Cameron's demolition job risks tearing the country from its past Far from fostering post-Olympic harmony, the new brutalism could unite in opposition affluent suburbanites and workers who fear for their jobs, despite Vince Cable's veto on any fire-at-will plan. The Business Secretary's love-in with Ed Balls stems less from personal ambition (although Mr Cable is hardly deficient in that department) than from his belief, shared by Mr Miliband and Mr Balls, that problems in demand cannot be addressed by supply-side tinkering whose effects contradict the Olympic spirit. Competition is vital, but so is preserving the institutions showcased by a Games that celebrated our heritage, from woodlands and countryside to the NHS and volunteering. That lesson risks being lost on a Government whose efforts to make sense of a nightmare future are eclipsing the preciousness of the past. In a new book, History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics, to be launched in the House of Lords tonight, Emily Robinson examines the allure of "pastness" to politicians. While it is true that all modernisers concoct a version of history to justify their actions (even Tony Blair's Cool Britannia never lost its romantic attachment to a bygone age), the Tories have always excelled at using the past as a valuable political commodity. From Churchill's capture of the British soul to Margaret Thatcher's Victorian values, Conservative governments implanted the belief that Britain is a Tory monument curated by a Tory hierarchy and blessed by a Tory God. As Michael Howard wrote of British Conservatives: "Their history is also the history of the country." If ever there was a moment for Mr Cameron to dust off his Big Society and revive that synergy, this is it. A new report from the think tank British Future claims that 82 per cent of people believe the Olympics will make citizens prouder of being British, and more than half think volunteering will increase. Far from tapping into that spirit of hope and generosity, the Government seems intent on setting neighbour against neighbour and boss against worker through policies that will not reboot the economy, but may yet prove a deathblow to Conservatism. No Prime Minister should be in thrall to the past. Building on our manufactured countryside is not always akin to constructing a Tesco superstore in Mecca. If there is an unanswerable case for a high-speed rail link or a third Heathrow runway, so be it. But the Government is risking, if not advancing, a more thorough demolition job, in which the shrinking countryside becomes emblematic of a withered country whose health service can no longer cope, whose elderly cannot be cared for, whose prisons overflow and whose least privileged children are so poor that Save the Children, for the first time in living memory, appeals for money to help feed them. With compassionate Conservatism all but defunct, conservatism itself might be at death's door, had it not acquired an unlikely saviour in Ed Miliband. The Labour leader is not only championing the green agenda abandoned by Mr Cameron; he can also, more startlingly, lay claim to the PM's discarded blue mantle. Eager as it is to stake its claim as the truly patriotic party, Labour has an uneasy relationship with its own history. Although some noises from the TUC are well-considered, partly thanks to its new, female secretary, Frances O'Grady, there is no lack of dinosaurs blind to the fact that a general strike would appall many struggling Britons. Clinging to an unedited version of its history would finish off Labour faster than you could say Red Robbo. While Mr Miliband is no sentimentalist, his interest in conserving the high street, tackling "rip-off" Britain, attacking predatory capitalism and reforging a more equal society all suggest that, in attempting to recast the future, he is also mindful of the past. Lord Adonis may get the fast trains and bigger airport he wants. Even so, other policy-makers counselling radical nostalgia have persuaded the leader that it is essential to make Labour the party that can tell the nation's story and articulate its hopes. If Mr Cameron has ditched his Big Society idea - and it seems that he has - then Labour will pick it up, rebrand it as the politics of the common good and turn it into the cornerstone of its project to rebuild Britain. Already Labour is using the organising skills it has picked up from US practitioners and from the Obama campaign - such as a volunteer database - to embed itself back in local communities and deal with doorstep issues predating the policy wonk and the technocrat. Where Tony Blair despised "the forces of conservatism," Mr Miliband appears to embrace them. Meanwhile commentators ask whether Mr Cameron has stopped being a moderniser. The real question is whether he has ceased to be a Conservative, preferring to move towards his party's neo-liberal wing. Its bleak contention, that Britain is a nation of deadbeats who must work harder in order to save the economy, is likely to enrage every hard-pressed middle-earner, astound every volunteer who has given his or her services for nothing, and depress all those who hope the Olympics might presage a kinder and more cohesive Britain. As TS Eliot wrote: "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future." Any leader hoping to shape tomorrow should recognise that heritage and tradition can be route maps to a better Britain. Whichever is the more conservative party is likely to win the next election - and right now that looks like Labour.