The Tories try to devalue our public services. But this month will be crucial in harnessing the growing affection for them
Here is the win or lose political battleground of our era. The public realm is either a precious, civilising embodiment of our best collective endeavours – or else it is, as David Cameron described it last week at his party's spring conference: "the enemies of enterprise … Taxing, regulating, smothering, crushing, getting in the way … the bureaucrats in government departments who concoct those ridiculous rules and regulations that make life impossible".
Eric Pickles, leader of the anti-public shock troops, went further with his favourite litany of extravagance amid malign accusations that Labour councils are adopting a "bleeding stump" strategy, needlessly cutting services just to "play politics with people's jobs". That Labour councils are both the poorest and the ones most drastically, severely cut he somehow forgets to mention. That Liverpool had the worst cuts and Dorset the least slips his memory, but his acid loathing of anything public does resonate with many.
So what will the public come to believe by the next election? The heated exaggeration of these attacks suggests that Cameron knows this is the one fight they must win, whatever it takes. With only three weeks to go until 1 April, they can only sell this unprecedented £81bn cut by persuading enough people that the bloated public sector was oozing with fat until they sliced it away. Under that cover, Cameron spurs on the public tumbrel with his calls for "any willing provider" to take over virtually any public service.
In response, Labour is conflicted by a hundred quandaries. Scruples and a measure of intellectual honesty mean Labour lacks the shameless gall to distort reality as boldly as trooper Pickles. Reasoned argument and a few facts are a weak match to the foghorns of the right. Ed Miliband's inclination is to think that, in the long run, being right pays off, but it makes some impatient. And Labour is conflicted by its own past: Tony Blair with his scars on his back was no advocate for the public ethos.
So how should Labour defend the public realm without sounding like special pleaders for their paymaster unions? There will never be a lack of examples of public waste and sloth, nor of anecdotes of disobliging jobsworths. Outdated practices in police or fire brigades need constant vigilance. Threatened strikes to protect public sector pensions would damage Labour: a minority of hotheads still regard a strike as a goal in itself.
The TUC leader Brendan Barber and wiser heads may rattle a sabre, but they argue against unwinnable actions. Instead, Barber celebrates the breadth and depth of protest now welling up, from shire defenders of forests, post offices and libraries to young occupiers of urban banks. The TUC is waiting until the eve of the cuts for its great 26 March London rally. Barber believes widespread, inclusive protest will always be more effective than train or school strikes, which alienate voters. The only victory is defeating this government at the election: not brought down by misguided muscle, but by winning the argument.
Some in government seem tempted to provoke strikes: steeply increasing pension contributions during a two-year freeze without even waiting for John Hutton's report was a jab in union ribs. Contrary to myth, most public pay has fallen behind over the last decade. But Cameron be warned: as Tony Travers of the LSE remarks, the poll tax riots that finished Margaret Thatcher were on 31 March, the day before new rates bills fell due.
Few people realise yet how their pockets will be hit after 1 April by £81bn of cuts, £18bn from benefits alone. Consider the working families suddenly losing childcare credits worth £600, forced to withdraw from nurseries and abandon jobs. Or housing benefit cuts making some move far away from work. Travers sees the government as "someone diving off a high board in the dark, not knowing if there is water in the pool". As with the 10p tax band abolition, there is no knowing how opinion will swing when reality dawns and 300,000 public servants land on the dole.
Labour is already gaining from a revived public affection for services people had taken for granted. As care is withdrawn from frail parents and wheels come off the recklessly "reformed" NHS, people are already looking more warmly on the public realm and Labour needs to be its fearless champion. Goodness knows, it should be easy enough to remind people how very much worse the private sector can be: I struggled most of the day on the phone with a delivery from Homebase – already paid, a month late, finally despairing. Standing in HSBC this week, a fraught mother tried to open a savings account – pure profit to the bank. "Come back tomorrow, it's late," said a bored teller with a shrug at her protests at losing another hour's work. I reminded her that 253 HSBC bankers just took over £1m each in bonuses and suggested Nationwide, the mutual next door, who I hope treated her better.
The ideal of the entrepreneurial, hyper-efficient private sector is as much a myth as the ideal public servant. Think of all that "business class" travel and hospitality excess paid for by shareholders, mainly from our pension funds. It's time Labour exploded this mindless "private is always best" nonsense. Business is essential – but so is a strong public realm. Why does Serco's CEO earn £4m for running outsourced public services? Labour is on the right track talking of the "good society" as an antidote to Cameron's empty "big society".
On Tuesday Will Hutton's report on public pay looks set to extol the value of public service and the need to protect it from Pickles-style contempt. While some top pay for vice-chancellors and council chiefs has been infected by FTSE boardroom pay madness, expect Hutton to defend effective public servants from the current witch hunt; to ensure quality, young civil servants need to be able to buy a house, but which high fliers work in the public sector to get rich? There is such a thing as public service with a strong ethos. Watch how good servants will still strive hard to keep the rickety show on the road despite severe cuts to their workforce. Are they Uncle Toms, or just imbued with public values Cameron will rely on, even as he denigrates them?
The great public v private values campaign starts in earnest with the march in two weeks. Be there and help unleash indignation at this crude and mindless attempt to shrivel the state and deny its values.