By Dr Henry Benedict Tam, Director, Forum for Youth Participation & Democracy, University of Cambridge; and Visiting Professor, Lifelong Learning, Birkbeck, University of London. He blogs at Question the Powerful: www.henry-tam.blogspot.com

[This is a shortened version of H B Tam's article, 'The Big Con: reframing the state-society debate', published in PPR, the journal of the thinktank, IPPR, Volume 18, Issue 1, pages 30–40, March-May 2011. For the full version, go to http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-540X.2011.00638.x/abstract, and download the pdf for free]

Although there has been an increase in the number of studies which suggest that politicians on the right tend to be more adept at framing public policy debates to suit their agendai, there is still relatively little recognition in the UK that the fundamental issue of the proper relation between state and society has been placed under an ideological filter, through which policies relating to the role of the state are misleadingly refracted. This filter is used consistently by the Conservative-led Coalition Government to present the interaction of state and society as a zero sum game. The latter can only grow and flourish as the 'Big Society' if the former - which is caricatured as 'Big Government' - is shrunk. To engage in policy debates framed around how to move towards a smaller state/bigger society is to tacitly accept this filter, and forego the alternative of a strong supportive state acting as the key enabler of a good thriving society.

The Neo-Con Portrait of the State

The Neo-Con (Neo Conservative, New Right) political strategy emerged as a negative reaction to the development of the state's supportive role in enhancing society's wellbeingii. The failure of laissez faire policies in the 1920s, leading to worldwide economic, political and military turmoil in the 1930s and 1940s, convinced many that the state should play a stronger role in regulating the market, maintaining stability of the economy, and helping citizens attain a basic decent standard of living. This post-war consensus continued into the 1970s when it began to be challenged by political and business advocates who wanted the state to have much less of a role in supporting society in general, especially in terms of monitoring, regulating, and taxing corporate interests.

The election of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan heralded the rise of the 'Neo-Con' gestalt. Many voters – including the less well-off – began to think that they would be better off without their government 'interfering' with the 'wealth generating' activities of businesses, or undermining the market by providing so many publicly funded services to the general population. In practice, this meant laws and policies were changed to help big business leaders make more money for their shareholders and themselves, pay less taxes through lowered rates and safeguarded loopholes, and to merge or move their operations abroad with few constraints relating to the impact on redundant workers and their communitiesiii. Unsurprisingly, with the Neo-Con ascendant through most of the 1980s/1990s, power inequalities, with income and wealth as proxy measures, grew substantiallyiv.

From the Neo-Con to the Big Con

Between 1997 and 2010, the Labour Government responded to the Neo-Con gestalt in two ways. First, it attempted to present a clear alternative – government as the collaborative state, a partner citizens can count on to deal with the challenges they or the market alone cannot tackle. This is the state which invests in training teachers, renovating crumbing schools, and enabling hospitals to treat more patients more quickly. On a range of impact measures such as reduced crime, shortened hospital waiting list, improved education attainment, more accessible child care; as well as public opinion surveys like the British Social Attitudes survey (2009), which found an all time high satisfaction rate with the NHS; and National Audit findings of substantial year-on-year efficiency savings across public services; it demonstrated what a collaborative state could do for and with the public.

However, its second approach took a contradictory direction and conceded to the frame set by the Neo-Con. Big business and the banks must be treated with deference and allowed to operate as freely as possible. So corporation tax was lowered, regulation of businesses – especially in the finance sector – was minimised, Conservative legislation restricting industrial action was largely retained, the onus on dealing with upheavals of the globalised economy was placed squarely on workers to be more flexible, and the widening of the income gap by ever inflated top executive pay and bonus was accepted as a feature of a vibrant market economy.

Looking back on New Labour's mixed response to the Neo-Con philosophy, Conservatives such as David Cameron and George Osborne could see that the pro-corporate filter had remained virtually intact. If voters could now be persuaded to view the public sector as something in need of drastic downsizing, no government in the near future would again be able to constrain the power of the corporate elite by providing publicly funded and organised support to people losing out in an even more deregulated marketplace. In short, they decided to send out a core framing message: the state could not be trusted; the more it does, the more it undermines society; but shrink it, and society would thrive.

