ABSTRACT
As British political culture moves towards one of personality and image, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has been the latest in a recent line of British political leaders to pay close attention to how they engage with the electorate. Often contrasting with the tone of his political agenda, Cameron has deployed a variety of strategies to popularise himself and soften the image of his party (Street 2010: 62). In a manner designed to engage with research into the relationship between rhetoric and political strategy (Finlayson and Martin 2008; Higgins 2009), this chapter examines particular elements of Cameron’s use of populist discourse. One of my key assumptions will be that a critical understanding of political communication should involve the political policy initiatives underlying, surrounding and occasionally excluded from politicians’ discourse. On this occasion, I am concerned with how the idea of the ‘big society’ has articulated notions of good citizenship within the rhetoric of empowerment. I also want to suggest that Foucault’s (1991) notion of ‘governmentality’, as an internalisation of expectations of citizenship, can give a critical understanding of prevailing attitudes to the role of the state and local responsibility. These are writings in which Foucault (2008: 186) extended his interest in regimes of good conduct amongst the stigmatised and institutionally-contained to look at the role of ‘economic policy’ and its implications for population.
