A system separated from the Daniel Blakes it is supposed to serve

In Ken Loach’s 2016 film, I, Daniel Blake, the main character – recovering from a heart attack and unfit to work, but forced to navigate a Byzantine benefits system to avoid losing his only income – prepares for an appeal against the decision of intransigent local bureaucracy, and coins a phrase that eventually serves as his eulogy;

'I, Daniel Blake, am a citizen; nothing more, nothing less.'

In this compelling work, O’Brien addresses a 'street-level' administrative system that has become separated from the Daniel Blakes it is supposed to serve. He presents a system that treats the vulnerable as objects or abstract problems, ignoring their needs and grievances and basic dignity.

He proposes a radical solution; reimagining such systems not as top-down bureaucracies, but as a 'postliberal' system that requires the state and civic institutions to promote the 'common good'. This requires reassessing the role of the state from the contemporary guarantor of individualism and autonomy to something 'positive and ethical', and resituating 'the individual in a complex web of civic association that is a source of both identity and political agency'. Practically, this means '[reinstating] strong civic institutions and structures of self-governance, nurturing intermediary institutions such as trade unions, universities, local authorities, professional associations and even pubs, post offices and libraries'.

O’Brien argues for closer connections between the individual and those who govern at the local level. Emphasising practical problem-solving, rather than mere adjudication, allows government to encourage things which promote human flourishing such as individual bonds, and self-government. Only thus, he argues, can people be properly treated as citizens, nothing more, nothing less.

I found this work inspiring. O’Brien’s postliberal politics put me in mind of both Catholic social teaching – in particular Leo XIII’s 1891 Encyclical Rerum Novarum’s emphasis on the state’s role in promoting the common good and subsidiarity – and recent arguments across the Atlantic about common good and classical interpretations of the US Constitution, as exemplified in Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism (2022) where it is argued that 'the central aim of the constitutional order is to promote good rule, not to "protect liberty" as an end in itself'.

This is a vital work with important ideas that should be properly considered.

James E Hurford is a solicitor at the Government Legal Department, London