Jonathan Todd

I wrote this for Labour Uncut when I was on holiday in the USA recently.

On the day before his brother’s attendance at the royal wedding, David Miliband was in Washington DC. This followed his tentative steps back towards the philosophical front line with a speech at the LSE on the decline of the left in Europe. Then, at the centre for American progress, he addressed the politics of identity and fear. On both occasions, therefore, he tackled in an international context issues of profound domestic significance.

This approach, obviously, has the advantage of minimising any sense in which David is stepping on Ed’s toes. But such internationalism is also instructive. The challenges facing Labour are similar to those facing social democratic parties elsewhere. The rise of the English Defence League is not the only instance of the search for identity turning ugly. In different ways everything from the birther movement to the success of the True Finns and Thilo Sarrazins can be seen through the same prism.

Miliband identifies “a backlash against globalisation. In the context of a big shift in power from west to east, there are no votes in being an internationalist and there are votes in being nativist”. The west-east shift is involved with a deepening of the global economy, but political impulses form a counter-reaction to this. They may be less pronounced where economies are strong. Canada’s economy is relatively healthy and Bloc Québécois, who might be considered a nativist element in Canadian politics, suffered in recent elections.

Michael Sandel, a voice worth listening to from across the Atlantic, argues “in the age of NAFTA the politics of neighbourhood matters more, not less”. Particularly given that the UK is, according to Miliband, “an over centralised country with underpowered communities”, the renewed importance of neighbourhood politics makes the movement for change more consistent than it might initially seem with the international focus of his politics.

Sandel sees contemporary dilemmas mirrored in debates of the progressive era. “Some sought to preserve self-government by decentralising economic power and bringing it under democratic control. Others considered economic concentration irreversible and sought to control it by enlarging the capacity of national democratic institutions”. With Maurice Glasman’s praise for the “worker representation on the management board, works councils, pension co-determination, regional banks and vocational regulation” in Germany, blue Labour might parallel the former instinct. The later has an echo in calls for stronger European and global governance.

Miliband noted that Labour faces a strategic question over whether to support such calls and make the EU more central to Labour’s politics. We should – for example, on international co-ordination of financial and environmental regulation – when only joined-up policy will suffice. While the international forums that should respond to these issues are vital, they are too technocratic and remote to be rallying points towards progressive senses of identity.

The less technocratic and closer-to-home institutions championed by blue Labour are now important precisely because they remain capable of forming the stuff of such identities. Miliband credited Glasman and Jon Cruddas with “genuine insight” when asked about the contribution of blue Labour by Uncut.

New Labour, like other centre left parties, embraced the opportunities of globalisation from the 1990s onwards. However, such policies as re-skilling, industrial policy and city renewal, Miliband conceded, have not enabled enough of these opportunities to be grasped for all to be convinced of globalisation’s virtues. The response to this is only partly to be found in the emphasis of centre left parties on seizing the economic benefits of globalisation. Economic growth, particularly when equitably shared, can dampen the discontents of globalisation but it cannot alone eliminate them.

It needs to be buttressed by the left winning arguments about identity. “The paucity of the economic answer”, said Miliband, “means that we can’t vacate the identity terrain”. He spoke of a “demanding pluralism”, stressing the responsibilities that should come with the rights of citizenship, as part of this.

Both David Miliband and James Purnell continue to be spoken of as potential leaders of the Blairites. Both have recently spoken internationally on domestic matters. Both are grappling with some fusion of new Labour and blue Labour. This was implicit in Miliband’s remarks last week and has been stated more explicitly by Purnell.

We need the economic openness and aspiration of new Labour. And its willingness to confront change squarely where necessary. We also need the reassurances provided by the continuity and preservation of blue Labour where these instincts can be nourished. The challenge is in knowing where and when change must be embraced and where continuity is the appropriate virtue. Simply having the later gear seems an adaptation to the vintage new Labour model. For this to move us forward it must contribute towards a hopeful and credible account of what Britain can become. This has always been provided by Labour at its best and is the most potent antidote to the politics of fear.

That the Liberal Democrats are in a very different position is not in doubt. I think they’ve figured this out for themselves. Labour people don’t need to remind them that not only are they in government with the Conservatives but that this creates a risk of them splitting in some way. Defections of Liberal Democrat MPs and voters to Labour could be part of this mix. But the best way for Labour to encourage this is to concentrate on publicly putting forward the most impressive and progressive alternative programme for government possible and privately launching a Liberal Democrat charm offensive. To rub the noses of the Liberal Democrats in their difficulties is just to come across as crass and unlikely to build the confidence necessary for them to cross the floor.    