Thus the 'Big Con' was unleashed, with the "Big Government has failed" mantra repeated at every opportunity. This was followed up with the claim that we must, therefore, look to the 'Big Society'.

It is astounding how quickly the true origins of the economic crisis have been forgotten – or buried. The Big Con pins the deficit created by the bank bailout on the Labour Government's earlier investment in improving public services for all. By suggesting it was inherently brought about by 'Big Government', it presents the dismantling of 'Big Government' as a necessity. In the meantime, having diverted public concern with disempowerment through framing the threat of excessive power solely in terms of the role of the state, Cameron and his closest allies have pressed ahead with plans to shift power even further towards those who are already among the most powerful in society (e.g., media moguls, bankers, top business executives, private multinational healthcare providers, etc.) amongst whom are those who caused the financial mess in the first place.

Deconstructing the Big Con

If policy debates continue to be conducted through the deceptive frame of 'the state needs to be smaller for society to improve', the centre of gravity will inexorably shift towards the state doing less – with lots of ideas on how to do things innovatively, more efficiently, but always with the presumption that more should be left to markets and communities, with the state having to be constrained more and more. But this presumption should be challenged at every point where it disconnects with the reality of a society increasingly deprived of the support of a collaborative state.

Is it good for society for those with less to bear more of the burden?

According to the Big Con, the costs and benefits of shrinking government to create the 'Big Society' are shared out fairly among everyone. But evidence suggests that the severity of the government's treatment of people is in inverse proportion to how powerful they are in society. To achieve a £30 billion reduction in the deficit through tax increases, for example, costs both those at the bottom 20 per cent and top 20 per cent of the country's income scale roughly the same (3.4 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively); but to achieve it through spending cuts damages the bottom 20 per cent twelve times more (12 per cent and less than 1 per cent respectively)v. However, the government's intention is not to rely on tax increases or even to split the reductions evenly between tax increases and spending cuts, but to rely on spending cuts to find 80 per cent of the reductions, which inflicts the greatest pain on the poorest and most powerless. For example, Legal Aid is cut by £350 million when between 80-90 per cent of that budget is used to support the legal fees of the poorest 20 per cent of the population. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, child poverty, poverty for working-age adults with children as well as those without children, will all be going up, with 900,000 more people falling below the poverty line by 2013/14vi.

Is handing more power to powerful corporate interests good for society?

According to the Big Con, the more power is taken away from the state, the better it will be for society. What this hides is the fact that power is being taken away from the state and handed to powerful corporate interests which do not always have a reassuring track record in serving the needs of society more than publicly funded services have done.

Many NDPBs (non-departmental public bodies or Quangos) are being shut down. For example, the Food Standards Agency, which has been at the forefront of raising industry standards in tackling unsafe and unhealthy food, is being dismantled in favour of an advisory body dominated by representatives of big corporations with a key interest in the food businessvii. And at a time when the expansion of the gambling industry is of growing concern to the public, the Gambling Commission, which has an independent regulatory role in keeping crime out of gambling, and protecting children and vulnerable people from being harmed or exploited, is to be closed downviii. But as all its regulatory activities are funded by licence fees charged to the gambling industry, one has to question who will really gain from its abolition.

Meanwhile, the Health & Social Care Bill threatens to turn the NHS into a marketplace to be dominated by for-profit organisations, with preferential terms to be given to private health providers to enable them to enter the market where they could then use 'loss leaders' to crowd out not-for-profit trustsix.

How are the interests of financial speculators and society to be reconciled without a strong government?

When they were in opposition, Cameron and his allies supported New Labour in leaving the Thatcherite deregulation of the finance sector in place, which paved the way for the banking crisis. Once in government, they backed off the bankers' bonus system which has greatly encouraged the irresponsible gambling of savers' moneyx. How feeble existing regulation is compared with bonus-based incentives can be seen from a recent example where Barclays was fined over £7 million for misleading a large number of elderly customers into putting a total of £692 million into risky funds. Instead of deducting £7 million from the pay of the executive who was in charge of the responsible unit, the bank later rewarded him with a bonus of £6.5 millionxi.

The government might claim that they cannot act alone to curb excessive financial speculations when the bankers might move their base to other European countries, but the European Parliament has overwhelmingly backed a report calling for a tax on financial transactions across Europe, and has urged the European Commission to develop plans to introduce such a tax for all member statesxii. The Chancellor is apparently against such a tax, however.

