The problem with the Tories policy is a) obviously they are just using it to appear nice and get votes and b) they oppose the kind of intervention that brings people out of poverty through education. Educational attainment is not just decided by schooling. Basic sociology teaches you that cultural capital is a very important factor. It basically means that middle-class students have access to books, art, knowledge and other culture that their working class counterparts just don’t have. That is why cultural studies are so important. Whilst everyone mocks the value of the arts in education they have been proved to be very useful to helping people climb the social ladder.

Given Cameron’s lead in this polls it’s clear this is going to be the dominant narrative in the run up to the next election – ‘the Tories aren’t for real’ / ‘this is a posture’ / ‘New Tories, New Danger’ etc. The liberal left would do well to reflect on the last time a party opted to question the sincerity of their opponents position rather than engage with it head on.

As to the substance – if equality of opportunity is unattainable then it needn’t be said that equality of outcome lies further out still and is clearly a nonsense in terms of education. The tensions you highlight between autonomy and improving standards are valid but it might be worth listening to the IPPR MP3 of the speech – Gove did 20mins Q&A and this came up……

“Basic sociology teaches you that cultural capital is a very important factor. It basically means that middle-class students have access to books, art, knowledge and other culture that their working class counterparts just don’t have. That is why cultural studies are so important. Whilst everyone mocks the value of the arts in education they have been proved to be very useful to helping people climb the social ladder.”

We have an alternative, somewhat more basic theory: http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/readytoread.pdf

And we are putting it into practice too: http://www.supplementaryschools.net/

It really doesn’t matter what politicians opposed to our own ideology say, it will always be regarded with scepticism. I happen to think that the Conservatives are genuine in what they say, but agree that what they actually mean may not conform to your ideology. The conservative are right to say that ‘equality of opportunity is an unattainable and undesirable goal’ in the context of ‘discrimination against those best capable’.

We seem to be in a situation where the conservatives are becoming what ‘New Labour’ supporters thought that they, themselves, were becoming in the run up to the 1997election. Both parties need to distance themselves from Thatcherite Neo Liberal policies. It’s probably too late for New Labour to do so, and too hard for Tories to be believed. As the media keep saying “We’re all Tories (Thatcherites) now!”

The left should avoid the mistake of defining Tories exclusively with reference to Thatcher – she was an extreme figure in the parties history and not at all typical of conservatism in the round.

There’s more common ground between the vision Cameron is spelling out now and his party’s history than there ever was between Blair \ Brown’s New Labour vision and Labour’s history.

Oh dear. Where to start? This makes Polly ‘SureStart Rules OK’ Toynbee sound like a sensible pragmatist.

Equality of outcome is a nonsense idea that only socialists have any truck with. Of course Gove is talking about equality of opportunity.

This sort of silliness is why I and other (classical) liberals loathe the ‘E’ word, but it has become so ubiquitous I guess the Tories felt cowed into using it. It leads to this sort of absolutist thinking.

Talk about ‘improving the prospects of the poorest’ or something like that, dammit.

QuestionThat is absolutely right that improving the prospects of the poorest is of far greater importance than the nonsensical semantics of equality.

Middle class parents do indeed provide their kids with books and culture in the hope of giving them the best possible chance in life – in many ways it is the defining characteristic of the middle class. One of the problems of the educational equality debate is the way it seems to find this problematic. We hear talk of “pushy” and “ambitious” parents with “sharp elbows” and lurking behind this is the idea that, if only parents would stop trying to improve things for their own children then nobody would be left behind and we would all be better off.

That idea has to stay in the shadows because it is so transparently ridiculous but it still skews this debate. Surely, instead of asking what to do about the scourge of ambitious parents we should be asking why it is that working class families seem reluctant to get hold of books for their kids and fight for entry to the better schools. Why isn’t culture itself more widely aspirational?

But it’s no good simply redistributing income. At the end of the day, that just makes the poor dependent on the state, lacking in Quentin Skinner’s ‘Third Kind of Freedom’ – freedom from dependency on the benevolence of another.

Equality of opportunity may be an unattainable goal, but then so are most of the goals we as the human race aim to acheive – justice, freedom, equality, whatever. All are unattainable in their perfect forms because that is merely the nature of humanity – ‘out of the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight was ever made’. Nevertheless, that does not make it a goal that is not worth pursuing.

Equality of opportunity seeks to provide the individual with the facilities to acheive whatever they want, not to hand money to them on a plate. The way to allow the poor to rise up out of poverty is to enable them to work their own way out, in their own way, to the degree they want. That is fundamentally empowering and liberating; equality of outcome is not, because there is no concept of desert, of individual effort and responsibility being promoted; instead, a state of constant dependence on government for financial handouts.

