“A political concept whereby a significant amount of responsibility for the running of a society’s services is devolved to local communities and volunteers.”
The phrase was coined by Prime Minister David Cameron, who said in July: “The big society ... is about liberation – the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street.” David Cameron spells out how his vision of a 'Big Society' could address Britain's problems.
David Cameron's big idea of the campaign is the "big society". This was launched with some fanfare at the end of March at an event in London, and made it into the Conservative manifesto. Three weeks later, it was being buried by Cameron's colleagues, one of whom said, "We need to turn Oliver Letwin's Hegelian dialectic into voter-friendly stuff." (Letwin, chairman of the Conservative Research Department, has a PhD in philosophy.)That shadow minister meant to dismis…