Martin Bright

A bad week for the Big Society?

We all know that journalists hunt in packs and now they are circling around the Big Society. Lord Wei’s decision to restrict his volunteering to two days a week and the announcement that Liverpool City Council has withdrawn from a “Big Society” pilot have been used to suggest that the idea is dead before it has been fully articulated.

This would be a shame. The emergence of the Big Society has coincided with a revival of interest in the co-operative movement and mutualism. And thoughtful figures on the left, such as Jon Cruddas and Hazel Blears, have already begun to work on a Labour Party response.

But there is already a growing suspicion that the government may be losing its nerve on the Big Society or, worse, that it really didn’t mean it in the first place.

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