Jon Cruddas addresses these issues in his New Statesman interview:

“I think it’s a mistake to attack the Liberals. We should have a much more subtle approach to this, because what we’re seeing is the first major political realignment following the economic crisis. The question is: what is the equivalent centre-left response to this moment of rupture? Attacking the Liberals is wrong. There’s a danger of us spraying too much lead across the forecourt and not really thinking about how we need to regroup. We need to have respect for and show courtesy towards different traditions as part of an overall, plural realignment across the centre and the left – that’s what’s going to be needed. Arguably, the era of majoritarian [sic] victories by single parties is at an end.”

The Conservatives are, however, a different beast. There should be no limit to how much lead we seek to fire across their forecourt. We should be unrelenting in our opposition to them. While Jackie Ashley is right that Labour appears tone deaf when we are too blunt in our attacks upon the Liberal Democrats, the kind of passion which Ed Balls, in particular, has shown in opposing his opposite number, Michael “pipsqueak” Gove, is entirely justified. The more of this we can summon up the more likely it is that the threat which the Conservatives pose to the NHS, schools and all public services will get through to people.

I departed the UK for a family holiday in the US the morning after the night of James Purnell’s resignation. I have been desperately trying to keep up with events in the UK, despite the time difference, family obligations and the lack of Adam Boulton. But, in effect, though the much anticipated meeting of the PLP is still to happen, my sense is that Labour’s fate was sealed before I boarded Virgin Atlantic. The Cabinet’s failure to follow Purnell’s lead means that Gordon Brown remains Labour’s destiny. 

Throughout the debates about Brown’s leadership, I have always maintained that Labour has three options: 1.) Back him, 2.) Replace him, 3.) Allow him to continue without backing him. The third of these options is the worst for Labour but the choices made by key figures in the Party over recent days have placed us definitively with this option, while effectively closing off the first of these options and not quite reaching the second. So, the transatlantic view from Virginia Beach is that of a “wounded elephant” – as a Labour MP described Brown to the Guardian – continuing to lead Labour.

The Conservative performance in the local and European elections wasn’t awfully impressive – less than 30 percent of the national vote in the Europeans. Yet, David Cameron will delight at facing off against this “wounded elephant”. Labour’s Cabinet might lack a killer instinct but Cameron certainly doesn’t. He will relish the prospect of savaging a beast now wounded by blows inflicted by his own comrades.

Labour’s weakness, more than Cameron’s or the Conservative’s strength, opens up the possibility of a victory at the next General Election that will keep the Conservatives in government for a generation. Given this, why have senior members of the Labour tribe chosen to leave us in the third of the worlds described above?

We are told that this is a Blairite resurrection. Ken Livingstone has obliged Number 10 by beating this drum. But it is a funny kind of Blairite resurrection that is beaten off by Peter Mandelson – and how curious it is that Livingstone and Mandelson, once great foes of Brown, should join ranks with an ex-Tory MP, Shaun Woodward, in being Brown’s most reliable defenders. The terms Blairite and Brownite are now as hackneyed as they are meaningless and do not help us understand the events of recent days.

There is no ideological or policy divide between those called Blairites and those called Brownites, as Europe divided the Tories in the 1980s or nationalisation separated Bevanites from Gatskellites in the Labour Party of the 1950s. There are, however, those that doubt Gordon Brown’s capacities as a leader and communicator – in various senses, this was the message of resignation statements not just from Purnell but also from Caroline Flint and Jane Kennedy – and those that do not.

To these resignations Jon Cruddas has retorted: “What I don’t understand is that there are all these resignations and yet there is no difference in policy. Everybody is taking their bat home with them, but they are not staking out different ideological or policy-based ground”. John Harris has dubbed it a “confused rebellion” for the same reason.

But when Labour has suffered its worst result in a national election for 99 years, is it necessary to have a policy difference with the leadership to call into question its effectiveness? Isn’t it enough to say that our message is being lost by the messenger? 

Cruddas and Harris want to say that policy changes are required because they desire policy changes. But, while there are certainly important policy debates to be had within the Labour Party, it seems easier to find evidence in the local and European elections for deficiencies in our ability to communicate our message than in the content of the message itself. 