I find it a bit sad that most of the posts on this blog about Conservatives and their statements, from Cameron, Johnston, etc. are so repetitive. While this one attempts some sort of lucid analysis, almost all devolve into simple “p: the Tories said it/ did it, q: the Tories are the spawn of the devil, p->q: the policy/action must be evil”. I understand that if you were figuring out you were “liberal” or “left” in the late 70s or early 80s, Thatcher’s reign probably wasn’t good for your psyche. But this really is getting a bit boring. Thatcher hasn’t been in power for 18 years, and we’ve just had 11 years of a Labour government. I don’t think the majority of the public still thinks, if they ever did, “Tories are evil”, so trying to paint all of their policies with the tar of decades-old antagonism seems entirely self-defeating.

I apologise for putting my rant here, which isn’t among the worst offenders.

As for the speech, the talk of “oh no it’ll only help private schools” is rather early, when considering a policy speech instead of a green paper.

I don’t think the majority of the public still thinks, if they ever did, “Tories are evil”, so trying to paint all of their policies with the tar of decades-old antagonism seems entirely self-defeating.

That may be true, but the fact still is many on the left did start getting into politics in the Thatcher years. such is life…

Sunny – but surely that’s no excuse for remaining ignorant of other strands of Conservatism or Tory thought?

I too started getting into politics in the Thatcher years and still have an active dislike for the woman and much of what she did. But you’d have to be willfully ignorant of history to let a clique of free-marketeers who hijacked the party in the late 70′s (Keith Joseph etc.) define the values and achievements of a party 400 years old.

There’s a comfort to be had in believing your enemies are just nasty evil sorts out to do bad things – and there’s a confidence needed to accept they share your aims and objectives but have flawed policuy prescriptions and demonstrate why. The liberal / left need to do far more of the latter and a lot less of the former….

This is just Gove trying to push an idea pinched from the LibDems and failing to understand it. There will be a lot of that about from the Tories – and probably also from whatever may remain of New Labour that is not in the grip of total despair – over the next year or two. The remedy is simply to read the LibDem’s stuff first.

The problem with Gove’s analysis is that most people are repulsed by the idea of joining an elite which exhibits abhorrent values, y’know like starting wars and seeking personal gain and advancement at the expense of the weak and vulnerable.

If the promise made by the Conservatives is that you can escape suffering and squalor by putting ten others in it, then it’s a tough sell because that kind of wealth is an exchange of spiritual well-being for material well-being and offers no real overall gain.

In order to sell this kind of policy firstly poshness needs to be decontaminated as a brand and leading Conservatives need to show that they are deserving of our admiration, rather than our suspicion.

In our ongoing search for the authentic, Gove and Cameron need to get real and stop with all this intolerant change agenda crap.

Thomas,

If the promise made by the Conservatives was as you describe it then they would certainly be unelectable. It suggests that attainment is a zero sum game – that you can only get on by screwing over others.

However, if the left pretends that this is the Conservative message it will eventually make itself unelectable because people will see that it is more interested in attacking the Conservatives than saying anything worthwhile.

If we want to get serious about equality we need to talk about levelling up by raising standards, and to spend a lot less time levelling down by restricting choice.

You cannot blame parents for wanting to do the best for their kids and if that means trying to get them into a better school then that is not in itself a bad thing. The problem is what to do about the children of less ambitious (or simply less lucky) parents who are left in the bad schools.

You can question whether Gove is right to concentrate on making it easier for the ambitious to get their kids out rather than on improving bad schools to the point where ambitious parents no longer feel the need to get their kids out but to portray the desire to attain the best possible education for your kids as retrograde is hating the symptom rather than curing the disease.

PS. You may not like it but “poshness” is by no means a contaminated brand in this country. Whatever we may say to the contrary, the British lap it up and supposedly classless America is even worse.

“The left should avoid the mistake of defining Tories exclusively with reference to Thatcher – she was an extreme figure in the parties history and not at all typical of conservatism in the round.”

But the ‘children’ of Thatcher became Tory because of her. They are now the dominant force in the Tory party. Heseltine did not get the job because the Thatcherites would not have him. John Major was seen as a compromise candidate, and when he did not live up to Thatcherites expectations they .
turned against him. William Hague was seen as Thatcher’s candidate, as was Duncan Smith.

Cameron has not fundamentally changed the Tory party like Blair changed the Labour party. When Blair won in 1997 he began moving away from the base of his party, culminating in the Iraq war. Cameron, if he wins, will, in my opinion move closer to his base, i.e. to the right. He is more like Bush, with his compassionate Conservativism, which we can all see now was a pile of shit.

