There is an tension within conservative forces: the Milton Friedman tendency continues to believe in "full gospel" Thatcherism [JR], whereas the Edmund Burke wing - now an unquantifiable minority - recall Disraeli's "One nation" Toryism.   [JR]   [PB]   [WP]

Cameron's lead in the opinion polls is probably based on Not Being New Labour, and a soft-focus impression of normality, which, relative to his opposite number, is not difficult to achieve!

However, as The Guardian's reviewer rightly commented, he "remains something of an enigma" [MF], a view confirmed by John Gittings report on Trident.   [20]

What is currently well-hidden is the certainty that US Republican ideas on 'welfare' will be extended if the Tory Party wins the next election. [WW]

Then there's the problem of the Brown-Darling borrowings [T&S], and how quickly they should be paid back.

Concern for 'the poor' seems to centre around oft-repeated mantras re the family and marriage.   [FV]

Warning of a possible visit to the IMF is a sign that Cameron is showing his true colours, which is confirmed by the leadership of a new ultra-rightist rump in the European Parliament.   [EU]

Finally, there's Dave who floats ideas that cannot have had one second's thought:   [HG]   [HR]

Nick Mathiason's "It's the Tory party ... but not as we knew them" is required reading.    [GDN]

The neoliberal small state is an as-yet untried experiment outside very small 'off shore' tax havens where citizenship can be - and is - restricted to those with the means to cope.

New Labour needs the full force of the big state to in order to train people to be autonomous individuals fit to service neoliberal 'free markets'.

The Tories regard this as a drag on enterprise and, should they win the next election, will begin the process of introducing the small state within the year.

Welfare is the focal point of the experiment.

Current welfare policy - which has cross-party support - is intended to transform welfare into workfare.

Workfare has arrived in Britain

In the workfare state, poverty is always an individual failing

Here we enter the world of the 'benefit scrounger' as lampooned on Coronation Street via the character of Eddie Windass.    [EW]

Like something straight out of the Daily Express, Eddie lurches his way round the cobbles on crutches he doesn't need, while feckless son Gary is in and out of trouble with the police.

Real-life Windass families emerge from time-to-time to get the full 'Paul Dacre' treatment, carefully built-up to create the impression that everyone on what used to be Incapacity Benefit is of the same ilk.

This is the driving force behind the adoption of the Wisconsin Works programme imported by Mr David Freud - a direct descendant of the psychologist, whose experience in banking - quite naturally - fitted him for instigating another populist crackdown on the numbers receiving benefits. DF

Young children, according to Chris Grayling, are exposed to drugs and alcohol at a "ludicrously young age".

They are also exposed at a ludicrously young age to those two emblems of US corporate dominion: a violent aggressive culture, and commodified sex.

The, er, 'values' of News International are in the vanguard of the degrading - and eventual elimination - of social/ethical norms, and their replacement by unrestrained greed.

All this existed before May 1979, but the election of Margaret Thatcher, and the Blair-Brown hijack of the old Labour Party, have ensured that this agenda became bipartisan in Britain.

Either Chris Grayling does not understand this, or he believes that social norms can co-exist with unrestrained greed. They can't.

Iain Duncan Smith's speech to the Heritage Foundation offers further indicators of the intellectual confusion at the heart of Tory policies on mending 'Broken Britain'.

What IDS - and presumably Chris Grayling - want, is a society which is more competitive, and - by inference - more unequal.

IDS lays great stress on 'morals':

"There’ll be no possibility of light touch regulation if certain moral values are absent from ourculture."

Would that be the, er, moral values exhibited by bankers during the years since Maggie's 'Big Bang' I wonder?

Would it be the moral values involved in shipping jobs out to China and then complaining because unemployment is up, mental illness is up, and the prisons are full?

(And it's all the fault of the victims, or course!)

Without rebalancing the economy so that there is work for all, many of the social problems in this country will continue to grow.

But that would cut profits and bonuses, and we would not want that, would we Mr Grayling?

Hague 'found out in last few months about Ashcroft'

Ex-Tory leader William Hague says he found out in the "last few months" that Lord Ashcroft changed an undertaking he made before being granted a peerage. The peer agreed to become a "permanent" UK resident, making it more likely he would pay tax on overseas earnings.

But this was later changed to "long-term resident" - a lesser commitment - after discussions with civil servants ...

Mr Ashcroft was given a peerage in 2000 after he signed a letter to Mr Hague promising to "take up permanent residence in the UK again", which would seem to preclude non-dom status ...

