In for the long haul

Member News

Beyond the immediate task of reducing the budget deficit, the government has twin objectives: to push power out to local communities and make the long-term good of the country paramount in policymaking, writes David Cameron.

Last year at conference we vowed to fight with all we had in the run-up to the election. That’s exactly what we did. I’m proud of the way the Conservative Party mobilised across the country: the marathon canvassing, tireless envelope-stuffing and endless door-knocking.

I’m proud of what we achieved: 10 million votes, two million more than Labour, a gain of more seats than at any election since 1931. But most of all I am proud that when we didn’t win outright, we put party interest to one side and put national interest first, forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats to give this country the strong, stable government it desperately needs.

I won’t deny that a coalition comes with its own challenges. You don’t always get your way. There has to be compromise. We’ve got to work to see the Liberal Democrat point of view, and they’ve got to try and see ours. But the real stroke of fortune for this coalition is that when you get down to the basic beliefs of our parties, we’re able to agree on the fundamentals of what we want to achieve.

We are agreed that the most urgent issue facing us is reducing the deficit and continuing to ensure economic recovery. But though deficit-reduction might dominate for a while, it is not the dominant purpose of this coalition. Our clear purpose – the purpose that binds this coalition together and drives us forward – is to make two major shifts in our national life.

The first is a power shift – pushing power out from government to people and neighbourhoods. Britain has become one of the most centralised countries in the developed world, and the effects of that are hugely damaging. You see that damage in the huge sums of public money wasted on big, clunky centralised systems. You see it in the fact that more and more people are disengaged from politics because they feel a great distance between the decisions that matter to their lives and their ability to have any impact on them. And worst of all, you can see the damage of centralisation in our neighbourhoods, in the way that civic pride and social responsibility have been sapped as bureaucratic interference displaces community action.

So we are committed to turning the tide on decades of centralisation, to taking our fingers off the levers of power – however difficult that may be – and giving people more control over their lives. We’ve wasted no time in making this power shift a reality.

Comprehensive Area Assessments to Regional Spatial Strategies – that was used to control the work of local councils. It’s about giving locally elected politicians the power to improve their area and drive their local economy as they see fit, ending the tyranny of bossiness they’ve put up with for so long. That way, instead of being accountable to the bureaucrats above them, they’ll be more accountable to the local people they serve.

Beyond decentralising power there is a second major shift we want to make in our national life: a horizon shift. It is our purpose to move on from the short-term calculation that has characterised the business of politics in recent years. We’re all familiar with the symptoms of short-term thinking: the initiatives designed to achieve a good headline and nothing much else; the tsars appointed to give the impression of activity; the programmes grandly launched just in time for polling day.

Then there are the less obvious, but much more damaging, effects of short-termism: issues of vital national importance get shelved in favour of more headline-grabbing issues; long-term economic, security and infrastructure projects get neglected. Short-termism is why, frankly, this generation has messed things up. We’ve over-spent and over-borrowed and we haven’t planned for our future – in our economy, our society or our environment.

We are determined to be different – to break the news-cycle obsession of recent years and take the difficult, Take our plans for a generation of free schools. By allowing new providers to come into the state education system and set up great schools, we’re increasing parents’ power to choose where they send their child. Or take our plans for welfare reform. By paying welfare providers by the results they achieve in getting people off benefits and into work, we’re giving professionals the power to do their job as they see fit, rather than dictating to them with a load of targets. And look at what’s been happening at the Department for Communities and Local Government. In just a few months, Eric Pickles has abolished a whole swathe of bureaucracy – from long-term decisions that will equip Britain for long-term success. It is in the best tradition of Conservatism to govern not just for us, not just for the here and now, but for then and for them – our children and generations to come.

You can see this determination to think long-term right across our agenda in government. It’s there in our five-year plan to balance the budget, however difficult that may be and however unpopular it may make us. It’s there in our push to get the whole of the EU to sign up to tough targets for reducing carbon emissions, however tough those targets will be to meet. It’s there in our commitment to keep investing in capital projects, despite the temptation to cut them in hard times. And you can see it in the long-term view we are taking of Britain’s role in the world, investing in our relationships with emerging economies like India, in Asia and the Middle East. Just because something won’t bear fruit immediately, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start sowing the seeds for that success now.

So this is what we’re about; this is what we’re working for; this is what we’re doing. I hope the people of this country see the strong sense of purpose guiding this government. And I hope the members of our great party recognise that though we are in a coalition, there is a strong strain of Conservative beliefs and values running through everything we do. Giving power to people. Encouraging responsibility. Extending freedom. Above all, working in the national interest for the country we love.

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