YouGov today reports that the majority of Brits are baffled by the Big Society posturing of the Tory-led Coalition.  Sure, ideas around localism have been on the agenda for some while; but the Tories’ version conveniently omits to say how localism can be resourced in the real world.

Increasingly we sense the wholesale destruction of the Welfare State fast approaching.  But some politicians (‘decent’ LibDems amongst them?) who should be resolute in opposition to this destruction continue to debate the details of the Big Society as if these mattered.

Meanwhile, de-governance, however labelled, seems to be catching on as an idea amongst alert commentators:

Blogger CharlieMcMenamin shares the view that … what this lot are doing is much more akin to Stalin’s scorched earth policy in WW2. They’re … simply trying to lay waste to territory they don’t expect to occupy for very long, to make it unusable by their opponents.

The Observer‘s secret Civil Servant has observed that [Government Policy] realists … believe the reports they receive every day that large numbers of frontline workers are being sacked … they understand that government everywhere is taking more and giving less. …

Communities Secretary of State Eric Pickles and his team can talk all they wish, as he has this week, about how local councils must make bins their priority, but binning public services, not waste, seems to be the Government’s fundamental agenda.

As Rick of Flip Chart Fairy Tales says,

Britain does not need to be bounced into a distressed fire-sale reform of public services just because David Cameron is in a hurry. It might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Prime Minister but the rest of us can afford to wait.

Whether initially conceived as such or not, like their rhetoric on bin collections, the Tories’ version of localism, Big Society, is a clever cover-up. 

It’s now plain that the core Conservative objective is to dump public services as fast as possible.  As people are beginning to realise, the rest – including Big Society – is froth.