David Cameron is going to make a speech tonight about poverty. It is alleged to be a response to Philip Collins's excellent column in The Times, which I commended.

But the bits that have been released in advance fall into precisely the trap that Collins identified. His starting point appears to be this:

Human kindness, generosity and imagination are steadily being squeezed out by the work of the state.

Not "the wrong sort of state" or the "bossy Labour nanny state", just "the state". Then he goes on to say:

Our alternative to big government is not no government ... Our enabling reforms depend for their success on a social response: and that is not something we can leave to chance. How do we get parents to come forward and demand new schools in their area? How do we make sure people actually go to beat meetings and use them to put pressure on the police? How do we find successful social programmes and make sure they’re introduced everywhere there is a need?  In other words, how do we guarantee that the big society advances as big government retreats?
 
This, then, is our new role for the state. Galvanising, catalysing, prompting, encouraging and agitating for community engagement and social renewal. It must help families, individuals, charities and communities come together to solve problems. We must use the state to remake society.

But it is precisely the prompting, encouraging and agitating of the New Labour nanny state that he and his supporters rail against. How is the Conservative enabling state any different from the Labour enabling state? 

Yes, the right answer: it's smaller.

Unfortunately, I won't be there tonight. I've got some more capitals of smaller African countries to memorise.

Picture: Steve Bell