One of the most confusing sights in modern politics must surely be the repositioning of the Conservatives as the champion of progressive communal values, against an individualist New Labour government, now supposedly presiding over the welfare state’s demise.
Time and again, it is the Converse trainer-wearing David Cameron who appears to tap into modern collective common sense, whether on the environment, the need for a fair education system or the problems of the NHS.
The importance of the public realm was at the heart of Cameron’s recent passionate defence of the NHS, a speech that consciously mimicked, and possibly mocked, Tony Blair’s famous 1997 mantra on education, education, education. The message was clear: the welfare state will now be safer in Conservative hands.
Last week, the two parties were arguing again, this time over the early years’ agenda. Nowadays, child care matters to the political heavyweights — if somewhat intermittently. And if recent poll findings are anything to go by, there is still a long way to go.
A childcare survey of Great Britain, published earlier this week, found an alarmingly high percentage of working mothers still unhappy with nursery provision.
The ever-astute Blair has recognised that child care is one of the new battlegrounds. Hence his recent stirring article in a national newspaper on the importance of supporting family life and his trumpeting of the government’s record on child care and early years’ provision, much of it through the Sure Start scheme and its Children’s Centres.
The government actually has a lot to boast about. A thousand Children’s Centres have opened round the country, with a further 2, 500 planned. If fully implemented, this will be a staggering achievement.
Not according to shadow education secretary David Willetts, however, who believes that ‘child care is under threat from New Labour’ and that only the Tories can save it. That’s some claim, coming from the party that traditionally held the view that family life is no business of the state.
There is clearly a big problem looming for Cameron’s Caring Conservatives: everyone wants to know, how deep does this conversion to welfarism really go? Far greater policy detail must be forthcoming before the public will buy the big U-turn.
Seasoned political watchers have already shown, quite convincingly, that a Cameron government simply can’t defend the welfare state as it is — or indeed, build on it — and still deliver lower taxes for the well-off.
But there’s an equally big problem looming for New Labour, a problem that has haunted nearly all Blair’s term in office and might well shape a possible Gordon Brown administration.
In its determination to be the stern reformer of the welfare state, to be the stick rather than the carrot when it comes to public service workers, and in its love affair with private finance, New Labour has sacrificed its once most potent ideological message and weapon: its belief in the profound ethical, as well as practical, significance of the welfare state.
Is it too late to reaffirm this message — to return to the kind of crusading language of the late 1990s, when Blair stood on the balcony of a deprived south London housing estate and promised to govern for all?
It certainly is for the prime minister and it might be in practice for the chancellor, whom everyone knows to be the most vigorous defender of Private Finance Initiative-style schemes from within government.
But Brown might just pull it off, if he can restate, in modern terms, the importance of those deep collectivist convictions that so many people associate with his particular brand of stern Scottish socialism.
Public service reform does not preclude the need to argue for the values that the modern welfare state represents: helping the most needy at the same time as providing the means for society to cohere. The welfare state is also a unique example of the distinct values of the public realm, which are very different from the world of private greed and profit.
Forget the notion of a Union Jack planted in every garden, Brown’s latest Britisher wheeze. The values of a modernised welfare state provide a new language and a highly practical road map for a far more meaningful sense of British identity.
What about pledging to provide a high-quality school, a decent hospital and a Children’s Centre in every area of Britain, however deprived, however wealthy?
Such an idea has the beauty of simplicity. If new New Labour doesn’t find a more inspiring way of talking about modern welfare, then the new New Conservatives look like they just might. Or worse still, they will claim that they do, until it’s too late for the voters to realise otherwise.
