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By Sam Macrory - 6th October 2010
David Cameron was an optimist once, according to the newly elected Labour leader Ed Miliband. Determined to deny the charge, thrown at him by Miliband last week, the Tory leader has just delivered a wildly upbeat glass-positively-overflowing speech to close the Conservative Party conference.
Straitened economic times? Don't worry about that. Cameron has a vision of a world in which a nation of "doers and go-getters" pull together, holds hands, and gets thing done because they can. This was, in the prime minister's words, "not a cry for help but a call to arms"; or, as he borrowed from Lord Kitchener: "Your country needs you."
Well, it certainly will, but in the next five years, when the 25 per cent department budget cuts kick in, the benefit payments are scaled back, and the public sector jobs vanish, the nation will turn to its government and ask for help.
Being told that there is a Big Society and to 'play their part is hardly going to ease the pain across large swathes of the country, nor will remembering the moment when the Tory leader wrapped up his speech, and the strains of "It Takes Two" by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston were blasted through the speakers at Birmingham's ICC.
But even though the Cameroonian concept of Big Society has been around now for the best part of half a decade, the nation really has little to go on beyond a cheesy lyric to really understand what on it really means.
Is it a collective attitude? "I am not alone, I will play my part" chorus Cameron's visions of Britons. Given that the Tory conference has been dominated by the fall out to the announcement of plans to cut child benefit payments - the spat was given just one fleeting mention in Cameron's speech - it seems unlikely that a national spirit of camaraderie will break out once the rest of Conservative spending cut backs are unveiled on October 20th when the spending review is published. "There's no other responsible way - I wish there was", Cameron told the massed ranks of the party faithful, who looked on blankly as the Big Society vision was explained to them.
Not surprisingly, the biggest cheers came when Cameron confirmed his intention to renew Britian’s nuclear deterrent, or when he told the hall that Nick Clegg’s reaction when hearing Cameron’s views on Europe was: “It’s much worse than I thought.” An energetic romp through Labour failings and post-election success for the government also had the conference delegates cheering, though yet another insistence on the brilliance of Nick Clegg prompted a more muted reaction.
But the silence was at times deafening as Cameron returned, yet again, to the Big Society vision. It didn’t work as a message during the election campaign, and as the nation braces itself for the horrors to come, it seems unlikely to spark into life now. At best, people will still be asking what it means. At worst, they will see it as a cynical ploy to soften the rain of heavy economic blows forewarned in the first half of the speech.
This was, of course, an astonishingly fluent and seemingly relaxed performance by Cameron, far more confidently delivered than either Nick Clegg or Ed Miliband’s earlier efforts. Little wonder that he looked so optimistic; the gift of the Big Society, however, is unlikely to be a source of cheer in the difficult years ahead.
Sam Macrory is political editor of The House Magazine.
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