Is Cameron a republican liberal?
by Richard Reeves
26/05/09
In his excellent Guardian article today, David Cameron sets out his belief that "the central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power..." In the course of the essay, Cameron writes:
"We should start by pushing political power down as far as possible...With every decision government makes, it should ask a series of simple questions: does this give power to people, or take it away? Could we let individuals, neighbourhoods and communities take control? How far can we push power down?"
He said the ideal is for individuals to wield power - for example over the choice of school for their children. When it is not possible for individuals to hold the strings he said "we need to do the next best thing: redistribute power to neighbourhoods and local government". This phrase "the next best thing" is important. It is clear that the best thing is for individuals to have power: only when this is not possible should power consolidate upwards.
This is an essentially republican liberal agenda, sharing much of the animating spirit with our Liberal Republic. Cameron uses the phrase "redistributing power" no less than 12 times in the course of his argument. I think he might even mean it.
Stuart White
Richard: I am more sceptical about how far this is genuine republicanism. I explain my scepticism in a post over at Next Left:
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/05/camerons-agenda-its-populism-not.html
John Craig
interested you think it's an excellent article - think I agree with Stuart. David Cameron says power needs ‘pushing power down as far as possible’ and you say that only when it is not possible for individuals to have power should it consolidate upwards. But it is clearly possible to leave it to individuals to exercise power over climate change, but it would be unwise, unjust and arguably un-republican.
But maybe I’m being too literal - I guess the point must be, push power down as far as is effective, but that’s a difficult political principle to operate. Because power is relational and positive sum, empowerment is a complex and collective endeavour. Sometimes, in pursuit of social justice, subsidiarity demands that we consolidate power upwards, even when there’s a populist win – nationalism, nimbyism – in doing the opposite. But when ‘power to the people’ is your slogan, that’s politically problematic. So Cameron is either has the wrong principle – populism for its own sake – or the wrong rhetoric – little England anti-politics (personally, I don’t doubt his sincerity and I think it’s a little of each).
As David Miliband said this morning, the reason people feel powerless about climate change, sticking with my example, is not that international institutions are too strong, but that they are too weak (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8073000/8073267.stm). I agree with that, although I think a key Labour failure is that they have weakened liberal insitutions, from the UN to the BBC to Parliament. On his election, Obama said, ‘more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth’. That republican liberalism - the idea of the resurgence of a republic that is just and wise - is inspiring. And for Demos, I think Obama has a greater interest in and a greater story about how to build it than Cameron.
Richard Reeves
Let's start by agreeing that it is a good thing to have a Tory leader wanting a 'radical redistribution of power'. Stuart is right that Cameron is not about to invite Philip Pettit in to evaluate his policies, as Zapatero did! John, in the Liberal Republic we are clear that on issues like climate change power does indeed need to be consolidated upwards, on good liberal harm principle grounds. I should not have the power to destroy the lives of others, even unborn others on the other side of the world. And yes, in an Obama v Cameron republican contest, there is in fact no contest. But we are not in America.
James
Lets hope they're not empty words...