Voters won't be told what to do

Author: Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph - Nov 14, 2009

The general election campaign began last week. We can now see pretty clearly the territory on which the parties will be fighting, even if they are doing their best to obscure the issue of who is on which side. The Conservatives are making a brazen takeover bid for one of Labour's defining themes – concern for the poor – while Labour attempts to reinvent itself as the party of consumer choice.

But it would be a mistake simply to dismiss these positioning manoeuvres as cynical tactical ploys for plagiarising the other guys' best lines. (Or, at least, to assume that they are purely cynical… etc.) The argument about the role of government and its relationship to the individual that was set off by two speeches – one by David Cameron and the other by Labour's anointed philosophical seer, Liam Byrne – has been characterised in jolly media terms as "EasyCouncil vs John Lewis". Roughly, there is the Tory approach, being pioneered by the London borough of Barnet, of basic, relatively low-cost services which can be supplemented with charged-for extras, as opposed to Labour's proposal for allowing public service agencies to become "independent" co-operatives run by their employees and users.

What the two programmes have in common (at least as they were presented in quite carefully drafted texts) is as interesting as their differences. For one thing, they both accepted, almost without question, that the old public-service attitude, in which faceless authorities give us what they decide we need and deserve, will no longer wash. Suddenly, politicians of all parties have made the startling discovery that there is a new generation of adults accustomed to buying their holidays and electronic goods on the internet, and who would not dream of purchasing car insurance without consulting a price comparison website – who are, in short, very sophisticated consumers for whom choice is a birthright and a way of life.

These people, who regard themselves as being capable of making grown-up decisions in all sorts of specialised and technical fields, then discover that when it comes to the most important areas of their lives, they are being told that they must take what they are given and be grateful: that they can not have their babies at this hospital, but only at that one; that their children cannot attend this school, but only that one.

There was a time in Britain when even private businesses behaved this way toward their customers – the legacy of wartime shortages and rationing had turned a generation of people into docile supplicants. But now the major public services are run on assumptions which are glaringly anomalous with the rest of our everyday experience.

Go to the original article here