BBC NEWS  04 Mar 2010    Election 2010    Westminster Sleaze

Lord Ashcroft 'dead horse' has long way to run

Tory officials refused to meet Electoral Commission

Steve Bell

Hague hid Lord Ashcroft's tax status for months

Ashcroft admits 'non-dom' tax status

MPs, peers and taxes

Michael Ashcroft

Tories reveal six themes to contest general election

• Act now on debt to get the economy moving
• Get Britain working by boosting enterprise
• Make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe
• Back the NHS
• Raise standards in schools
• Change politics

BBC NEWS  27 Feb 2010    Election 2010

Lord Ashcroft: 'I am a non-dom'

Ashcroft's election war-chest targets marginals

Return to responsibility

It's possible, or course, that Cameron is so naive he actually believes all this garbage ...

With less bureaucracy and greater personal responsibility, people are more likely to make ethical decisions ...

Politically, power is badly allocated. In Westminster, and in the big, centralised bureaucracies that affect so much of our daily lives, power is too concentrated. It can easily be abused when those who wield it are not accountable. Outside the political and bureaucratic elite, power is too weak. People have far too little control over, and responsibility for, the things that affect them.

So we need a massive redistribution of political power to individuals and civic institutions. Instead of parents being told what school their children must go to, families should be able to come together and demand new schools. Instead of public sector workers being under the thumb of central government, they could set up employee-owned co-operatives. And when yet another local pub or post office is closed, communities would have the right to buy these institutions and run them themselves.

There is an imbalance of economic power too. In the past, Conservatives thought a rising economic tide would lift all boats. But it's clear that the bottom rungs of the ladder to prosperity are bro­ken. After 13 years of Labour, inequality has grown and the poorest are poorer. In a free society, some will always be richer than others. But extreme inequality erodes ethics as it undermines the idea that we are all in this together.

I know some will be sceptical at the idea that the Conservative party can succeed in addressing poverty and inequality where Labour have failed ...

Lysicamus
27 Feb 2010, 1:20PM

As Winston Churchill once said about an MP's speech, "It contained every cliché except "God is love" and "Please adjust your dress before leaving" ".

The article is just warm words that sound cosy but add up to little and we all know that once elected you will quietly forget about it.

Besides which "modern Conservatism" is an oxymoron. The Tories and New Labour are both still fighting the economic battles of the free market, despite its spectacular failure.

I'll believe the political parties are modern when they tackle unregulated markets and start encouraging manufacturing. Until then, they should save their breath for cooling their porridge.

Guardian  27 Feb 2010    Election 2010

Lord Ashcroft: 'I am a non-dom'

Cameron promises to protect children from 'inappropriate sexualisation'

Cameron should get up to speed on 'commodification' and ask himself who promotes it, and who gains from it.

Unbelievably, the interview took place at a leader in the field of commodification: GMTV.

Unveiling a range of party measures aimed at giving children back their childhood, Mr Cameron told GMTV: ''We all know as parents, I have got two young children and there will be many watching this programme, that you do your best as parents but there is a lot of pester power going on.

''What we are saying is that you can't cut children off from the commercial world, of course you can't, but we should be able to help parents more in terms of trying to make sure that our children get a childhood and that they are not subject to unnecessary and inappropriate commercialisation and sexualisation too young. This is what this should be about.''

Mr Cameron outlined proposals for punitive measures against firms found flouting rules against targeting youngsters ...

Telegraph  18 Feb 2010    Ofsted

Don't blame advertisers ...

Sexualisation of Children

A tide of bland imagery tells girls that sexy is everything

Sexy kids

Girls just need to be young

The truth about Tweens

Commodification

Conservatives would allow public services to run co-operatives

It might appear that Osborne has been reading up on Ivan Illich, but - as Robert Peston points out - this may simply be a new route to privatisation.

As part of a Conservative pre-election appeal to Labour-leaning public sector staff, Mr Osborne said a Tory government would offer a “power-shift to public sector workers”. The move could allow teachers and nurses to remove underperforming managers and take over the running of schools and hospitals themselves ...

He added: "This is a power shift to public sector workers so that they take control of their own working environment and they get away from these top-down bureaucracies which have made life a misery for so many people in the public sector." ...

Mr Osborne said that collectives would still face some central control on the way they provide services.

"The check on quality here is that they would be contracting services to the local authority or the National Health Service and they would be providing a contract, for community nursing or for primary education.

"And we would be making sure, as taxpayers, that we were getting value for money and it was appropriately run and the standards the kids were being taught to were at the right level and the like. So it is not a complete free for all."

Standards such as the national curriculum would remain ...

Telegraph  15 Feb 2010

Election 2010    Policy, Delivery, Accountability    Reforming the Regime

Conservatives need to work on their credibility

Tories renew pledge to allow public sector workers to form co-operatives

The John Lewis state

Goldie Hawn talks to Tories about setting up schools

The Tories are in talks with foreign educational groups - including one run by Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn - to set up state schools in England.

Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove says he is talking to the French government and a Swedish schools chain.

And he told The Sunday Times his team had also spoken to Ms Hawn's charity, which promotes Buddhist values ...

