The consumer and New Labour: the consumer as king? (original) (raw)

2009, The consumer in public servicesChoice, values and difference

1. Introduction: New Labour and Framing 'The figure of the consumer', Vidler and Clarke have written, 'stands at the heart of New Labour's approach to the reform and modernisation of public services'. Consumerism, that is 'the commitment to organising services around a public understood as consumers of services' emerged after 2000 as the central motif in the Blair Government's narrative, 'a generic organizing principle for public service reform (Vidler and Clarke, 2005: 19, 20. See also Clarke et al, 2007). What were the main elements of New Labour's consumer narrative? Why was it adopted and so vigorously propounded? To what extent did it amount to a major break with past Labour (and traditional social democratic) thinking? A key objective of this chapter is to elucidate New Labour's understanding of 'consumerism'. In so doing it shall draw heavily on Schon and Rein concept of the frame. Frames can be understood as analytical devices which supply order and intelligibility to a complex, ever-shifting and confusing world (Schon and Rein, 1994). The first part of the chapter, after a brief sketch of the concept of 'framing', consists of a discussion of what shall be called New Labour's 'diagnostic frame,' that is the way the way it defined the problem of 'modernising' the public services (for reasons of both space and political saliency, we focus on education and healthcare). The next section considers New Labour's 'prescriptive frames', that is to say its major policy prescriptions which emerged from this diagnosis, The final section explores ambiguities and problems within New Labour's consumerist narrative. In this chapter I draw upon documentary research (government papers of various types and ministerial policy speeches) and a series of interviews conducted mainly between 2004 and 2007 The people interviewed include former government ministers, former government advisors and MPs and clinicians. Some were on the record but mostly off (for a list see Shaw, 2007). A central organising principle of the New Labour approach to public policy is its repudiation of 'ideological thinking'. It believed in approaching issues 'without ideological preconceptions' and searching for practical solutions 'through honest well constructed and pragmatic policies' (Blair and Schroder 1999). It made decisions it claimed) on the grounds of the merits of the case and the feasibility of all policy options grounded in a scrupulous investigation of their likely consequences. As the mantra had it, 'what matters is what works', whatever a policy's ideological provenance. It is true that New Labour displayed a willingness to experiment, to look at issues with fresh eyes, to challenge received willingness and to sweep aside the barnacles of past belief. To this extent it was, indeed, 'non-ideological'. But is it possible to adopt an approach that is wholly practical and solely-evidence based? I would suggest not. For example, how does one know 'what works'? Given uncertainty, imperfect information, constraints of time and analytical capacity-as well as the sheer press of events-there is (as one senior government policy advisor noted) 'inevitably some reliance on presumptions about what works best' (interview, Chris Ham, 2007). As Jack Straw put the matter: all politicians need a 'framework of belief so that there is some template for the scores of individual decisions which they have to make every day' (Straw, 1998). To explicate the Blair Government's 'framework of belief' and its 'presumptions about what works best' I shall draw upon Schon and Rein's concept of the frame. Frames, they contend, 'select for attention a few salient features and relations from what would otherwise be an overwhelmingly complex reality'. It may be possible, through assembling a body of