Welcome to Utopia
Are we really 'all in it together'?
David Cameron is often accused of not really believing in anything, of having no consistent political principles, and many right wing conservatives are suspicious of the coalition he has formed with the Liberal Democrats. For his part, the man who stood behind Norman Lamont on Black Wednesday seeks to convince us that he is a ‘liberal conservative’ who cares about the poor and can be trusted to steer the country through economic crisis to the sunlit uplands of prosperity. What, then, is the truth?
Perhaps the answer lies in his pre-election rhetoric about the ‘big society’, which seemed to evade precise definition and became the subject of much debate. We now know that VAT will rise to twenty per cent, that there will be substantial cuts in public spending and many voluntary organisations will struggle to maintain current projects because their funding is being reduced. Most independent commentators believe that the poorest members of society will be most affected by these changes and that inequality will widen as a result. David Cameron, however, has a different perspective on these issues. We must reduce the size of the public sector and our dependence upon it, he insists, so that the free market can haul us out of recession. People must be freed to do more for their communities themselves, even running schools if they wish. His most telling admission was that the proposed cuts will not be reversed once the economy has recovered.
David Cameron’s philosophy is basically Thatcherism with a human face. He has the same naive faith in neoliberal economics that predominated in the 1980s and that was continued to a large extent by the last Labour government. Our heavy reliance on an overly powerful and lightly regulated financial sector, addiction to consumer spending and the absence of a sound manufacturing base to produce exports are all difficulties to be glossed over. Like many in his cabinet, David Cameron is independently wealthy and inclined toward a belief in self reliance. This is an easy virtue to practice when the means to do so have largely been inherited through a privileged background and belies the claim that ‘we are all in this together’. It also explains the utopian idealism that motivates him, the belief that shrinking the size of the state will liberate our society and create a rising tide of prosperity that will lift all boats.
The same dogmatism was apparent when Tony Blair was interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Marr. The Labour Party, in his view, should not depart ‘a millimetre’ from his legacy and he robustly defended the invasion of Iraq. After the collapse of communism, some neoliberals proclaimed that this was ‘the end of history’, that ideological conflicts would cease as all countries progressed toward liberal democracy and free market economies. Tony Blair’s misguided attempt to impose this process on both Afghanistan and Iraq, in collaboration with George W Bush, has been an abject failure yet he remains unrepentant. The idea of human perfectibility persists and is almost impossible to eradicate. Politicians, however well intentioned, can create misery both at home and abroad once they have been seized by it.
Quakers have long been associated with optimism about human nature on the basis that there is ‘that of God in everyone’. However, in our commitment to the principles of integrity, simplicity, equality and peace, there is a recognition that we need to practice restraint and balance freedom with the exercise of responsibility. Margaret Thatcher’s efforts to transform Britain made our society more acquisitive, created conflict and promoted inequality. Little has been done to rectify this and we now have another prime minister motivated by the same ideals. It was said of the Romans that they created a desert and called it peace. David Cameron aims to create more freedom but his imagined utopia could mean more misery for many of us.
