Introduction

Despite continuing scepticism ‘on the doorstep’, enthusiasm for the ‘Big Society’, at least among key elements of the Conservative Party, appears to be increasing. This chapter first looks at the changing context of Tory politics and specifically the origins and nature of the Big Society as set out by contemporary Conservative thinkers – and think tanks. Thereafter the discussion considers how well ideas about the Big Society articulate with the principles that underpin the Coalition government's social policies. In view of the current financial crisis (skilfully transformed by the Conservative–Liberal Democratic Coalition government into a crisis of the public sector), a particular point of concern is how far Big Society thinking might be contributing to new forms of discipline and social control as particular interpretations of individual behaviour and ‘responsibility’ risk ‘redlining’ the more deprived sections of the community. A brief concluding section raises some wider issues about the feasibility of the Big Society as a ‘project’, and poses the rhetorical question as to whether its main legacy could be little more than a renewed authoritarianism.

Changing Conservative politics

Before exploring Conservative thinking about the Big Society itself, it is important to understand how the idea gained influence in the Tory Party. How, in other words, did a conception of society that, on the face of it, promises to decentralise state power, empower local communities and individuals, increase social justice and reduce poverty (see Cameron, 2009, pp 3-4), find purchase in a party that, both before and after New Labour's election victory in 1997, appeared unable to shake off an embedded image of callous disregard for the victims of free market liberalism and marked intolerance over social and moral issues? One answer to this question could be that the corrosive combination of neoliberalism and moral authoritarianism (Gamble, 1994) that defined the ‘Thatcherite’ Conservative Party in the 1980s and 1990s has not been shaken off and the Party continues to pursue the economic and social goals espoused by Margaret Thatcher and her acolytes. On the other hand, it is reasonable to argue that something has changed in the Conservative Party, most obviously since David Cameron became leader in 2005. For Bale (2010, p 381), Cameron's swift decision to move to the centre ground of politics was the crucial factor that distinguished him from his ill-fated immediate successors.