‘The Good Society vs. The Big Society’ last night, a debate in a House of Commons Committee Room organized by Compass. Jesse Norman MP was the token Tory, or ‘sacrificial lamb’, as he put it, alongside Stella Creasy MP, the soon-to-be-Lord Glasman and others.
Several things stood out:
Surprisingly few people saying they just didn’t understand what the Big Society was.
Everyone wanted to claim small independent groups as their own, politically speaking. They were made out to have impeccable left-wing credentials, to be the bedrock of Fabianism or to be the little platoons of the right.