The only bit of equality Thatcher liked was millionaires and billionaires paying the same tax rate as the poor.

Georcge V – the point is that for many people Conservatives are not to be touched with a barge-pole and in many areas one or other party are unelectable. Tribalism in politics infers that it is a zero-sum game.

I don’t blame parents for wanting the best for their children, I blame the politicians who’ve introduced tribalism into the institutional set-up of our educational and other systems by biasing the employment market with their self-serving regulatory and taxation policies. It is the tribalists who see standards and choice as incompatible, not the liberals.

“The only bit of equality Thatcher liked was millionaires and billionaires paying the same tax rate as the poor.”

Well not exactly, she liked to give even relatively low income people the chance to buy their own house.

Schools are now ripe for a bit of “libertarian egalitarianism” (to coin a phrase) because now labour have started funding the system properly, the only thing holding schools back is the entrenched interests within the education establishment and the government that manage to fumble even the most basic teaching strategies. The middle class haven’t cared enough about Labour’s manifest cos they can helicopter their children out of trouble (with tuition, with private education or even just helping them out with homework).

Don’t you guys think it is ever a bit far fetched to imagine that your evil political opponents are always secretly plotting about how to kick the poor into the gutter? I know it must bolster your own sense of self-righteousness but isn’t it just a tad unlikely? I mean, for all the collectivist/statist policies propounded on here, I usually attribute relatively benign INTENT to them. You guys won’t even give the Tories the benefit of that doubt occasionally on that front. Anyway, I don’t think the Tories are ever going to persuade you lot that they are serious about improving the life chances of the least well off. I just hope they get the chance to show you, and that they don’t balls it up like the last time.

“Well not exactly, she liked to give even relatively low income people the chance to buy their own house.”

I think not.

There is a famous story told by a certain well known pundit who was there when Thatcher was first told about idea of selling off of council houses. Apparently her reaction was “yes, but what does it do for our people”

It had to be explained her that this was mostly a political stunt, to get labour voters to vote for her, and more importantly, the money the Govt would receive could be used to cut taxes. Selling council houses was always really about short term electoral benefits.

So a “well known pundit”, that famous bastion of truth? But who is it out of interest? A quick google doesn’t reveal.

“Apparently her reaction was “yes, but what does it do for our people””

And which modern politician has ever thought differently?

“And which modern politician has ever thought differently?”

Oh ,so Thatcher was just another run of the mill politcian then was she? Sorry, I thought you guys thought she was was a woman of conviction. A woman of political principles.

Just another modern politcian, hey? I must quoye that to my Tory friends.

“you guys”

Could you expand on this point? I’m interested to find out who “I” am.

Synergy6 – here’s a hint, I believe its being implied that you, along with Question That and Nick are bunch of Thatcherites. The injustice of it!

Here’s a thought experiment.

Imagine a person who actually thinks the massive inequalities between rich and poor in this country are a disgrace. An inhuman, disgusting disgrace. Someone who realises the continually and obviously proven fact that the more grotesque the inequality of wealth in a state, the greater the inequality of opportunity, and the ossifying of class priviledge, as proven in America in previous decades, and, increasingly, in Britain. That these divisions are tearing society apart.

Then imagine that person saying “There’s only one way to stop this…I’d better vote Conservative.”

Then, imagine that person is not either a moron, clinically insane, or a liar.

Difficult isn’t it? And the liars are the greater part of the equation.

I’m not incidentally aiming those accusations at any of the aforementioned. They clearly arn’t genuninely concerned about the hideous and monstrous inequality in the UK. Fair enough. Its the fact that the Tories are pretending that they do that sticks in the craw. The fact that it may convince a few thousand key idiotical guillibles to go the other way.

If the Labour Party wanted to try and get back popular support without being such a bunch of cenrtist tossers, they could have a rally good slogan

“No-one EVER joined the Conservative Party to help the poor”

With the EVER highlighted in red, in bold etc. Its just a simple fact. And one which it would be good to draw attention to.

“I have an opinion. My opinion must be fact because I think it is. And anyone who dares the temerity of disagreeing, is is a ‘moron, clinically insane, or a liar.’ Therefore, I am proven.”

Great logic

Well, Ben G, I am not a Tory party member nor a Thatcherite but I understand some of their thinking. As for your mini-rant, in the end it comes down to a difference of opinion over what causes poverty and, after that, what humans are and what rights they possess and where their virtue lies (the fact that nothing of value is ever uncaused):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOd42r7szQY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16N_76mlsMk
(this is the most pertinent section from a long, but very intriguing, presentation)

When you take a more detailed examination of political systems, you will see that in many ways the poor are far more trapped into redistributive socialist programs in the US than they are in Europe and that the simplistic view of “Europe = social democracy, America = free market capitalism” is not enough to explain the consequences of certain policies in some areas.