Slogans that are redolent of past General Elections – Labour investment versus Tory cuts, etc – no longer cut any ice in a much changed fiscal and economic context. The public may not understand the full details of this context. (Who does?) But they sense – and they sense rightly – that the real debate isn’t about investment or cuts but about how much cutting and what kind of cutting. The wisdom of the crowds is too great for the wool to be pulled over their eyes for long. 

We need to be more imaginative in our policies – as I said, there is certainly much room for debate about Labour Party policy. But, even more crucial than this in averting complete and utter disaster at the next General Election is an increased capacity to be more straight-forward, empathetic and emotionally intelligent in how we communicate these policies. Peter Kellner sees in the local and European elections an indication that Labour has lost the ability to persuade ordinary voters that we are on their side. This is both the tragedy of these elections and the challenge that they pose for the next general election. 

John Prescott was scathing about the European campaign. It seemed to me like a sorry hangover from the 2005 general election campaign, which was itself a little brother to the 2001 general election campaign. Massively improving upon this seems more important than policy revisions, irrespective of who is our leader, though my instinct now is that our leader will remain the architect of the 2005 general election campaign: Gordon Brown. However, what worked in 2005 will not work now.

The Sunday Mail reports that support for Labour has fallen to 23 percent – the lowest since opinion polls began in 1943. If Labour polled this badly at a general election, the party would lose 200 seats to the Conservatives, who would hold a massive, carte blanche majority of 220. The survey was also the first to record that the majority of voters want Gordon Brown to stand down now as PM.

These are desperate times, indeed, for Labour and while the expenses revelations “will hurt the reputation of all politicians”, argues Andrew Rawnsley, ”the damage is likeliest to be greatest to Labour at the next election”. Another poll supports Rawnsley’s view. There have been many highs and lows under PM Brown. But each low seems lower and more desperate than the last one. I didn’t think it was possible to go any lower than the McBride affair but recent days have probably managed it.

It may be that everything that has been revealed in recent days was “within the rules”. What McBride was up to certainly was not. Nonetheless, Brown’s response in both cases was to blame the rules and insist upon their reform. But people, especially public figures, have to take responsibility for their actions, irrespective of what the rules may or may not say. While the McBride affair was undoubtedly depressing in the extreme, there is something even more depressing about the expenses revelations because the people concerned are people who are widely respected and admired within the Labour Party, in contrast to McBride.

Of course, as I have heard Tessa Jowell and Ed Miliband say on TV, we should avoid making judgements on the basis of partial information and Ben Bradshaw and Phil Woolas also challenge the versions of events that have been reported about them. I am afraid, however, that, whatever the reality of the situation may prove to be, the damage has already been done and the dye has been cast for Labour. The party can now only, to mix metaphors, walk into the hurricane of public anger.    

What a prospect. It must make the most battle hardened Labour campaigner nervous about door knocking. Those lions have been lead to this by the expenses claims of the donkeys that lead them. Alan Johnson, however, doesn’t appear quite so donkey like. According to Rawnsley, he, along with Hilary Benn and Ed Miliband emerges ”as acmes of frugality who make modest and entirely reasonable claims for performing their duties”.

James Forsyth argues that this increases the likeihood of Miliband “winning the leadership after the next election”. But the question will increasingly be asked whether, if this were to happen, this would make him the next leader of the Labour Party. Even before the expenses story broke The Mirror did not seem disinclined to the prospect of the frugal Johnson, who has recently appeared to indicate more of willingness to take on the top job than previously, replacing Brown before the election. That frugality must have been good for his conscience at the time and now also appears a smart career move.

 Matthew D’Ancona speculates that he ”may yet be the first person to become Labour leader by going on television and radio repeatedly to deny that he is either capable of the job or interested in it”. These denials mean that Johnson is considered to lack a steely, Michael Heseltine or Brown like determination to accede to the very top. Given this and past experience – the lack of any challenge to Brown either when he became leader or last summer – D’Ancona seems justified in his view that “for all the sound and fury we can expect over the summer”, in terms of plots against Brown, ”the PM will still survive and fight the general election”. But D’Ancona was writing prior to the expenses story. Is this story a game changer? And, if so, how will the game end?

