New Party Leader Addresses Brit "Broken Society"

Ten years ago British Prime Minister Tony Blair turned the Labour Party away from its economic socialism. But the real problem in its left-wing recipe was left to fester, the destruction of civil society by the all-powerful social-services state. Conservatives in Britain and the United States know what that looks like, and we know what to do about it. Writer Theodore Dalrymple has witnessed to it in numerous articles and in Life at the Bottom: the utter degradation of underclass life under the tutelage of the welfare state. Numerous writers and politicians have shown what to do about it, from Charles Murray and his Losing Ground to Rudolph Giuliani and his “broken window” policing. Now the spotlight shifts to Britain.

It is significant that the first speech of new Tory leader David Cameron, elected by Conservative Party members to be leader of the Conservatives in the British Parliament, should address the “broken society” of the welfare state.

I want to set free the voluntary sector and social enterprises to deal with the linked problems that blight so many of our communities, of drug abuse, family breakdown, poor public space, chaotic home environments, high crime.

We can deal with these issues, we can mend our broken society.

In opening this flank attack on the welfare state he is opening a new era in British politics. As always, the thinkers and the scribblers have got there first: There is Civitas, the British think tank that has opened a low-cost independent school to serve parents of modest means that want to escape from the “bog standard” government schools. And there is James Bartholomew and his book The Welfare State We’re In, a devastating history of the welfare state in Britain over the last century.

It’s a radical notion, that the social space for helping the helpless should be filled by a voluntary sector, rather than by government experts and functionaries. For most people in Britain and in the United States the idea is over the top, so used are we to the educated class’s insistence that only they, furnished with our money, have the standing to help the poor and the unfortunate.

We will see whether David Cameron can move the British people away from the government model of social welfare towards another model: ordinary people helping ordinary people, face to face, heart to heart.