Mr Gove told BBC One's Andrew Marr show he wanted to give state schools the same "freedom" as fee-paying schools to set their own curriculums, which he claimed would boost the chances of pupils from poorer backgrounds reaching top universities.

"What we want to do, for example, is to allow organisations like a Swedish company, the International English School, the chance to come here to teach the sort of rigorous academic curriculum which too many students, particularly students in poorer parts of the country, are denied." ...

BBC NEWS  14 Feb 2010    Election 2010    

Tory Swedish model for schools

Class, say hello to Miss Hawn

Hawn Foundation

Free our failing schools

To fix broken Britain we shall start at school

Why Ashcroft is costing Cameron dear

It was the morning of 6 May 2005 and the Conservative Party was struggling to come to terms with the devastation of a third consecutive election defeat ... but for Belize-based Baron Ashcroft of Chichester, the operation represented the vindication of a political strategy that brought the Tories into bitter conflict with all their political opponents.

Along with two other colleagues, he had organised and funded a huge campaign to boost the Tory performance in a series of marginal seats across the country.

Twenty-four out of the 41 targeted had been taken from Labour; 25 of the 33 candidates who won seats from Labour or the Liberal Democrats had benefited from the fighting fund and six more sitting MPs had held their seats ...

Lord Ashcroft, a man who refuses to confirm that he pays taxes or is registered to vote in the UK, is ... as deputy chairman of the party ... both funding and spearheading a centralised campaign to repeat the trick – with more spectacular results – in 2010 ...

Electoral law demands that all individual donors to British political parties must be registered to vote in the country. Although Lord Ashcroft gave the Government a solemn undertaking that he would become a UK voter and pay tax in the UK when his peerage was confirmed in 2000, there is as yet no evidence that he has done either ...

The complications with Lord Ashcroft are beginning to outweigh the benefits of his millions ...

Independent  14 Feb 2010    Election 2010    Westminster Sleaze

Tories facing renewed pressure over Lord Ashcroft's tax status

Tory top brass frustrated by mystery over Michael Ashcroft's tax status

More than half of voters have doubts about 'slick' Cameron

Labour in headlong retreat, says David Cameron

Ex-ministers would have to wait two years after leaving office before lobbying a Conservative government, David Cameron said today.

The Tory leader said he wanted to crack down on the "far-too-cosy relationship" between big business and politics.

In a speech at the University of East London, he described the issue of "secret corporate lobbying" as the "next big scandal waiting to happen".

"It's important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard - and, indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation," he said.

"But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control." ...

Independent  08 Feb 2010

Andrew MacKay to work as lobbyist after quitting parliament

Gordon Brown attacks 'scandal' of Lord Ashcroft donations

Gordon Brown has thrust the issue of Tory party donations to the centre of the election campaign by declaring that the secrecy surrounding its biggest financial backer – Lord Ashcroft – is "a scandal" ...

Delivering his strongest comments yet on the "Ashcroft question", Brown said it was now the duty of journalists and opposition politicians to "press these people for answers". "It's a scandal that we haven't had proper answers about where the [Ashcroft] money has come from and what the status of this person is." ...

Ashcroft has generated controversy because he has become the Tory party's biggest donor – and a growing influence on policy – without clarifying his British tax status. The Belize-based billionaire has bankrolled the Conservative party over the past 12 years, pumping money in to help Tory candidates overturn Labour majorities in swing seats.

Donations worth millions from his company, Bearwood Corporate Services, are under investigation by the Electoral Commission, following allegations that the company was not eligible to give money because it was not "carrying on business" in the UK.

For a company to make donations, it must also be registered under the Companies Act 2006 and be incorporated in the EU. If the commission finds against the company, the Conservatives could be forced to pay all Ashcroft's donations back to the Treasury. Labour MPs are frustrated that the commission has failed to report on Ashcroft after an inquiry lasting more than a year and fears it will not do so before the campaign begins ...

Observer  07 Feb 2010

Is Lord Ashcroft ashamed to say he lives here?

MP calls for tax-exile peers to be removed from Lords

Ashcroft: new questions

Michael Ashcroft

David Cameron warns of 'social recession' to match economic one

Tory leader points to Doncaster torture case as symptom of Labour's 'moral failure' ...

David Cameron missed an opportunity to say something sensible about yet another lamentable failure by the public 'services' in respect of the Edlington torture case.

Instead, he 'went off on one' about 'broken Britain', seemingly oblivious as to the fatal wounds society received from his predecessor Margaret Thatcher.

In appearing to blame New Labour for the actual crimes he showed himself unable to separate the crime itself from those, er, 'services' tasked with preventing such crimes.

By hollowing-out local political and social responsibility, and centralising control, Blatcherism offer us the odious spectacle of Mr Ed 'Nothing to do with me' Balls spouting the familiar clap-trap about 'learning lessons'!