Martin Bright is right think to that there is a “distinct possibility that (it may end with) the Labour Party (going) into terminal decline as a credible political force”. He argues that the best way to avert that outcome is for “the younger generation of Labour politicians … to take control now”. Who can he have in mind? I don’t think Johnson or Harriet Harman, another potential successor to Brown, can be considered part of the younger generation. But James Purnell and Jon Cruddas could. Allegra Stratton has them down as a ‘dream ticket’.

“Why don’t James and Jon grow some balls and get together and challenge GB”, a “Labour grandee” apparently recently told her. The “grandee” will presumably hope that the expenses story has made these balls grow. At this stage, however, I am not sure whether it is certain that Purnell, nor Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper, either of whom (but surely not both?) might well consider standing in any contest that featured Purnell, is out of the expenses wood - though, this is far from the only question that might be raised about the supposed dream ticket. They are usually considered, for one thing, to be on opposing wings of the party. David Miliband – another member of the younger generation with leadership ambitions – certainly hasn’t come out of the expenses story as well as his brother or Johnson.    

If Brown can be prised from Downing Street – and that definitely remains a big if – then the number of names discussed here (Johnson, Harman, Purnell, Cruddas, Balls, Cooper and both Milibands) would seem to open up the spectre of an unseemly scramble for Number 10 – if they all were to grow balls, as it were - at a time when we face challenges so grave that Frank Field has been talking about the need for a national unity government. Peter Mandelson may insist that Brown is focused on these challenges, not his cleaner, but polls of 23 percent cannot fail to darken Labour’s mood music. It may now be the Tories turn to hold the expenses spotlight but David Cameron senses enough weakness around Brown to be edging towards a confidence vote, via the Royal Mail vote.

The chances are that Brown will avoid a confidence vote by giving enough concessions to Labour backbenchers to win the Royal Mail vote with Labour votes, while losing Cameron’s support for his Royal Mail plans. But how many concessions can Brown give without losing the support of the responsible Minister, Mandelson, a potential Geoffrey Howe in this drama if ever there was one? It’s bizarre that Brown has ended up in a position of such dependence upon his old foe – The Sunday Telegraph speculates that Brown may reduce this dependence, in respect of the Royal Mail vote at least, by moving Mandelson to the Foreign Office, “a post he has long coveted”. How these once bitter rivals play their cards on the Royal Mail vote may go some way to determining whether everyone’s favourite ex-postie, Johnson, ends up as PM. The Sunday Telegraph also suggests that Brown may try to prevent this happening by making Johnson Chancellor and, thus, “binding him in” to Brown. This creates the risk, however, as Peter Hoskin notes, that Alistair Darling will play Howe.

All of this, however, is just fluff and hot air – or “sound and fury” to use D’Ancona’s term. Not only is it fluff and hot air, it is fluff and hot air at a time of crisis. Shuffling deckchairs on the Titantic is the right expression. Martin Bright correctly grasps the depth of the crisis facing Labour. The worst thing Labour could offer now (and I have stopped assuming that things can’t get any more desperate, as that assumption has proved sadly, too unrealistic) is more fluff and hot air. That is to say more talk of a challenge to Brown. Talking about challenging Brown but not actually challenging Brown, i.e. not growing balls but pretending to, is the worst of all Labour worlds. It is worse than growing balls and challenging Brown. It is also worse than not growing balls and supporting Brown.

This is a crisis of fluff and hot air in a deeper and more dangerous sense than this, however. Brown promised the country a vision but, frankly, this only came into view with the credit crunch. This gave his government a sense of purpose that it otherwise lacked. Once a government and a party becomes so lacking in purpose that it needs a global crisis to give it one, it is little surprise that the public have little sense of what the party’s purposes, motivations and convictions really amount to. I fear that those battle hardened Labour campaigners, who are newly nervous about door knocking, would struggle to give a convincing answer as to what the point of a fourth Labour term would be, if asked on the doorstep. These lions have again been let down by the donkeys that lead them. And just as badly let down as they have been in respect of expenses.

