A triumph for democracy?
Filed under: Politics, Public policy, The RSA, Uncategorized
I have an article in the Observer this morning. It explores why as a country we seem to be able to organise big events like the Olympics but not to address the more fundamental problems of modernising our creaking and outdated infrastructure.
Regular readers of this blog won’t be surprised that among the reasons I offer is the difficulty politicians have in persuading the public to support long term investment. Genuine political leadership, I argue, involves overcoming our innate tendencies toward self interest and short termism and helping to forge an enlightened view of the national interest.
The idea that effective democracy is about shaping not pandering to public opinion is picked up in another story I came across this morning. It concerns the grim plight of the Gurkhas who have come to the UK as a result of the change of rules implemented following Joanna Lumley´s high profile campaign.
The article speaks for itself with a very clear implication that it would have been much better both for the Gurkhas and for Aldershot, where thousands of aged Gurkhas have now settled (but not integrated), if other routes to improving their welfare had been pursued. It would, for example, have been much easier, cheaper and better in terms of outcome simply to have increased the military pension the Gurkhas were receiving in Nepal.
But what I find fascinating about the article is Lumley´s suggestion that although the outcome of her campaign has ultimately been pretty disastrous it should still be seen as ´a victory for democracy´!
There are two problems with this assertion. The first is the simple equation of ´democracy´with popular opinion at some given point in time. This is only one of many ways of being democratic and is often in conflict with other equally valid descriptions.
Secondly, surely a victory for democracy is not doing something counter-productive on the run from a populist campaign, but engaging in an informed debate with the public and its representatives which leads ultimately to a good decision?
A social media challenge for Fellows
A famous study compared the impact of three ways young people spend their time. The study found that young people’s life chances were most improved by structured activities, for example playing in a football team or in a adult-led music band. The consequences of spending a more solitary childhood at home watching TV or playing video games were largely neutral. The worst outcomes came from young people spending time together in social activities that lacked formal structure or adult supervision.
Knowing this research I have long had concerns about the Internet. Of the three kinds of activities studied, on-line socialising seems to be closest to the third; unstructured group activity. My worries are confirmed by a conversation I have with a friend with whom I am holidaying. She is a politician who has for years conscientiously represented an inner city part of West London.
Part of her patch has been suffering from an upsurge in violent youth crime. The context for the violence is neighbourhood based gangs. The lines are drawn very strictly on the map, with one young person recently beaten into a coma for appearing in a video produced by a gang from a neighbouring estate.
The video was posted on YouTube. My friend tells me that social media play a major role in gang organisation. Not only do youngsters post videos showing off guns and knives and glorifying gang life, but Blackberry Messenger and Facebook (although, I am told, not yet Twitter) are used as ways of cranking up rivalry, spreading malicious gossip and arranging confrontations.
Lots of people are aware of this problem but no one seems to be confronting it head on. The challenge, it seems to me, is not surveillance of the kind the police force presumably undertake, in as much its limited resources allow. What is needed is a kind of benign oversight which might include the following elements:
Spotting emerging confrontations and providing information so that on the ground charities can intervene (these charities suffer from short term and inadequate funding and being constrained by borough boundaries, so need good intelligence to enable them to target their resources and collaborate effectively).
Making some material public so the wider community can be more alert to issues and dangers.
Sometimes intervening directly through posts and messages, for example, offering protection to those who are being victimised and threatened and letting ring leaders know they are being watched.
This intervention would be best provided by young people themselves, particularly those who understand but have turned their back on gang culture, but overseen by adults able to provide support, advice, protection and routes through to authority.
So this is the challenge to RSA Fellows: As well as wanting to use Fellowship as a way of making the world a better place, you are innovative and many of you experts in social media. How about a group of Fellows putting together a Catalyst bid for seed funding to develop a social enterprise addressing this issue and offering services to local and police authorities? Such a bid could seek to engage the support and skills of staff in our John Adam Street Projects team who are expert in social network mapping.
As Chief Executive I don’t have any direct say in which bids win Catalyst awards – this is down to expert staff and members of our Fellowship Council – but I would certainly be happy to help with such a bid.
So, any responses? Is it a good idea? Are there already services like this out there and what can we learn form them? And, most important, is anyone willing to take this idea forward?
The inequality gap
(writing this on holiday on my iPad so please excuse mistakes and the lack of links)
For many years I have argued that Britain suffers from a social aspiration gap between the future we say the want and the course we are set on relying on existing ways of thinking and acting. The future we want relies on citizens,in aggregate, being more engaged more self reliant and more pro-social. But what has this perspective to say about what many people would say is the biggest problem now facing our society, growing inequality?
When doyen of conservative columnists Charles Moore writes a column entitled ‘I’m starting the think the Left might actually be right’ it’s time to sit up and take notice. His article contains this paragraph:
‘ The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.’