Should the state generally do less to help the poor but more to help the rich?

The Big Con vision of the state shrinks its role in helping the poor but consolidates its role in helping the rich. The Coalition government is accordingly cutting benefits for the poor and disabled, with more resources targeted at punishing these groups for any fraudulent attempt to claim more than they are entitled toxiii. Yet a different approach is taken in relation to the amount lost through tax avoidance and tax evasion, especially by large companies and wealthy individuals, estimated at £100-120 billionxiv, which is 100 times or more the likely loss through benefit fraud. The government – even as it proclaimed its determination to do more to tackle tax avoidance – is cutting back staff at HM Revenue and Customs whose track record would suggest their numbers should be increasedxv. It is also cutting corporation tax, on the familiar if debatable grounds that the gains to business will trickle down to other less well-off members of society.

Overturning the Big Con – Reframing the Debate

The Big Con relies on its deceptive frame being tacitly accepted, through its language, imagery, metaphors and assumptions spreading through the public consciousness. It wants people to feel that society is in trouble, and that the only way they can turn things round is by cutting down the state, as that would somehow make society stronger and healthier.

The first line of counter-attack is to draw attention relentlessly to the dissonance between what the deceptive frame suggests and what is happening in reality. Policy experts and political activists need to remind the public constantly that a shrunken state which only helps the powerful minority but neglects the needs of the majority is corrosive of society.

In parallel with exposing the deceptive frame of the Big Con, and with projecting an alternative state-and-society-as-partners gestalt, more needs to be done to address reasonable criticisms of how the state sometimes operates. The image of a supportive state can be successfully undermined if it is shown to be unresponsive to public concerns, hostile to innovation, captured by vested interests or bureaucratically inefficient and wasteful It is, therefore, essential, that in reframing the state-society debate, we proactively demonstrate both awareness and inclination in making the state much more dependable, responsive and creative in helping citizens tackle the problems they would be powerless to address on their own.

Instead of a series of isolated initiatives, we need a package of proposals to build public confidence in a strengthened democratic partnership. A government committed to delivering the package of reforms would be able to present itself as the supportive partner voters can rely on in safeguarding the interests of society as a whole. Such a package may contain a range of policies. I would suggest they should cover at least five areas which would resonate around the theme of tackling disempowermentxvi:

Nobody pays the pipers and calls the tune but the electors collectively: large donations by individual and organisations to people running for office, corporate funding for lobbying government ministers, unequal media coverage, and high salary opportunities for politicians to take up positions in the private sector during or after their time in office, all suggest to the public that some people can buy significantly greater influence than others over what elected representatives prioritise in their decisions. Reforms are needed to remove such undue influence, with campaign finance backed by electors collectively with a cap on private donations, and control to maintain balanced coverage across all media.

Voters to have a tangible and equal influence over who would become their elected representatives, and when they might have to step down: Voters currently have reasons to believe that in the many seats where one party has a sufficient lead over its closest rival, unless they happen to support that party, their views count for nothing. Furthermore, once an MP has been elected, he or she could ignore the views of a large number of their constituents for the next four to five years. Arrangements should be put forward to give voters influence proportionate to their numbers, mechanisms to recall MPs for breaching the trust of their electors in relation to policy as well as propriety issues, and more frequent elections.

Local electors are to have the power to vote for councillors who can decide local policies and local levels of tax and expenditure: Many voters' experience of how supportive (or not) the state is comes from their encounter with local public services, and yet despite successive governments' claims of favouring devolved powers, local authorities lack the powers to raise local tax to fund local services. A move towards fiscal devolution would hand real powers to local people in determining the level of support they get from their local authority. Central government should also be prevented from controlling what local authorities may communicate to the local electorate.

Assure citizens that between elections they would have opportunities to influence public decisions affecting them: Under the Labour government, civil renewal and citizen empowerment policies made a significant impact in engaging people in some of the most deprived areas in the country in shaping public decisions. These policies and practices, and their positive impact, have been recorded by organisations such as the Community Development Foundation and Involve, and can be systematically rolled out across the country, improving public services and at the same time strengthening public belief in their responsiveness and efficacy.