The Labour Party, whoever leads it, desperately needs a stronger sense of direction. Until the party rediscovers, re-imagines and revivifies its purposes, it cannot complain about these purposes being unclear to the electorate. The most encouraging thing about the latest ‘date‘ between the ‘dream ticket’ is that it occurred at the launch of an exciting new Demos pamphlet. The Liberal Republic is a great publication by Richard Reeves and Phil Collins, which is likely to appeal to Alan Milburn, a name sure to be mentioned among the plotters. The likes of Milburn, Purnell and Cruddas are intelligent and bright enough to think through the thoughts that will need to be thought through for Labour to really rediscover its sense of direction. They should have the balls to do so and not to get distracted by the fluff and hot air. Only one of these pursuits, ultimately, will make a real difference. We were promised vision and we were promised substance. That is still what is required, whoever leads Labour.

Richard Reeves is typically thought provoking in the current Prospect. He quotes an interesting line from a recent Liam Byrne speech. Labour’s “mantra should be really simple. We want a country of powerful people”. Given his excellent biography of John Stuart Mill, I wondered whether Reeves also found this line evocative of a famous line from Mill: “with small men no great thing can really be accomplished”.

“On the one side” of the Labour Party, argues Reeves, “stand those for whom the economic crisis demonstrates the need for a more muscular state; on the other, a diverse group”, including Byrne, “who want to use the state to give more power to individuals”. Similarly, Jesse Norman has previously divided Labour into Trimmers, Romantics and Deniers. Remarks from Matthew Taylor and David Miliband are said to define the Trimmers. “Instead of a Government-centric model of change in which we assume our rulers should be given the blame for what goes wrong and the responsibility for making it right”, claims Taylor, “we need a citizen-centric model in which we reinstate ourselves as the authors of our own collective destinies”. In other words: we want powerful people.

Norman associates Jon Cruddas and Tony Woodley with the Romantic tendency. “They regard New Labour as a tool of neo-liberal capitalism, which has deliberately betrayed its working class roots in order to appeal to the middle classes”. Polly Toynbee and Ed Balls are offered up as Deniers. “They argue that the growth of the state under Gordon Brown has been benign, and should be continued and extended”. If we collapse the Deniers into the Romantics, then Norman’s characterisation of the Labour Party exactly parallels that of Reeves. To mix the terminology of Taylor and Norman, the Trimmers favour a citizen-centric approach, while the Deniers and the Romantics advocate a Government-centric model; precisely the distinction proposed by Reeves.

Certainly, Toynbee – “the high priestess of Denial” - appears to continue to defend what might be described as a Government-centric model. While Neal Lawson and John Harris, both closely associated with Compass, like Cruddas, recently argued that “the government’s responses to changed times have been either too timid or, on the few occasions ministers have still affected to be radical, based on the very ideas that are now part of history … running through the supposed remedies for the financial crisis is a discredited belief in light-touch regulation”. Thus, Deniers and Romantics unite behind ”a more muscular state”.

This side of the argument, observes Reeves, has “the upper hand, and understandably so. The government is bailing out banks, car firms, homeowners and charities … A new corporatism is being hailed”. Compass are certainly keen to move UK politics on from the “ideological vacuum” that Howard Davies sees it as being played out in. “Both Labour and the Conservatives need to find a new way of talking about the government’s role in a stumbling market economy”, contends Davies. The left’s response to Davies’ call for “a British version of Gaullism” might come from the likes of Compass, while the right’s may come from Phillip Blond’s red Toryism.

Davies hears that “within government a debate is under way between those who wish to present the state’s new role as a regrettable short-term necessity and others who think a positive long-term redefinition is required”. The Deniers and the Romantics offer up the positive long-term redefinitions of the left, as the red Tories provide the positive redefinitions of the right. At this stage in the economic and political cycles, all of the energy – the “big mo”, as Americans say – is behind these redefinitions. Those who prefer citizen-centric models to a positive long-term redefinition of a more muscular state, such as Trimmers on the left and compassionate conservatives, like Norman, on the right, now lack the big mo.

“Compassionate conservatism”, argues Norman, “seeks social renewal through the devolution of power and responsibility to people and local institutions, through greater personal freedom from bureaucracy and regulation, through breaking up state monopolies to improve public services, and through a renewed emphasis on the rights of the citizen and the rule of law”. This was very trendy in the early part of David Cameron’s leadership but red Toryism seems more in vogue as concern has shifted from “social recession”, once a key concern of compassionate conservatives, to economic recession, now a massive concern for everyone.

