Little platoons online

Cameron’s ‘big idea’ is for a ‘Post-Bureaucratic Age’ enabled by the internet. Will it work? Peter Hoskin and Neil O’Brien aren’t sure

The future: it’s all about computers. Anyone could tell you that. But not everyone gets quite as evangelical about it as David Cameron. Put the Conservative leader in a room full of tech-heads, web freaks and assorted blue-sky thinkers, and he soon starts to preach his gospel. Computers will catalyse our political evolution, he says. Armed with only an internet connection, the public will start seizing back control from an overreaching state. Everything will be cheaper, faster, better — and we’ll all be happier to boot. Burke’s Little Platoons have just gone digital.

Yet beyond this the narrative fizzles out — and rapidly. This bright future has been saddled with a name that only a management consultant could love: ‘The Post-Bureaucratic Age’. And, worse, the Conservatives are more than a little uncertain about what it will look like.