Are Tory co-op plans "clearly a social good"?

I've been enjoying witnessing the Co-operative Labour movement making it abundantly clear that they are the real co-operators over the last couple of days, since the Tory announcement of their plans to encourage co-operatives and social enterprises to deliver public services.

I sent my previous piece on this via Twitter to Phillip Blond, the architect of the Tory plans.  Here's his reply:

Thanks - will read and study.  But surely just a negative reaction is wrong and a misaligned reflex.  This is a social good. 

This is a social good.  Blond clearly doesn't lack confidence. 

First things first, I haven't really read any of his work in any detail, or read the detail of the Tory co-op plans.  I will do as soon as I've moved house and unpacked the boxes in ten days time.  But I've kept an eye on what he's been saying in the newspapers and elsewhere.

Secondly, I think it is a fairly negative piece so I take his point.  And that's a fault of mine - I try hard to write positive stories, and to be constructive, but I know that I can dwell on the negative sometimes.  But show me a writer who doesn't.  It's easy writing.  And there are downsides to be told in a social enterprise sector which sometimes only tells the good stories.  And I enjoy having a go at George Osborne. 

Yet I'm interested in Blond and his Red Tory ideas.   I'm also intrigued by his background.  Like me, he grew up in 1980s Liverpool and he says the impact of Thatcherism on the city has been a big influence on his life and work.  I'd say the same.   I can see how to this day Thatcher's policies - and the Militant response - did a lot of damage to my home city, and that legacy is still with us.

But I can't help but question the claim:  this is a social good.  Says who?  Who's to say that opening up the market for public services to social enterprises won't create a massive amount of damage to a fragile, skint society?  Or that the real impact of opening up to social enterprises will be to create a market in which the private sector will eventually dominate, thus (potentially) further alienating local communities?  Or that the undoubted social good that will come from the many great social enterprises that will deliver services will be counterbalanced by the regular bailouts of the ones that fail?

Let me finish on a positive.  I, like many other people, see the damage that poor public services do to individuals and communities.  I also believe that we need socially enterprising approaches to changing society - and some of those will come in the form of social enterprises.  So, I'm going to try hard to be constructive, as well as critical, in the debate about mutuality and public services.  I hope the people who seem to only see the upside of these proposals - who see them as a clear social good, might also peer over at the slightly less green grass on my side of the fence. 

Comments

[Mike Chitty]

Rob
I have had an interesting morning looking a gift horse in the mouth. You buy a one day training programme and learn all the skills you need to have a business for life. Clearly a social good here too. Except of course if you can learn the skills in a day so can everyone else. And if the market is doing its stuff that means those skills won't command a very high price in the marketplace.

I think that current interest in mutuality from all political parties has little to do with social good, and everything to do with delivering public services more cheaply. It is another element of our drift towards an unpaid/part time work economy. Now this might be necessary given the financial context. But is is one thing to adopt a business model because it is the only one you can afford. It is quite another to adopt a business model because you believe it can transform society. Setting up coops that have only 1 customer, HMG, is by no means a clear 'social good'.

I don't think your piece was negative. It was sceptical. And there is NOTHING wrong with that.