Provide the public with the means to counter-balance the power of 'Big Business': Many people feel disempowered because they believe big business organisations are often responsible for putting their interests above those of communities affected by their actions and that they are able to secure government backing through their public relations and lobbying activities. A body should be set up to enable the public to raise concerns in partnership with the government, protect whistleblowers, and follow up where appropriate with public backed interventions, including independent arbitration.

The outlined package above needs further development, and there may well be other ideas which could be added to strengthen its overall impact. But the list of ideas as it stands can help to draw out the dissonance between Big Con pretensions and the government's actual political tactics. A package of reforms to empower the public, opposed by Cameron and his allies, would present a vivid contrast between the Big Con and an honest commitment to reconnect state and citizens. The former would be seen as a deceptive attempt to shrink the state in the name of strengthening society. The latter would start to be recognised as the way to cultivate a stronger partnership between state and society so that collective resources can be used to serve the interests of all.

Note

See, for example, Westen, D., The Political Brain, New York: Public Affairs (2007); Frank, T., What's the Matter with America? The resistible rise of the American Right, London: Vintage Books (2006); Kintz, L., Between Jesus and the Market: the Emotions that Matter in Right Wing America, Duke University Press (1997); Lakoff, G, Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't, University of Chicago Press (1996).

King, D.S., The New Right, Basingstoke: Macmillan (1987); Bosanquet, N., After the New Right, Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing (1983).

Frieden, J.A., Global Capitalism: its rise and fall in the twentieth century, New York: Norton (2006); and Reich, R., Supercapitalism: the battle for democracy in the age of big business, London: Icon Books (2009).

The net individual income gap in the UK increased from the top 10% earning 3 times more than the bottom 10% through the 1980s to almost 10 times more by the late 2000s. The household wealth gap over the same period had risen to the top 10% possessing almost 100 times more than the bottom 10% (source: An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, Government Equalities Office, 2010)

These figures are based on calculations carried out by Professor John Hills, as reported by Polly Toynbee, The Guardian 12 June 2010.

Brewer, M. and Joyce, R. Child and Working Age Poverty from 2010 to 2013, IFS Briefing Note 115, London: Institute of Fiscal Studies (2010).

Including, for example, the corporate affairs director of Tesco, which had opposed the food labelling scheme promoted by the Food Standards Agency.

The Gambling Commission's work is supposed to be absorbed into the National Lottery Commission, but the latter is not a regulatory body. Its primary role is to ensure the smooth running of the national lottery scheme.

As the article goes to print, the Government claims it will listen further to the critics of the Bill. The critics remain sceptical.

Labour raised £3.5 billion by taxing the bankers' bonuses, but the Conservative-led Government would reduce the tax on bankers by nearly 30% to just £2.5 billion, when everyone else has been asked to make a bigger sacrifice. In fact, the Government first lowered it by over 50% to £1.7 billion, and only when public criticisms persisted did it increase it to £2.5 billion. Its PR machine then informed the world that its action had left the bankers "livid", though the latter knew they had got a much better deal from the Coalition Government compared with the previous Labour Government.

The executive in question was Bob Diamond. See report in Daily Mail 19 January 2011:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348405/Barclays-pays-60m-conned-customers-Daily-Mail-campaign-victory.html

Even a modest 0.05% would generate £172 billion. See Money Marketing 8 March 2011:

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/pensions/european-parliament-calls-for-financial-transaction-tax/1027379.article

What claims can be legitimately dismissed will be highly contentious since the overall budget for benefits such as the Disability Living Allowance has already been cut by a fifth.

Murphy, R., Tax Justice and Jobs, http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/03/11/tax-justice-and-jobs-the-business-case-for-investing-in-staff-at-hm-revenue-customs/.

Each compliance officer in HMRC brings in on average £658,000 each year of unpaid tax.

For a more extensive discussion of some of the ideas outlined here, see, for example, The Power Inquiry, Power to the People: The Report of Power: An Independent Inquiry into Britain's Democracy, (2006); Levine, P., The New Progressive Era: Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy, Roman and Littlefield (2000); and Tam, H. B., chapter on social democratic solidarity in Cramme, O., Diamond, P. and Durr, T. (eds), After the Third Way, Cambridge: Polity (forthcoming 2012).