Lancsman
22 Jan 2010, 11:36AM

Some of the policies adopted by the centre left since the sixties have been damaging to social cohesion, family stability and social mobility. But lets not be under any illusion about the biggest single contributor to the social breakdown in poorer parts of the UK. It was the policies of the government between 79 and 92ish.

Whilst the end of much of our poor government-supported manufacturing industries was inevitable, the sudden and draconian manner in which they were dismantled has caused untold problems. There was no plan to deal with the fallout of sudden and mass unemployment. Indeed the severity with which the policies were carried out seemed driven by dogma and a desire for revenge for the early 70s defeats inflicted on the Tories.

Equally, Thatcher's ideological revolution led to the freeing up not just of economic restraint, but also of social restraint. Thatcher, unintentionally, unleashed a crude libertarianism that has resulted in the nasty "i do what I want when I want" mentality we seem to have now. This social and very un-English revolution had a huge and, in my opinion, detrimental effect upon society.

Two young boys were almost tortured to death. Cameron has peppered his speech with his tedious key messages and phrases - 'broken society' 'we can't go on like this'. Trying to pin this sickening incident on the government is beyond reprehensible. As others have pointed out, are all the terrible crimes committed between '79 and '97 to be laid at the door of the conservatives? Is Michael Howard to blame for Fred West?

Does Cameron imagine that tax breaks for married couples, will resolve the problems creating by community and family destruction, poverty, generational unemployment and drug and alcohol dependency across the crumbling towns of post-industrial Britain?

The Britain we live in now was created between 79 and 92. It is a sad indictment of politics that the Tory party can get away with this 'broken society' PR line unchallenged. The charge that should be laid at Labour's door is that they were elected to fix it and have largely failed to do so. They instead sought to maintain a kind of post Thatcher consensus and failed to deliver any creative solutions or meaningful change. Some public services are considerable better although whether they are better by the same magnitude as the additional investment they received is open to debate. Labour's failure has been the fact that it has not managed to undo the damage of 79 to 92/97.

The opportunism and calculation of Cameron in exploiting this torture case and using it as part of a crude PR initiative has genuinely revolted me. I truly dislike Gordon Brown and this administration. But this cheap vulgar piece of work from Cameron is sickening. I've always thought it lazy for people to say that politicians are all the same as each other but alas sometimes its true. I am in no doubt whatsoever that Cameron as PM would be as, if not more, duplicitous and cheap as Brown, and indeed exhibit the same pathetic, public relations driven hollow bilge as he does now.

Guardian  22 Jan 2010

In Denial About On-screen Violence

Police chief defends force over earlier attack

Chief apologises over Edlington case failings

Doncaster council's troubled record

Future to focus on rehabilitation

Doncaster torture boys were well known as violent troublemakers

Repeating the same mistakes

Friends in high places

Every year a very grand lunch is given by the Conservative Friends of Israel at a central London hotel. Anyone who is anyone in the Conservative party makes it their business to be there. It is normally addressed by the party leader.

This year's event took place in June, with the main speech by David Cameron, and the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, in attendance.

The dominant event of the previous 12 months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

We were shocked Cameron made no reference in his speech to the massive destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that resulted, or for that matter the invasion itself. Indeed, our likely future prime minister went out of his way to praise Israel because it "strives to protect innocent life".

This remark was not intended satirically ...

Guardian  16 November 2009

CFI

DAVID CAMERON has personally raised more than £5m for the general election campaign by offering to dine with the party’s biggest backers.

The Sunday Times has established that nearly 100 businessmen have signed up to a premier club that offers them a private dinner with the Tory leader for an annual fee of £50,000.

It is part of a discreet network of Tory donor clubs expected to raise about half the funds for the next election.

Those who join the second-tier “treasurer’s group” for an annual £25,000 meet George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, or William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary.

The Tories have been delighted by the success of the clubs, which are contributing towards their target of more than £40m to “blow Labour out of the water” ...

The Sunday Times  04 October 2009

Drug offences have increased in virtually all the top 25 most deprived areas of the country, with some seeing rates rise four fold.

In a speech in London, Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, warns a world of drug gangs, deprivation and organised crime, like that depicted in The Wire, is now rife in the UK.

It is the latest attack on Labour’s record in tackling poverty and crime as the Conservatives continue their raid on their opposition core support.

It is part of a week of speeches and reports designed to prove to working-class voters that only the Conservatives are willing to tackle social inequality.

Figures show 22 of the 25 most deprived areas saw drug offences rise between 2002/03 and 2007/08, with half witnessing increases above the national average.

Salford, Greater Manchester, saw offences increase 312 per cent while Hackney, north London, saw them rise 259 per cent.

Mr Grayling said "culture of deprivation, harm, addiction and failure that is a feature of the worst US urban areas” is now crossing the Atlantic ...

