By Sam Macrory - 10th February 2011
Perhaps we were hallucinating all along. The hushed niceties of last Wednesday’s PMQs felt like a distant by memory by around seven minutes past midday yesterday, as normal, short-tempered service was resumed. In the case of David Cameron, this was very short-tempered service indeed.
Like Marty McFly of the Back to the Future films, whose temper erupts when anyone suggests he is “chicken”, Cameron’s calm seems to snap at the first hint of a suggestion that his hallowed Big Society project may not be working.
His Cabinet colleagues obviously never dare tell the emperor that his favoured new clothes appear to be a little hard to define – because when Ed Milband dared mock the Big Society, Cameron rapidly turned on the Labour leader.
“Almost every single member of the House knows what we’re talking about” Cameron declared, thought the blank faces on all sides of the House suggest that the Big Society is positioned somewhere the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs on the unexplained scale for most MPs.
Miliband asked if it meant closed libraries and cut local care service; Cameron argued loudly that it wasn’t, but he didn’t quite manage to find the language to explain it. Instead, he turned on the Labour leader’s own attempts to define a grand vision of his own.
“Labour has published its fresh new ideas. The tree was chopped down, but there is nothing in the book. We all knew that we wanted a blank page, but no one thought that he would publish a whole book of them. What are his plans? What are his great ideas?”
The decibels were rising. The prime ministerial folder slammed shut with a crash. Nobody mocks David Cameron’s Big Society. Miliband spied an opportunity.
“The Prime Minister should not get so angry: it will cloud his judgment,” he replied, adding mischievously: “He is not the first Prime Minister I have said that to.”
What a comparison to make. Somewhere in Kirkcaldy, a jaw will have hit the floor. Somewhere in Taiwan, work began on a video of a pixelated David Cameron pummelling a pixelated – and terrified - Steve Hilton, while hurling his iPad across the room.
For now, Cameron took his temper out on Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor. Either Cameron is worried by the new shadow chancellor, or he is determined to destroy his yet-to-be-reacquired reputation for economic competence, as Balls took the brunt of the prime minister’s abusive streak. Don't feel too much sympathy: the Oxford and Treasury-educated Balls is altogether fairer game than the amiable Alan Johnson.
Then something rather peculiar happened. Cameron found himself put in repeatedly awkward positions – and not by Miliband, all Big Society-ed out, or Balls, left ranting furiously from the frontbench. Instead a seemingly well-drilled cohort of Tory backbenchers stepped forward. I couldn’t see Patrick McCloughlin, the chief whip, but my guess is some serous brow-mopping will have been underway.
Christopher Chope wanted a free-vote on the electoral reform bill; Julian Lewis, spitting out the words “Liberal Democrat”, demanded that the PM “refuse to pay that price” of deferring a decision to renew the nuclear deterrent; David Nuttall, to Labour cheers, called on Cameron to “keep our pledge” to save a Bury hospital; John Baron wanted a policy shift on Afghanistan; and Priti Patel called on Cameron to “defend our country from any further sanctions from Europe.”
Cameron had answers for all of them, but the experience was not one he will have relished. Miliband looked more baffled than ever, but the spectacle will have intrigued him. If not quite revolting, the Tory backbenchers are not a sight to delight the prime minister.
Sooner rather than later, he may need to start explaining his Big Society if he wants to appease them. Until he does, Miliband has found a sensitive prime ministerial sore to aggravate.
Article Comments
I have been trying to get the 'faith communities' to organise charitable funding hospital chaplaincy.
This is an example of 'the communities helping themselves rather than making demands upon the tax-payer. It could not be more 'Big Society'
The response from the churches? 'Go forth and multiply'
The response from the Tories? A deathly silence.
Alan Rogers
10th Feb 2011 at 3:40 pm
There is no such thing as a 'big society.' The phrase is empty and meaninless, just as 'broken society' and 'no such thing as society' were also empty and meaningless. One cannot build meaningful policy on meaningless phrases, particularly when the vast majority of people know its all nonsense.
The same shallow, lightweight (President Obama's assessment) politician who dreamed up 'big society' and 'broken society' (we don't hear that one any more) once loudly applauded and cheered the politician who thought up the meaningless phrase, 'no such thing as society'. Perhaps he thinks we have forgotten that because he now tells us that there is such a thing as society after all, and its 'big'. The contradictions and muddled thinking are staggering.
Even the so-called 'big society' tsar has publicly declared he can't spend too much of his time working for nothing, and that he needs to have a life. You couldn't make up that sort of farce.
The fact that this nonsense is unravelling and falling apart before its author's eyes should not surprise us. Nationally it is rapidly becoming the butt of well-deserved ridicule, scorn and utter contempt. the vast majority of people were never fooled as they thought right from the word go it was a fig leaf for decimating our vital public services.
Services which the disconnected millionaires in Whitehall rarely, if ever, use.
NMac
10th Feb 2011 at 2:11 pm
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