance of a strong government developped by the Labour Party. In his views, the strong role assigned by Labour to the state has not met with its goals, "the progressive aims of reducing poverty, fighting inequalitiy, and increasing general wellbeing" (l. 2-3). His argument relies on the evolution of poverty figures. He mentions "studies by the Sutton Trust" (l. 26) in order to support this analysis of the Labour government period : according to the figures, inequality is "at a record high" (l. 25) and social mobility "has effectively stalled" (l. 26). To Cameron's mind, the link between state domination and poverty can be explained by the notion of individualism. He considers that, as the state takes more and more responsibilities, people develop "selfishness and individualism" (l. 5) : they do not feel concerned anymore by the problems of others - they think that the state can best answer them. This relationship is a core idea in Tocqueville's philosophy (Democracy in America, 1835-1840), as well as the concept of "atomisation" (l. 47, and l. 6 "atomise"). People are more and more concerned by their own interests so they let the state get more and more power, while they become more and more distant one from another. This relationship can therefore be considered as a vicious circle.

Moreover, Cameron targets the way of financing social expense. He mentions the date of 1997 (l. 17), opening the Tony Blair era as Prime Minister. This election sybolizes the victory of New Labour - although Cameron still calls Blair's party Labour. New Labour was meant to represent a third way between the traditionnal right and left wings. Blair was concerned by the question of poverty but he strongly and specifically acted against it from 2001 on. After the elections, influenced by the Fabian Society, he increased taxes in order to reinforce public service, especially on health and education : this is part of the action of the welfare state. In addition, government introduced the autonomisation of public hospitals funding. However, this led to an inner controversy within New Labour, opposing Tony Blair to Gordon Brown on the debts it was creating. Cameron resumes this aspect in one short sentence : the debts "will have to be paid by the future generations" (l. 20). To him, the problem is thus not really solved. Therfore, when Cameron recognizes some progress on the issue of poverty, he compensates it by criticizing the method of funding. These critiques set thefoundations of his future policy of austerity. Cameron clearely connects what he describes as bad results on poverty and the Labour policies. We can therefore argue that

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