Telegraph  25 August 2009

Tories claim poor being let down

Tory vow to fix 'broken Britain'

Tories attack school poverty gap

Citizen and the state

Truancy on the rise in England

Children imprisoned on remand

Family breakdown a national tragedy

Make it harder to get married

Government targeting teen binge drinking

In a land without morals

More than £340bn has been paid in state benefits to the jobless since Labour came to power in 1997, the Tories will disclose today.

Theresa May, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, will accuse Labour of failing to tackle Britain's "dependency culture" despite repeated pledges to reform the welfare system. She will publish a Tory analysis showing more than £106bn has been paid in housing benefit to people out of work since 1997, £92bn in incapacity benefit, £90bn in income support, £36bn in jobseeker's allowance and £20bn in council tax benefit.

In a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank today, Ms May will say: "The benefit bill for Labour's 12 years of welfare dependency totals over £300bn. But the social consequences of this failure have been even greater."

She will cite communities in Britain where more than half of working age adults are unemployed and say that almost one in five children in the UK grow up in households dependent on jobless benefits.

"Worklessness has become a generational problem, passed from father to son, mother to daughter. Report after report has laid out the problems children growing up in workless households face: they are more likely to fail at school, become involved in criminal behaviour, develop addictions to drink and drugs and ultimately end up workless themselves. A vicious cycle has emerged," she will say ...

Independent  27 August 2009

Tory benefit cuts may raise jobless to 4m

Govt bank bail-outs to cost £145bn

1,162 quangos cost £64 billion

MoD ‘wasting up to £2.5bn a year’

TPA: Waste = £89bn a year

David Cameron's attempts to detoxify his party are dealt a further blow today with details revealed for the first time of his extensive travel by private jet and helicopter funded by multi-millionaire businessmen.

The Conservative leader has accepted more than 60 flights by luxury plane and helicopter from 10 industrialists and plutocrats with a combined fortune of £3bn, figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

Many of the flights were for short trips in the UK that could have been easily made by road or rail, although together the air mileage would have taken Mr Cameron to Sydney and back – casting his much-vaunted commitment to the environment in a poor light ...

Independent  16 August 2009

Figures from Greenpeace show Conservative-run councils blocking three times as many wind farms as they approve ... Greenpeace unveils new figures showing that local councils run by the Conservative party block more than three times as many wind farms as they approve.

Labour-controlled councils meanwhile approved marginally more projects than they turned down between December 2005 and November 2008, according to the campaign group ...

Greenpeace claimed last night that its study of publicly available information provided to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that Tory councils approved 44.7 megawatts of onshore wind schemes but blocked 158.2MW. Labour-controlled councils approved 68.3MW and rejected 62.6MW.

"One of the reasons Britain's green industrial revolution is yet to take off is the lack of domestic demand for wind turbines, and a key reason for that has been the attitude of many Conservative councils," said John Sauven, Greenpeace's executive director. "They need to be offered incentives to stop blocking wind developments, while David Cameron could make a difference straight away by making a crystal-clear commitment that a Tory Britain would meet the target to generate 20% of our energy from renewables by 2020." ...

Guardian  27 July 2009

... last Monday, David Cameron made a surprise speech about quangos. His team asked the rightwing thinktank Reform to set up the event at just a few days' notice. It looked like the standard speech made by all oppositions promising cuts in "the quango state".

But one astonishing new commitment stuck out, even though it was barely noticed in most reports: "Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist. Its remit will be restricted to narrow technical and enforcement roles. It will no longer play a role in making policy." It would be knocked back to "regulating lightly". Had there been a great popular outcry calling for the demolition of Ofcom? Hardly, since this is obscure, techie stuff. So what was this all about?

Within hours of Cameron's speech, leading market analysts UBS Investment Research assessed the potential impact: "This bodes well for Sky … We believe that a lighter-touch approach would result in a far better and fairer outcome for Sky, the consumer and the pay market. This could result in a valuation of over 750p versus circa 650p under Ofcom's current proposals."

In plain English, if the Conservatives come to power and abolish Ofcom, expect a £1 share price rise for Sky – worth some £1.7bn ...

Cameron's office says there was "no contact with News International" about Ofcom but history should not be ignored.

The Murdoch press has a long record of winning pay-back from the political leaders it backs – and it has recently swung behind Cameron.

In fact, it is so ordinary that too few political commentators bother to keep remarking on the malign influence this man has had on our politics for the past 30 years ...

Guardian 11 July 2009

The investment banker who helped to raise £50 billion for firms such as Eurotunnel, Railtrack and EuroDisney, had a reputation for solving impossible problems.

"If it was horrid, I got given it," he says.

There can be few things more horrid than the welfare system. "It's a mess nobody understands or can manage," he says.

He took three weeks to research and write the first draft of his report.

"I didn't know anything about welfare at all when I started, but that may have been an advantage. I was genuinely shocked that the analysis was such a blob, nobody had come up with anything clear. In a funny way the solution was obvious." ...