Moore’s analysis is confirmed by a report published today but the excellent Resolution Foundation. The report’s headline finding is this:
‘ The share of national income going to the bottom half of earners in Britain has fallen dramatically over the last 30 years…..These ordinary workers have seen their share of GDP fall by a quarter, at the same time as the share going to the top 1% of earners increased by half.’
Not only does gross inequality seem endemic to modern ‘free market’ capitalism but from the work of Picket and Wilkinson and others it seems at least very likely that among rich countries more unequal scieties are also more unhappy societies with greater social problems.
It used to be that only the left talked about inequality as a problem but – as Charles Moore exemplifies – this is no longer the case. But there is another way in which the debate has changed. Just a few years ago Labour politicians were like Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair were happy to argue that the rise of the rich didn’t matter as long as the poor were doing well also. But as living standards fall at their fastest rate for three decades and the number of people in poverty rises this argument is threadbare.
The more progressive strategy, articulated most fully in the mid nineties in the Commission on Social Justice, that the route to greater equity lay in long term preventative and capacity building measures, particularly investment in skills and education may still hold water but despite more than a decade of rapidly increasing education investment and rising standards the is little sign of success so far.
Which leaves us with little other than redistribution and shame. The latter may be more powerful than we imagine. I am told by insiders that there is a real shift in attitudes to pay and bonuses in the financial services sector, although there isn’t much sign of the pips squeaking as yet. As for redistribution the gap between what people say they want – greater fairness – and what policies they are wiling to sanction remains large.
The idea that the 50% tax rate should continue at least until the deficit is cleared sees to be largely uncontroversial (despite mutterings among Conservative backbenchers and free Market free tanks). But how about the other most obvious steps? It reads like a ‘how to’ manual for losing elections. Here are four vote losers to start with:
Well-off pensioners (a group whose electoral power has seen them almost untouched by austerity measures) to pay National Insurance on their earnings.
Capital gains tax to be raised to match income tax levels
Abolish higher rate tax relief on pension contributions
Introduce a new comprehensive property tax
The point of this list is not argue for these measures but to show how the most obvious remedies to the widely recognised problem of widening social inequalities still seem highly unpalatable. There may be other routes to greater social fairness but they will still require more political will and popular support than is evident today.
This gap between the ends we want and the means we will is the problem which better engagement is intended to address. It is only through proper engagement that we face up to the fact that we may have to agree to things we instinctively oppose in order to achieve the ends we desire.
This is the why closing the social aspiration gap is relevant to the problem of social inequality.
Political paradoxes
A wonderful moment at the RSA Academy Governors’ yesterday: Ten students joined us to talk about their experience of entering and winning a national debating competition (the first school outside London ever to do so). Their stories of overcoming nerves and their growing confidence and determination to win were inspiring and more than one governor was close to tears. As the Principal said, ‘if you want living proof of the value of the Opening Minds approach to learning, there it is’. Such hopes and triumphs would have been inconceivable in the school just a few years ago and I hope all RSA Fellows feel pride in the Academy’s work.
Just before they left I asked the students whether the experience of leaning how to debate had made them interested in politics. Although they seemed more excited about being better able to argue with their parents, nearly all agreed. So if any of them are reading, here is a little reflection on the occasional paradoxes of political leadership.
On the surface there is no question that the News International crisis – which seems to be receding from the headlines – has been very bad for Mr Cameron and very good for Mr Miliband. From the moment the Labour leader made the courageous and correct judgement to call for the resignation of Rebekah Brooks it has felt like the Opposition is in charge of policy with the Government being reduced to reacting. Looking at the crisis now it looks like it was bound to unfold in this dramatic way, but there is a serious argument that had Miliband not been so bold News International and the Government could still have found some way to minimise the damage.
And yet…
All new Prime Ministers reach a moment when they are no longer new Prime Ministers. It isn’t just a matter of time, it is also reputation. Tony Blair had his Bernie Ecclestone moment, Cameron is having his more drawn out Murdoch moment. Many people perceive that one of David Cameron’s weaknesses is that he can sometimes gloss over the detail and assume that he can argue his way out of any situation. Well, he certainly knows better now. And this may not be a bad thing.
However interested we may be in the melodrama, almost nobody’s vote will be swung by the hacking scandal. What unfolds in the next three years, as people experience falling living standards and declining public services, will determine the outcome of the next election. As I have said in previous posts, there seems too often to be a serious lack of strategic grip in Government. The public still believes austerity is necessary (although polls show the majority in support has almost disappeared), but Mr Cameron is going to face by far his toughest political test in trying to keep the country together – and his chances of re-election alive – as the full impact of cuts and the continuing weakness of the economy hit home.
If the hacking crisis leads Mr Cameron to be more questioning of the advice he is given; if it encourages him to take a firmer grip on issues and demand a more strategic approach, then it could turn out to have been better than a mixed blessing.
