the ownership state

Ideas from The Ownership State are discussed in Chapter 4 of The Innovation Unit's December 2009 report "The Engagement Ethic": In his recent publication trumpeting the potential of shared ownership for public services, Philip Blond quotes research that links this kind of meaningful work to performance. The research showed that 'the most successful councils share a common set of characteristics… excellent and good authorities 'value and recognise their employees, by allowing them greater input into the decision making processes of the authority, and perhaps, as a consequence, providing more room for individual creativity to flourish''...

At the launch of his new thinktank ResPublica, "red Tory" Phillip Blond, basking in David Cameron's approval, said that one of the three cornerstones of a new conservatism was the moralised market. He fiercely criticised the tendency to size and monopoly in unregulated free markets in which the only criteria was narrow static economic efficiency. There needed to be more diversity and genuine competition. Small was beautiful. A libertarian view of the world, he said, had allowed too many mergers to go through.

The second pamphlet, The Ownership State , comes from Philip Blond of ResPublica, who has been described as David Cameron’s ‘red Tory guru’. It argues for a new model of public sector delivery in which services are provided by social enterprises, led by frontline workers and owned by them and the communities they serve.

Hospitals and schools would be transformed into John Lewis-style partnerships under radical plans that could form a central plank of Labour's general election manifesto.