Broadly speaking, compassionate conservatives offer a citizen-centric model that demands a much reduced role for the state and Trimmers provide a citizen-centric model that requires a smarter state. But citizen-centric models are offered from the right and the left; just as the Gaullists – Compass and the red Tories – offer competing Government-centric models from the left and the right. Some future trends point towards the Gaullists continuing to hold the big mo but others point in the opposite direction.

The Gaullist ascendency seems confirmed by the inevitability that Martin Wolf now attaches to banking nationalisation. “In 1978, Alfred Kahn, an adviser on inflation to President Jimmy Carter, used the word “depression”. So angry was the president that Mr Kahn started to call it “banana” instead … We are painfully learning that the world’s mega-banks are too complex to manage, too big to fail and too hard to restructure. Nobody would wish to start from here. But, as worries in the stock market show, banks must be fixed, in an orderly and systematic way. The stress tests should be tougher than now planned. Recapitalisation must then occur. Call it a banana if you want. But bank restructuring itself must begin”.

However, the warning from Steve Bundred of the Audit Commission to brace ourselves for huge public spending cuts augers against the Gaullist ascendency. If Wolf thinks that bank nationalisation is inevitable, then it must be a very real possibility. Equally, who am I to argue with Steve Bundred? And what conclusions should be drawn from the conflicting implications for the Gaullist ascendency offered by Wolf and Bundred?

It seems that there may well be some areas of policy – banks, most obviously – where Government-centric models are unavoidable. This does not mean that Gaullist delight should be unconstrained, however, as the finite nature of public funds means that the more public funds are consumed in these areas of policy the more citizen-centric models become unavoidable in other areas. Put simply: Government-centric models, by definition, tend to make larger calls upon public funds, which reduces the level of public funds available to use on other areas of policy, requiring more attention to focus in these areas upon citizen-centric models that typically make smaller calls upon public funds.

The realities of public budgets are not, though, the only reason for advocates of citizen-centric models to have heart. Let’s consider the full quotation from Mill that Byrne brought to mind. “The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it – a state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished”. We all wish that Fred Goodwin has long ago been made a docile instrument but no real solutions to climate change, anti-social behaviour, obesity and much else besides are likely to be offered by either docile instruments or the state – no matter how benign or enlightened – that renders them so.

Instead, argues Taylor, “for society to progress relies on citizens acting more often in ways which match their values and aspirations and doing more for each other than simply obeying laws. To have the society we want, we need to agree to give more back. This is particularly obvious” – even after the credit crunch and the Gaullist ascendency – “in relation to four current public priorities: protecting the environment, improving public services, living together as strangers, maintaining a sufficiently strong democracy and civil society”. Responding to climate change requires citizens to change the way that they live; not simply change in government policy. The NHS needs active citizens to take responsibility for the future health of themselves and their family; not simply a reaction from NHS staff after a health issue has developed. The response to youth crime includes citizens volunteering at youth centres, as well as government initiatives like anti-social behaviour orders. And, ultimately, citizens get the politics that they deserve. Cynicism about politicians is the default position of our times but if the best citizens do not bother to stand for election, where will this leave democracy?   

As much as all of this stands against the Gaullist ascendency, it seems rather trite and common-sensical. Citizen-centric models, as with so many things, perhaps move further beyond the realms of glib cliche when concrete examples are provided. Here I volunteer personalised budgets. Of their application to adult social care, Demos report: “it changes people’s attitudes towards themselves and their role in the service. People who were recipients, whether passive or complaining, became participants in planning and commissioning the services that support them. The service users that we interviewed said that they became less isolated, depressed, dependent and more optimistic, energetic and confident”. They argue that “this participative approach delivers highly personalised, lasting solutions to people’s needs for social care, education and health at lower cost than traditional, inflexible and top-down approaches”.

In short: making people powerful delivers better and fairer outcomes at cheaper cost. I can’t argue with this. Equally, I draw more Gaullist in relation to the banks with every passing day. Yes, I feel citizen-centric in relation to some things and Government-centric in relation to others. Does this make me a bad or mad person? I should hope not. But call me a cross dresser, if you want. Call it being it favour of what works, if you insist.

The debate about the proper role of the state is certainly getting more interesting. But the least helpful response to this debate is to offer the same answer in every context. Just because bank nationalisation seems more inevitable, it does not follow that Government-centric responses are right in all contexts. Nor does the success of personalised budgets in adult social care mean that citizen-centric models are always the best approach. The challenge is when to go Gaullist and when not to.