At the height of protests against the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon addressed himself to ‘the silent majority’, those good people of America whose voices were not being heard over a vocal minority of ‘un-Americans’. The phrase - tellingly it was originally used in the nineteenth century to refer to the dead - when applied to voters, was an appeal to the great traditions and moral norms of American society.

In this 2010 UK election, David Cameron begs notice from ‘the great ignored’. This is, however, no call for voters to stand up and be counted, let alone part of any broader clash of values. Quite the opposite: we are all huggable in this new embrace, whatever we might be thinking. The order of the day is value-lite pluralism. With his idea of creating ‘the big society’, Dave tries to stand in the shadow of both John F Kennedy (‘ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country’) and Lyndon B Johnson (‘the great society’).

Speaking about the problems America faced in Ann Arbor in 1964, Johnson said, ‘We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world.’ Cameron’s 2010 clarion call is for ‘engagement of that significant percentage of the population who have no record of getting involved - or a desire to do so.’ It is a stark contrast. One can be in favour of some form of mass social engagement but still notice the absence of any answer to the fundamental question of what for. Just what sort of future are we being offered over and above the bare minimum of being involved? Why should those who have no ‘desire to do so’ be called on to take a lead? 

For instance, take getting involved if you think your local school is not up to scratch, failing your children. In fact, all the parties subscribe to a form of this. But is it really based on a belief that those pushy parents know better than teachers what education is and should be? Do any of today’s leaders have an inspiring idea of what constitutes a universal education? Are they willing to take responsibility for arguing it with us? Or, hiding from the truth that society as a whole is no longer clear what counts as a good or a bad education – nor has the nerve to make such value judgements – is it not more the case that we are being offered a local education for local people?

Instead of a commitment to create great schools that offer excellent education, we have an open invitation to complain if we don’t think schools are good enough. Isn’t this to support the idea (in the model of Japanese corporates) of the continuously improving school? Can it ever be good enough? Would you rather the sign on your child’s school gates was ‘a place of improvement’ or ‘improving school (Ofsted)’?

‘Things can only get better’ always smacked both of desperation and a lack of direction. Yet a model of change simply for the sake of it, and vague betterment to infinity and beyond, speaks more to a profound loss of any sense of what the good looks like.

We could be relaxed about the fact that some schools are better than others – if we only had a real vision to improve our schools towards, a standard you could judge by. Society needs leaders to step forward; ultimately, to discuss and debate with us what the good society might be.

It is these questions that are being ignored in this election and, without real debate about what matters, the stuff of politics becomes a matter of off-mike contempt for the bigoted and the ignorant. Rather than capitulating to the downgrading of politics into a seemingly worthless pastime, we should instead be thinking about what sort of ideals might drive more enlightened debate.