Mr Freud's big idea is that the private sector be put in charge of the long-term unemployed. Companies taking part would receive a huge fee for getting somebody to stay in a job for more than three years but nothing if they fail.

There will be bonuses for hard cases, and no special treatment of disabled people or lone parents with children at school.

"There are about 3.1 million people not working, I think we can get about 1.4 million back to work," Mr Freud says.

Telegraph 02 February 2008

'Going on the sick'

So, on the basis of three weeks research, David Freud claimed he could get 1.4 million people off benefits and into work. The fact that this leaves nearly 2 million where they are is glossed over.

Bear in mind - because papers like the Daily Telegraph won't tell you - Invalidity Benefit claimants have had their claims double-checked regularly by DSS doctors since Peter Lilley's reforms dating from 1992. I can vouch for this truth since a friend went through this system until his sixtieth birthday; it was tough, but if you were genuinely unable to work you kept your benefit.

This fact will not put off either party from going further and further down the road to US-style workfare.

So how is the US system coping now the recession has pushed up the unemployment rates?

The New York Times report makes ominous reading.

'Unsustainable' social security spending

Centre for Policy Studies

We will take over the leadership of a country that doesn’t just face an economic crisis – worse than the one that greeted Margaret Thatcher in 1979 – but also a breakdown of British society.

Across a range of indicators – depth of recession, scale of government borrowing, breakdown of the family, and the level of crime – Britain is in worryingly bad shape.

I established the Centre for Social Justice five years ago. It works with all political parties. It has won credibility by pursuing the very opposite of cosmetic change.

We’ve brought together Britain’s most effective poverty-fighting charities in a national alliance. Within this alliance every kind of social challenge is being addressed.

Drug addiction. Family breakdown. Homelessness. Long-term unemployment. Indebtedness.

We’ve awarded these poverty-fighters with privately raised cash. We’ve befriended them. We’ve fought for them when they have become entangled with government bureaucracy.

The best policy conclusions we have recommended to the Conservative Party – and to Britain’s other mainstream parties – have emerged from what we have learnt from them.

Three years ago we published a report that documented the scale of social collapse in Britain. It was called Breakdown Britain.

A year later we produced Breakthrough Britain. Breakthough Britain contained 188 policy recommendations.

They were based on the idea that a strong family, a completed education, good employment opportunities and freedom from drugs and other addictions were the basis of a life free of poverty ...

For David Cameron – for me – and for modern British Conservatism – social policy is central. What I have argued for some time is that this is not an add on but integral to conservatism and for four good reasons.

First, unless Britain starts to mend its broken society the cost of fractured families, of poorly educated workers and dysfunctional adults will make Britain’s economy uncompetitive.

The recent report ‘Bankrupt Britain’ demonstrates that as the economy turns down this becomes more critical, not less.

In the last ten years alone the cost of welfare spending in Britain has spiralled upwards by close to £100bn. The single biggest component of government spending is the permanently unemployed… the permanently ill… broken families… people with addictions.

Then there are the costs associated with crime. Most of the criminal justice budgets have grown by nearly 50% in real terms. This money hasn’t reduced crime but contained the problem. Although a lot more people are in prison we have seen large increases in violent crime and anti-social behaviour. If you look at the prison population you find young men – mainly from broken homes – addicted to drugs – and with a reading age of 11.

Reforming society is not a soft option but without it big government becomes inevitable.

Second, in emphasising social policy we are rediscovering the conservatism of Edmund Burke.

We are not just against big government but ALL forces that crush the social institutions that lie between the individual and the state. These institutions could not matter more for our future and could hardly have been more neglected in recent times.

There will be no sustainable reduction in the size of the state if civil society doesn’t become stronger – nurturing more self-sufficient and vigorous citizens. There’ll be no possibility of light touch regulation if certain moral values are absent from our culture. There’ll be no competitive economy if families don’t encourage their children to learn and excel.

Third, the cohesive society.

Currently 47% of voters see Republicans as out-of-touch. Only 15% see the party as “in touch with ordinary people”.

The groups the Republicans were seen as closest to are big business, rich, well off people, Christians and the armed forces.

You cannot lecture people about freedom if parents think the life chances of their children are set at birth and that they are set for failure.

Talk of liberty is at risk of being seen as a self-serving arrogance from those who already have everything.

This, surely, is at the heart of the American dream. A cohesive society where every parent really believes that their kids have a chance of a better life than them.

The fourth factor is a by-product of the other three.

In emphasising society conservatism isn’t just seen as the party of the wealthy and the strong – a party that is good for me. It will also become a broadly-based party; meeting that natural sense of decent people that their government should be good for them AND good for their neighbour.

