Following electoral success in 2005, Tony Blair announced that his third term ‘big idea’ was to create a society of ‘respect’. According to Blair, ‘there is a disrespect that people don't like. And whether it's in the classroom, or on the street, or on town centres on a Friday or Saturday night, I want to focus on this issue.’ A government ‘Respect Task Force’ was established in September 2005 and a Respect Action Plan was launched in January 2006. This cross-departmental agenda built on earlier work targeting anti-social behaviour – a topic that had became something of an obsession during the Blair years, with its emphasis on the tough enforcement of standards of behaviour (Burney, 2005; Squires, 2008; Millie, 2009). But with the ‘Respect Agenda’ Blair was also going to be tough on disrespect (and maybe tough on the causes of disrespect?). Blair took some inspiration from the work of Richard Sennett (2003), if not necessarily Sennett's exact ideas (of which more later). In fact, in a speech to launch the Respect Action Plan (Respect Task Force, 2006), Blair stated that ‘Richard Sennett has written persuasively about the way the basic courtesies diminish with increasing material inequalities.’ How Blair intended to make people more courteous is another matter. Sennett was less favourable about Blair, and following the launch of the Respect Action Plan he commented:

Like that of anti-social behaviour before it, the definition of ‘respect’ was left vagu e, maybe deliberately so. According to the Respect Action Plan,

Thus, disrespectful behaviour was equated with serious anti-social behaviour, but also with more minor annoyances such as queue jumping.