Yet the Coalition?s radicalism is not without risk. The electorate is perfectly capable of simultaneously applauding a dynamic Government and fearing the consequences of its dynamism. This is a swashbuckling nation of entrepreneurs, pioneers and warriors; but it is also a land suspicious of change, jealous of tradition, made anxious by those who would disrupt, transform and unearth what is already there. With the occasional vivid exception, Britain has been a country of evolutionary rather than revolutionary change. As a people, we moan with equal vigour about the status quo ? and about those who try to change it.
So those who undertake as much change, with as much speed, as this Coalition already has since May 11 must not expect a smooth ride. In this context, the triumphs of Margaret Thatcher are often recalled as an inspiration, and rightly so. But it should never be forgotten that the Iron Lady?s campaigns and crusades were fought in very different circumstances. The enemy, for a start, was usually clear and identifiable: the unions, Scargill, the Argentinean junta, international communism. Inflation is a less abstract financial evil than a huge fiscal deficit. The evils that Cameron and Clegg seek to take on are no less monstrous in their way, but they are much harder to dramatise in the public?s mind.
Mostly, the problems that the Coalition has to address are structural: bad systems which produce bad results, that spend too much public money with insufficient return. The transformation they seek to bring about is cultural rather than ideological: not a wholesale victory of ?small-state? doctrine but a generational shift in attitudes to work, to the fabric of our communities (the Big Society), and to our responsibilities towards one another and (as in the case of student fees) for ourselves.
This sort of shift will not be achieved by fiery, demotic language. Indeed, in many cases, it will be obstructed by such provocations. Welfare is a case in point. The journey upon which the Coalition is embarking is one of its noblest, and the ministerial team at the Department for Work and Pensions one of the best, under the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith. The annual �195 billion benefits bill is out of control, but it is the human cost of welfare dependency that is truly intolerable. So change must come, and urgently so. But that does not mean it will be straightforward.
Some claimants are indeed out-and-out ?scroungers? and morally deplorable cheats, living off their taxpaying neighbours with no intention of sharing the burden. But most are not. When it comes to benefit claims, there is a wide and complex spectrum of behaviour, ranging from the completely justified to the fraudulent: between the two extremes are millions of people, many of whom have grown up with no meaningful exposure to the life of work, or have been unemployed for so long that they have forgotten what the dignity of labour feels like. A myriad cultural and psychological factors play their part. Some will be fit for work immediately; some never; many will need help to make the transition, perhaps for some while.
This is not a Left- or Right-wing point, but an argument for practicality, on the cusp of a bold and necessary programme of reform. Take Incapacity Benefit. Next spring, a process of rolling reassessment will begin, subjecting the 1.6 million claimants of IB to a test, with the aim of abolishing the benefit altogether and transferring those who need it to the Employment and Support Allowance. To repeat: this is an essential reform. But it will be painful, politically and to the many who feel themselves traduced by the assessment results. Within Government, the working assumption is that about 400,000 IB claimants may end up feeling themselves thus traduced. Some of them ? not all ? will inspire genuine pity in the public. Some of them ? not all ? will complain vigorously to their MPs, to newspapers, on television and radio. Some of them ? not all ? will mount acts of protest in Westminster, protests that will doubtless seek to caricature the Coalition?s actions as Dickensian. Worst of all by far will be those who sink into despair. As one senior Government source put it to me: ?It is quite possible that there will be cases of suicide.?
Given that apparent risk, how much more important it is that the reform is enacted with as much humanity as determination, with a calm voice and listening ear as well as unbending political will. Listening to student leaders, protesters and sixth formers last week, one could tell how far the Coalition still has to go to explain to teenagers and their parents what the new and highly progressive fees regime will really mean to them.
The radicalism required of this Coalition is not the radicalism of its predecessors, however successful they might have been in their time. It is the radicalism of persuasive competence and engaged compassion: shock therapy, yes, but with a good bedside manner. This is leadership of the most nuanced sort: robust, sometimes fiercely so, but alive to the painful consequences of change, and mindful of the impact of tone and language. If this sounds incredibly hard, that is because it will be. Ministers and the police are bracing themselves for another round of student protests tomorrow. They won?t thank me for saying that all this is the easy bit.
Sam Brownback Laura Bush George W. Bush George H. W. Bush Jimmy Carter
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