AESTHETIC DISASTER

John Hayes says that big business

is as culturally damaging as big government

AS I walk through the centre of Bournemouth I see brand names, shops, hamburger joints that are identical across the world, and which so often in places less pleasant produce ugliness, sameness and blandness. Such sentiments are not those of an anti-globalisation Luddite. They are those of a true Conservative.

For too long politicians have assumed that good economics equals good politics; they have behaved as though standard of living and quality of life are synonymous. The view that endless material advance is the utopia to which all policy should be directed has dominated political debate for 50 or so years.

Because quality of life has awkward associations with values and morals, it became convenient for politicians to retreat to the safer ground of managing the public purse and advocating ever greater material consumption. And yet the material success that most of us enjoy is not the same as true fulfilment.

Yes, money is welcome, but the hours committed to generating income are increasingly onerous, leaving us with little time for family, friends and culture. Enjoyment of daily life is routinely diminished by everyday incivility, and increasingly by the fear and reality of violent crime.

The most important challenges we face are not economic, but social and cultural. The interests of trans-national capital, particularly its need for limitless flexibility and mobility, may sometimes militate against the sense of community in neighbourhoods and the solidarity of the extended family. We need to develop policies in response to these pressures.

Those who view politics as discovering final and complete solutions to all human problems seek big ideas and big structures to deliver them. Impatient with the imperfections of humankind, they are seduced by the tidiness and wholeness of pannational or trans-national grand designs.

But the glory of trusting local people to run their own affairs is that the solutions they devise will be sensitive to local needs and different from one village, town, city or nation to another. Big government is not the only threat to our way of life. Many soulless and rootless big businesses demonstrate little loyalty to local producers and only the minimum necessary commitment to consumers. The ubiquity fostered by multinationals is an aesthetic disaster. Its consequence has been the standardisation of our townscapes. Everywhere the same shopfronts selling the same products. Local delicacies are replaced by the predictable uniform flavour of a bland burger supplied by the same corporation operating from Bournemouth to Bombay.

To the political pan-nationalists, universal prosperity is seen as the most likely guarantee of world peace. One of the most commonly vaunted and facile arguments for transferring more power to the EU is that there are no more European wars. Even a cursory study of world history illustrates that central domination and the attempt to extinguish local traditions is a frequent cause of conflict.

Yet New Labour has exacerbated the problems of scale and uniformity because it misunderstands and undervalues diversity and localism. Mr Blair has presided over a massive increase in red tape and a significant increase in the complexity of the regulatory burden. By design or accident this, like workplace-administered tax credits, has hugely favoured big over small business. Big business — although it may not always like gov ernment regulation absorbs it more easily.

The BBC is another example of a big corporation that, while often providing high-quality services, suffocates diversity. There have been many complaints that its recent expansion of digital services, in particular, has threatened independent arts and ethnic broadcasters. The BBC is dominated by a liberal worldview which means that its monopoly position in key areas is undemocratic and a cause for real concern. A government committed to diversity and localism would not allow the BBC to pursue such anti-competitive behaviour.

Big government is, of course, also a major offender in its own right. The welfare state too often delivers crude 'one-size-fits-all' solutions, effectively prohibiting communities from delivering alternative welfare models more sensitive to local needs. The focus of dutiful professionals in the great public services, typically against their own instincts and judgment, is directed away from their patients and pupils and towards meeting government's national plans and targets.

Government funds only those parts of the voluntary sector that share its ethos. Any drugs charity must therefore support the government's lax attitude to cannabis or sacrifice its funding. Any relationship education charity that chooses to emphasise marriage is defunded. Pregnancy crisis services that want to help women keep their babies rather than encourage abortion are ignored by those holding the purse strings.

During the 18 years of Conservative government we were frequently caricatured by our opponents as favouring big business, encouraging greed and ignoring those in most need. This popular misconception of our record is now the received wisdom and is the electoral context in which we now operate.

Our re-engagement in debates about cultural change, scale, community and sustainability is vital. It is vital not just because these matters are central to a holistic Conservative perspective, but also because, through the renewal of a distinctively Conservative philosophy, we will be recast and our credibility restored in the eyes of the electorate. Our focus on these issues will match the preoccupations of a people who see their standard of living as only one part of a decent quality of life.

We should reject the social liberalism of New Labour that weakens the family and the other institutions that best protect children from drugs, delinquency and despair. We should also realise that an electorate beset by uncertainties and insecurities will not be reassured by a dated neo-liberal reaction that has little to offer beyond unbridled individualism.

The aim of Conservative policy should, therefore, be the reinvigoration of society — its institutions and its values. By so doing, the sense of local and national identity so long undermined by our opponents will be renewed.

Conservatives must advance beyond the confining concentration on material selfinterest. After too long a silence, it is time to articulate the case for a Conservatism that is idealistic, socially cohesive and romantic. We must once again be the champions of politics on a human scale.

John Hayes is Conservative Member of Parliament for South Holland and The Deepings, and Shadow Minister for Agriculture.