Centre for Social Justice 09 March 2009

A decade of education reforms—and lessons still unlearned

THE building is striking enough, if you like that sort of thing—chunky render painted azure and sunshine yellow; the school's name on the side in huge lettering. Inside, though, it is beautiful, with airy walkways and bright, quiet classrooms. The head teacher, Sir Michael Wilshaw, shows visitors the sports hall and theatre with pride. “Who knows what a journalist is?” he asks a class of children with severe learning difficulties. Hands shoot up.

This is Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, east London, which was opened in 2004 to replace Hackney Downs, a notorious failure. It is independent from local government although entirely state-funded. Its sponsor (Sir Clive Bourne, a local boy-made-good who died this year) chipped in £2m towards the buildings and plenty of good advice. The uniforms are aggressively smart, classes are grouped by ability and rules on behaviour are unbending.

David Cameron, the Tories' leader, and Michael Gove, their spokesman on schools, chose Mossbourne to talk on November 20th about what their party would do to improve education. More schools like Mossbourne, was the gist of it, to be set up by philanthropists, charities and parents, with local government kept well out of it. Mr Cameron called it a “supply-side revolution”, and invoked Sweden's school-choice reforms of 1992.

The choice of venue was pure political theatre, enlivened by some audacious cross-dressing. Of all the “academies”, as these independent state schools are known, none was dearer to the previous prime minister, Tony Blair, than Mossbourne. In 2006 he gave a speech there on his education reforms, his successor, Gordon Brown, by his side.

By planting himself in front of the cameras at Mossbourne Mr Cameron conveyed two messages: that the Tories would continue Mr Blair's reforms—and that Mr Brown would not. Evidence of the latter is growing clearer. Earlier this month Mr Brown ordered an urgent review of academies. More are to open, bringing their number to 400, but they will have to follow the national curriculum (although innovation in teaching was an aim of the programme). And local authorities may now run academies (although prising their grip from schools was another).

It takes political determination to counter the inertia of local government. In 2005 Tower Hamlets turned down an offer from Goldman Sachs, a bank, to sponsor an academy, saying it could run schools just fine itself. And earlier this year another London council, Haringey, competed to open a school under new rules—and won the competition (which it ran itself).

The contradiction at the heart of Mr Blair's reforms was always the absurdity of removing the dead hand of local government, only to impose an even tighter grip from the centre. Over the past decade schools have been showered with directives on everything from school meals to classroom layout. Syllabuses and teaching methods have been specified narrowly. Although academies can ignore their local councils, to set one up requires approval by the schools department in Whitehall.

Centrally imposed targets have distorted both what is taught and measuring how well it is taught. Nowhere is that clearer than in official figures showing that standards in reading and writing have soared. Independent observers say these are unreliable, because teachers have learned to coach children and there is unspoken pressure for scores to rise. In 2005 the Statistics Commission, a numbers watchdog, backed private researchers who said most of the claimed improvement in the performance of children leaving primary school was illusory (see chart).

Sadly, this lesson appears to have gone unheeded. Mr Cameron did not confine himself to talking about new schools and parental demand. He also laid out detailed plans for bossing schools around. All are to bring in uniforms, all are to group children by ability—and all are to teach reading in a particular way. A pity.

The Economist 22 November 2007

Taxation · Scrap inheritance tax on family homes

· Adapt the taper relief system to reduce the adverse impact of capital gains taxation on saving

· Abolish or reduce stamp duty on shares, cut stamp duty on property

· Raise the threshold at which the top rate (40%) of income tax is paid

· Cut corporation tax to 25p for large firms, 20p for small businesses

Regulation

·Appoint a Cabinet Office minister to be the deregulation secretary, responsible for keeping red tape within a set "budget" for each Whitehall department

·Restore the European social chapter opt out, and produce UK rules on: works councils, part-time and fixed term working, sex discrimination, information, and consultation

·Repeal, consolidate or "significantly amend" working time regulations, data protection and money laundering legislation

·Scrap Home Information Packs

·End mortgage regulations

·Remove the need for licences for small charity events holding raffles or offering bingo games

·Give firms the option of filling in one form for HM Revenue and Customs which would double as the end-of-year figures for Companies House

·Make Health and Safety at Work Act risk assessments "more proportionate"

·Where EU legislation applies, do not put in place additional UK regulations

·Seek opt-outs from EU legislation in areas where UK-only legislation would be better for creating jobs and prosperity

·Consider splitting off the commercial activities of the BBC from its public sector broadcasting duties and responsibilities more clearly than at present

Energy

·Keep North Sea tax competitive, so that oil companies have incentives to exploit what is already well-known or effective and to continue to search for additional reserves which can be brought ashore

·Increase gas import facilities

·Back research into clean coal technology

·Speed up planning process for nuclear plants

Pensions and investment

·There should be no compulsion to buy an annuity with the invested money in any pension fund on retirement

·There should be no maximum age to start drawing down a pension

·Future pension contracts could specify a range of benefits that are guaranteed, to be agreed between employer and employee

