Today's news is hinting at splits in the coalition over multi-culturalism. Apparently Clegg is for it and Cameron against. Apparently the Big Society will be big on muscular liberalism but that is not enough for the Deputy Prime Minister who it seems wants multi-culturalism back at the heart of the Big Society.
Is it possible that on the horizon we may be seeing a split that will allow the voters a say in whether the shape and direction of society is leading to a fairer and more moral society not just a Big Society?
I imagine that Ed Milliband will have greeted the result of the Barnsley by-election with barely concealed joy. the Liberals losing their deposit and the Conservatives coming third to UKIP.
Barnsley is not really the new middle England but that result is brilliant and definitely gives the Labour Party bragging rights until the next by-, or hopefully general, election .
The candidate of course resigned a commission in the Army to fight the seat and whilst not being an identi-kit Barnsley or even Labour Candidate, brought some genuinely held and pretty radical opinions to bear not least in his published views on the Labour parties support for the armed forces and his first hand experiences of the health service as a result of personal tragedy.
The Big Society is struggling and is still in the incubation unit whilst the Prime Minister is rattling one of the very few Sabres he has got left over the future of Libya.
The situation in North Africa has yet to play out in its entirety some commentators are already forecasting the emergence of a successful economic revolution as oil wealth begins to benefit not just individuals and their families but the whole of civil society in the Arabian Peninsula. This of course does not necessarily take into account what may happen if an Islamic Republic emerges but the Islamic approach to money (not charging interest, stronger family inheritance, and not confusing price with value) could encourage a rapid increase in personal wealth amongst the population at large leading to a realisation of Gordon Brown's vision of an Africa in which internal markets result in increased demand for goods and services leading to greater personal wealth and friends.
At this stage it is a hard call to make.
We could in fact see an explosion in emigration with populations on the move seeking freedom and prosperity in the West, it is interesting to see how for so many people, as we realised to talking to people in Genoa, their ambition is to move to the UK.
Before the Big Society can be taken at all seriously it is surely essential that we sort out what we mean by the words we use. If a society cannot be open and welcoming to people wanting to make a better life for themselves and their families can it truly be described as 'Big'? If a society allows huge differences in wealth and prosperity to divide it between obscenely rich and scandalously poor, can it be called 'Big'? If a society allows a gulf to emerge in the overall health of the population, whereby class and geography can determine your health probabilities at birth, can it be called a 'Big'? If a society cannot find the resources to invest in its young people so that education is unequally rationed between those who can afford tuition fees and those who cannot, can it be called 'Big'.
It certainly seems to me that what I hear as the political debate unfolds is that the vision that drives the concept is itself small and partisan. For the 'Big Society to be re-discovered not invented, because we had a big society it was called the Welfare State and it was born of a vision that no longer in Britain would there be poverty, poor health or lack of education and that those with skills and energy and ambition were welcome to come and help build that society,the vision itself needs to be bigger that either Cleggs view of Multi-Culturalism or Cameron's muscular liberalism.
I have recently joined the Co-operative Party now there is a vision .............
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