For Mr Miliband in the other hand, the worry must be this; if, even after such show of leadership, there is little evidence that the electorate is warming to him as a potential Prime Minster, what more can he do? Up until now his team could put his lack of credibility down to his inexperience and a series of misfortunes, but what if people don’t like Ed even when things are going his way?
All political careers end in failure. But the standing of some leaders improve when people see more of them. Thus it was for many years with Thatcher and with Blair People may not have liked them as people, but these politicians had credibility as leaders and there was a sense that when they got involved with an issue it was more likely to be gripped. Judging by how his Commons performance yesterday – while far from perfect – seems to have moved on the story this may, I suspect, currently be true of Cameron.
Then are less fortunate figures for whom the sad truth seems to be that the more people see of them the lower they are rated. This was the case with Iain Duncan Smith as Tory leader, with Neil Kinnock among swing voters and with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. Despite the great two weeks he has had, and the plaudits he richly deserves, team Miliband will be kept awake at night by the worry this might also prove to be true of their boss. By the time of his Labour Conference speech we will be closer to finding out.
Rupert Murdoch made me a sanctimonious git
Arts in Peckham and the Murdoch inquisition give me a rare excuse for piety….
Back in the office late again. It seems eight to nine is my new blogging hour. But I don’t mind, I’ve just been an enjoyable Fellowship event. It was hosted by Emily Druiff FRSA, Director of Peckham Space which is a project and building ‘dedicated to commissioning artworks made in partnership with community groups’ and ‘increasing access to and participation in community art’.
The focus of tonight’s conversation with local people and Fellows was a commission by the artist David Cotterrell called Slipstream. Here’s what the press release said about the project:
‘Slipstream is partially filmed from the air using a specially-constructed miniature stunt helicopter … The camera swoops from ground-level to lofty heights tracking these parallel, remembered journeys from the air in a series of ‘fly-throughs’, exploring airspace previously occupied by buildings and relaying back lost views of Peckham and the wider area…It maps architectural changes and overlays memories of individuals, exploring what residents have expressed as a ‘missing identity’ for the area.”
Reflecting on his work and the pamphlet John Knell and I wrote about arts funding and the Big Society, I talked to David about the vexed question of the social purpose of art. He had some elegant ways of rebuffing my advocacy of an enlightened instrumentalism, talking about the indeterminate and long term nature of art’s impact.
What put me in mind of today’s remarkable events in the Commons was when I asked about the dangers of nostalgia as something which can be used in a reactionary way to lionise the past and spread pessimism about today and tomorrow. David responded that as he had spoken to local residents in preparing and describing his work he had found they often started with a particular view of the past as bad or good. But as they recalled incidents, people and places the picture became more nuanced. As I then suggested, this does make a subtle instrumental link to the competencies we need for the times ahead. For this ability to move beyond simple categories of good and bad, all better, all worse and to take a view which is both more grounded and more complex is vital not just to the appreciation of art but to social and political engagement.
Which brings me to News International. As someone who has always disliked the Sun and News of the World and thinks that Fox News is a disaster for American public discourse (fuelling the fundamentalism which could bring the world economy to another terrible crisis in the next few days), I ought to be taking great pleasure in the humbling of the Murdochs and their acolytes. But I find I can’t.
Partly it is ageism. An 80 year old man who seems slightly lost is hard to hate. But more than that I feel I recognise what has happened to these people. Sociopaths excluded, few people commit terrible acts knowing them to be terrible. We rationalise, we deny, we put off to another day the need to make things right. Whatever the specific facts, the true story of phone hacking is of people and of an organisation which allowed itself to excuse something which was palpably wrong. As the apologies pile up, we don’t hear the real story because the guilty parties realise not only that they have been caught out, not just that people think what they did was terrible, but that if they were to utter the stories they told themselves at the time about why it was all OK it would only make their situation worse.
It’s just like the MPs who realised during the expenses scandal not only that they been exposed and were despised but that they would only make things worse if they admitted that they had felt free to play the system because deep down they felt sorry for themselves; modestly paid, unrecognised for their work, in an insecure and ultimately thankless profession.
Something you learn if you spend time with journalists is that they too tend to feel sorry for themselves. Their mission is to bring power and badness to book but they feel they get too little recognition and that their jobs are hard and insecure (in fact, the people journalists most sound like is politicians). My guess is that Rebekah Brooks – who we were encouraged to see as an evil wielder of immense power – tells her friends that she often felt crushed between the News International hierarchy and the deeply embedded macho culture of the newsroom.
Rebekah, James and even old Rupert have done bad things but it doesn’t really get us anywhere to think of them as bad people. This is the kind of simplistic, Manichean world view peddled by the Murdoch empire’s media outlets. The best way now to show we haven’t been corrupted is not to feel not rage but a kind of pity.
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