Ambient government

David Cameron’s speech at the Business in the Community Forum has caused a bit of a stir. The tradecraft seems to be pretty obvious. Vague mutterings about Tesco and inappropriate knickers for girls connects young smoothiechops with the concerns of middle class women in marginal seats. He chats their chat. He gripes their gripe. And he looked so dashing communing with the polar bears. So, then: just another factoid down the idea pipe. Maybe, but maybe something else is going on as well.

Young Dave struck a mildly chiding tone with business. Profits are great and wonderful things, he said, but there’s also the matter of neighbourliness, along with the implication that neighbourly behaviour by business was something in the remit of government to enforce. The government, after all, seems to have become everybody’s neighbour, and a remarkably nosy one at that.

We’ve already seen this government use the Private Finance Initiative to create a class of client businesses. We’ve also seen the government dangle peerages in front of any entrepreneur with a fetish for school uniform design and a couple of million quid to flog on the government’s academy programme. As the private sector advances into public provision, the state doesn’t retreat. Instead, it forms “partnerships”. Perhaps young Dave wishes to extend this sort of clientism into the world of business in general.

If so, it would be the logical outcome of the politics of the past thirty odd years. Thatcherism might have been serious about rolling back the state. But that was in an era when there was a firm distinction between the two. What’s happened is that as the state continues to abandon responsibilities, it gathers new powers to itself in compensation. And now we’re in a situation where it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between the private and public spheres. Rather than being rolled back, the state has become a kind of ambient phenomenon.

How does this work in practice? The government accepts that society at large must conform to the demands of the market. It therefore demands the right to micromanage education, ostensibly to meet these demands. That’s one way. Likewise, cities must become “world class” to attract investment. So teenagers who drop their lolly sticks have to be fined, and a special force of comedy cops is created for just this job. And it’s somehow characteristic of the current government to put a measure that would remove changes in legislation from parliamentary scrutiny within a Bill designed to reduce regulation on business. And in the Health Service, the micromanagerial frenzy grows along with private sector involvement.

It seems to me that when young Dave wags his finger at your friendly, neighbourhood retail behemoth, he’s taking the Tories in the same direction. It’s not an actual curtailment of Tesco were talking about; more an expansion of Dave, and, perhaps, a further move towards a society where the state is never entirely absent from any transaction. As the man himself says:

I want to explore the potential for a new understanding between business and Government.

With this new understanding, businesses that have publicly signed up to a commitment to responsible business practices would enjoy a lighter touch regulatory enforcement regime.

Let’s say you happen to live in a marginal seat which is also the proposed site of a landfill. Once you are aware of the government’s power to reward its friends and punish its enemies, then you’ll have clear guidance on how to vote. How neighbourly!