Ben G @ 23 – since I read blogs quite a lot this is probably more of a sleight than it first appears but that’s one of the most ill-informed and banal comments I’ve ever read on a blog. Not only that but it encapsulates perfectly the sort of thinking on the left that led to 18 years of Conservative rule and will do so again if it gains any traction in Labour today….

Conservatives were legislating for trade union rights a generation before the Labour party was founded and establishing public health projects before Aneurin Bevan was born. The ‘middle way’ ethos of Macmillan’s government was expanding the welfare state in the late 50′s / early 60′s before Blair was out of short trousers

“No-one EVER joined the Conservative Party to help the poor”?

I hope not – anyone who joins any party to advance the interests of one group over another (as distinct from the interests of society as a whole) certainly isn’t to be trusted. At times the Conservatives have understood this and governed well, at others they haven’t. The same applies to Labour and if you go back far enough to when they regularly held office the Liberals too. That’s politics Ben and as Blair said on the day he signed off at PMQs the vast, vast majority of people on all sides of the house have noble & decent intentions with genuine disagreements about how to advance them.

As I said earlier – there’s a comfort to be had in believing your enemies are just nasty evil sorts out to do bad things – and there’s a confidence needed to accept they share your aims and objectives but have flawed policy prescriptions and demonstrate why. It’s a shame you don’t have that confidence Ben….

Liam Murray 26 understands that demonsing the Tories will not defeat them. A major reason why Thatcher won in 79 and Rreagan in 80 was that they both received the support of skilled craftsmen and self employed who were fed up with the unions . In the UK ther power of the shop steward undermined the formen and charge hands. In addition, the power of the unskilled and semi-skilled unions meant that the pay differential between the semi skilled and the forman who was craftsman was insufficiently great, especially as the latter carried so much responsibility. The tax rate was so high that underking extra work or accepting promotion and the extra responsibility which went with it ,was often not worthwhile. Therefore Thatcher offered the harding working, honest and skilled working classes a chance to financially better off. It was the skill, hard work and entrepreneurial of the craftsmen which gave us the Industrial Revolution. Many craftsmen emigrated in the 60s and 70s or worked in the Middle East because of poor pay in the UK. An electrician foreman told me that he only earned 15% more than someone who was semi-skilled in the 70s! When discussing the working class there is massive difference in attitude between the unskilled workshy who is prepared to live on the dole and the hard working apsirational craftsman. Unless the Liberal Left starts to respects the hard working apsirational and often self employed craftsman, then they are unlikely to vote for them. As part of this respect a craftsman foreman should earn 4-5 times that of the unskilled labourer. If white working class boys who are the children of unskilled parents see that hard work and skill delivers a good quality of life they may study at school.

Liam@26

there is a problem with differential ‘help’ strategies in that one group is necessarily likely to be percieved as benefitting disproportionately over another, and therefore what may actually be an overall good to society and a real good to all groups becomes tainted as harm to the group which does relatively worse.

As a result popular opinion changes to keep up with reality and ideologues get confused about how they came to be betrayed.

Thanks Thomas – that’s a reasonable explanation for why some groups feel aggrieved at certain solutions but it’s certainly not a justification for labelling parties that advocate those solutions as ‘nasty’.

As I mentioned in my comment there are plenty of examples of Tories advancing positions that help the poor at the expense of the better off – only the politically illiterate happily pretend they don’t exist….

Aside what @NIck and @Lee Griffin have said, inequality is not the only issue in the political universe!

I didn’t realise I’d commented in this thread!

Ahem. That should have been @Liam Murray, not @Lee Griffin!

@Nick Cowen and anyone else interested: I imagine you have read it, but if you haven’t you should treat yourself by going back to the classic; The Uses of Literacy by Hoggart.

“The problem with the Tories policy is a) obviously they are just using it to appear nice and get votes….”

No no, you can explain the problem without being as overtly hostile as that. When David Cameron presents himself as a liberal either A: He is being dishonest, as you say, and is just attempting to win votes or B: He is being honest, and is out of step with the vast majority of the conservative grassroots, in which case he should defect to a party whose general membership are more in tune with the message he occasionally espouses. Us. Given he wrote one of the most retrogressive Tory manifestos in years and he is inconsistent in delivering his “I’m a liberal conservative” message I lean strongly in favour of A, naturally.