Five - ‘Progressive’ neo-liberal conservatism and the welfare state: incremental reform or long-term destruction?

Summary

Grandma's footsteps is a traditional children's game in which one player, acting as the main protagonist, faces the wall at one end of a room while fellow participants line up behind, a short distance away. The aim of the game is to displace Grandma by creeping up on her unseen and tapping her on the back. Grandma is, however, permitted to turn around at any time and if she spots a participant moving she can point at them and order them to return to their original starting position. Since the mid- 1970s the Conservative Party could be said to have been engaged in a long-running game of Grandma's footsteps with the ‘classic’ welfare state (see Lowe, 2005). Instead of attacking ‘Nanny’ with a swift blow to the neck, a remedy favoured by many on the neo-liberal right of the party, a step-by-step ‘reform’ strategy has been pursued. It remains an open question as to whether the aim of these reforms has been to bring about the gradual demise of the welfare state or whether the underlying purpose has been simply to create a leaner, more effective institution.

This chapter will explore the approach of the modern Conservatives towards the welfare state since David Cameron became party leader in 2005. Are these contemporary Conservatives engaged in what they describe as a much-needed modernisation of the welfare state or might they be pursuing a longer-term dismantling strategy?

During the ‘path breaking’ Thatcher (1979–90) and ‘consolidating’ Major (1990–96) eras, the Conservative Party abandoned its apparent rapprochement with the ‘social democratic’ post-war welfare state. This change of approach was deemed necessary to bring the escalating cost of the welfare state under control and to provide citizens with an escape route from what were seen as ‘stifling’ forms of state dependency. Despite calls for the rapid demolition of the welfare state from some diehard elements within the party, a more measured incremental reform programme was undertaken by both these administrations, not least because of growing public anxiety about the pace and scale of change. Although the infrastructure of the welfare state was not dismantled by the time the Conservatives left office in 1997, there were signs that a cultural ‘revolution’ was starting to take hold whereby public attachment to this institution was increasingly based on individualistic and consumerist considerations rather than egalitarian or solidaristic sentiments (see Park et al, 2012; 2014).