… read this article by Johann Hari in today’s Independent. Here are some excerpts:
In 2006, a group of rebranded “compassionate Conservatives” beat Labour for control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, a long stretch of west London. George Osborne says the work they have done since then will be a “model” for a new Conservative government, while Cameron has singled them out as a council he is especially “proud” of.
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The Conservative administration was determined to shrink the size of the state and cut taxes as an end in itself. Rather than pay for it by taking more from the people in the borough with the most money, they slashed services for the broke and the broken first. After the homeless, they turned to help for the disabled. In their 2006 manifesto, the local Conservatives had given a cast-iron guarantee: “A Conservative council will not reintroduce home-care charging”. It was a totemic symbol of leaving behind Thatcherism: they wouldn’t charge the disabled, the mentally ill or the elderly for the care they needed just to survive.
Within three months, the promise was broken. Debbie Domb, 51, is a teacher who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994. She had to give up work, and now she needs 24/7 care. After being lifted up by a large metal harness and placed in her wheelchair so she can talk to me, she explains: “This was always such a great place to live if you were disabled. You were really treated well. Then this new council was elected and it’s been so frightening… The first thing that happened when they came in was that they announced any disabled person they assessed as having ‘lower moderate’ needs was totally cut off. 
So people who needed help having a shower, or getting dressed, had that lifeline taken away completely. Then they started sending the rest of us bills.
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And in this boarded-up youth club, in Debbie’s panic, in the image of Jane and her bump on the floor of the park, I realise I am peering into the reality of David Cameron’s “Big Society”. The council here told people that if they took away services like this, there would be volunteers; if the state withered away, people would start to provide the services for each other. But nobody opened their home to Jane, or volunteered to feed Debbie, or started a new youth club on their own time and with their own money. The state retreated and the service collapsed. It’s a rebranding trick. The Conservatives know that shutting down public services sounds cruel, while calling for volunteerism sounds kind – but the effect is exactly the same.
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So what is Cameron so proud of here? There seems to be only one answer: in this area the Tories have managed to cut council tax by 3 per cent. They’ve given back about £20 a year to somebody on an average income, and about four times more to a rich person. That’s why, when Cameron was challenged about what has happened here, he said: “When I look at the record of what the Conservatives have done here in Hammersmith and Fulham, far from being embarrassed as the Conservative leader, I’m proud of what they’re doing.” As I heard this, I remembered that earlier this year Cameron’s close friend and shadow cabinet member Ed Vaizey said Cameron is “much more Conservative than he acts, or than he is forced to be by political exigency”. The principles that run through Cameron’s politics seem to become visible at last, as clear and as stark as the Westway on the Hammersmith skyline: tax cuts, whatever the social cost.
Is wielding the Hammersmith hammer really worth it? Is cutting taxes by a fraction justified if it means abandoning the most desperate people – the homeless, the disabled, the poor? Is that who we want to be? The last time I see her, Debbie Domb tries to move a little in her chair – painfully, slowly – and says: “People should look at what they have done to us in Hammersmith. This is what Cameron and Osborne want to do to Britain. They say so. Remember, the people running this council said before they were elected that they were compassionate Conservatives. I can see the Conservatism. Where’s the compassion?”
