IF ONLY LABOUR WERE IN CONTROL, THATCHERISM WOULD BE A TERRIFIC IDEA AGAIN!:

There's a good idea in Cameron's 'big society' screaming to get out: Labour must seize this flawed initiative from the Tories, reclaim its Labour origins and then set about improving it (Jonathan Freedland, 7/21/10, guardian.co.uk)

Ed Miliband wasted no time, branding the big society – which hopes to see citizens, local communities, voluntary groups and philanthropists take on tasks currently performed by central government – a return to "a 19th-century or US-style view of our welfare state", comparisons that were not meant as compliments. Yet insults and sniggers, however enjoyable, might not be the right response. For this is a rare case of the wrong person at the wrong time and in the wrong way delivering the right idea – an idea that Labour and the left would be foolish to reject.