·People should be allowed to open a lifetime savings account, with income tax relief on contributions

Transport

·Increase the use of private money to build roads, following the example of the M6 toll motorway

·Re-phase traffic lights to give priority to major roads

·Allow traffic to turn left at a red light

·Remove bus lane restrictions at off-peak times

·Place cycle lanes on pavements rather than roads

·Introduce flexible speed limits, for example temporary 20mph limits outside schools at the start and end of the day

·Make lorries pay by the mile for using roads. This would be balanced by a reduction in either the tax on diesel or the lorry's vehicle excise duty. The review claims that this will enable UK hauliers to compete more effectively with other European drivers who pay less for fuel and vehicle tax

·Decentralise Network Rail, allowing train operators to own the track they run on

·Fit rubber wheels to commuter trains to improve braking and acceleration, allowing 40 trains to run per hour instead of the current 24

·Explore the feasibility and costs of introducing high-speed maglev trains

·Redevelop Heathrow to increase intercontinental traffic

·Streamline the Department for Transport by amalgamating the Driving Standards Agency, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and Vehicle and Operator Services Agency; privatise the Vehicle Certification Agency and Government Car and Dispatch Agency

Education and skills

·Radically overhaul the apprenticeship system, with a greater educational component

·Universities should be encouraged to raise money from the private sector, with tax incentives for people who donate to them.

Public sector efficiency

·Scrap the ID cards scheme

·Abolish unelected regional government

·Reduce the number of quangos

·Cut the number of civil servants, but without any redundancies

Planning

·Develop a "new city" for the Thames Gateway using brownfield land, low-grade farmland and reclaimed land from the estuary

·Replace "restrictive" building regulations with building standards. The policy group claim this will lower the cost of homes

·Introduce a presumption to allow building on brownfield land unless the planning authority can submit good reasons for a development not to proceed

·Establish community land trusts to provide housing for locally-employed people

·Streamline planning procedures so all simple applications are dealt with within three months

The Guardian 16 August 2007

Family breakdowns lie at the heart of many of Britain's most pressing problems, a Conservative Party report on social justice is expected to say.

Drafted by a policy group led by Iain Duncan Smith, it will warn about a growing underclass.

Tory leader David Cameron welcomed the report on tackling poverty, describing it as "powerful and convincing".

Mr Duncan Smith warns of an "increasingly dysfunctional society" which breeds criminality.

BBC political correspondent Teri Stiastny said it "paints a gloomy picture of a society where for some family breakdown, drug and alcohol abuse, debt and failure in education combine".

One of the main problems identified by Mr Duncan Smith is a growing number of co-habiting couples who split up while their children are young ...

BBC NEWS  11 December 2006

'Breakdown Britain'

Gertrude Himmelfarb and the Centre for Social Justice

In her book 'The Roads to Modernity', US neocon Gertrude Himmelfarb examines the life of John Wesley, and the impact of the Methodist Revival in 18th Century Britain:

Although the emphasis was upon the personal giving of charity and good works, the Methodists helped establish and support philanthropic enterprises and institutions of every kind: hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages, friendly societies, schools, and libraries ...

"Roads to Modernity" Vintage Books, 2004, p123

It's clear from an over-view of Himmelfarb's writings that Victorian England is, for her, something of an icon for the true neoliberal society; one in which government adopts 'laissez-faire' economic policies, alongside a hierarchical society where a shared religious belief - and charity - played a central role.

The notion, if that's what it is, of a resurrection of Victorian England is, of course, a sentimental fantasy. The global world of 24/7 corporate advertising, consumerism, easy credit, and libertarian drinking 'laws' would have shocked Queen Victoria and William Gladstone.

There are, however, enough indicators that this is the world to which the likes not only IDS, but also Tony Blair would like to return.

Blair's academy schools' policy suggests that, despite the obviously secular nature of 21st century society, his education policy - like his foreign policy - was driven by a desire to inculcate a certain type of religion:   [GDN].

For IDS and Cameron, Enterprise areas are part-and-parcel of the plan to take government out of social policy:

David Cameron today sharpens his commitment to helping the poor by describing those left behind by rising living standards elsewhere in the population as the most urgent political problem facing Britain.

In an article for the Guardian, the Conservative leader says central government intervention is often too blunt an instrument to aid hard-to-reach families.

Instead he endorses proposals published by a Tory task force today for "social enterprise zones" in run-down areas, boosted by tax relief and fewer planning constraints ...

"Social enterprises ... are not, as many on the left claim, cut-price welfare organisations, commercial wolves dressed in the sheep's clothing of charity.

They are fired by the same passion for public service which drives the statutory sector, but they deliver it in a way which is often more effective than the large and lumbering agencies of government."   [GDN]

The Fatherless Family

'The two sides of Manchester'

Breakthrough Birmingham

Breakthrough Manchester

The Message Trust