The wrong hypocrisy, the right internship
Poor old Nick Clegg – nothing seems to be going right for him these days.
It is, of course, totally illogical that just because he and many of his colleagues benefited from a leg up in their careers, he is not in a position to highlight how internships inhibit social mobility.
This is a category error in relation to the concept of hypocrisy. As David Runciman pointed out in his book on the subject (Political Hypocrisy, which he presented at the RSA), we should not worry so much about the hypocrisy which seems to obsess the media (see this morning’s newspapers). This is the gap between what people say and how they may have acted; for how else could we have aspirations to improve ourselves and the world?. Instead, we should focus on the hypocrisy of justifying actions by using a dishonest argument – for example, saying a reform is to promote fairness when its authors and champions know it is actually to save money.
In the light of statistics showing how many working class families are going to lose out due to tax and benefit changes, and in recognition of the fact that the best way to promote social mobility is to reduce social inequality (because you have less far to travel in more equal societies), it is the credibility of a Government that espouses social mobility while apparently adversely affecting the life chances of the poor that might be a better subject of scrutiny than whether Nick Clegg happened to work in a Finnish bank in his 20s.
All of this is by way of justifying a bit of boasting. On internship, the RSA can now proudly claim to be a beacon of best practice.
Here are the principles of our internship policy:
• We’re looking for diversity in background, age as well as thinking styles i.e. not just graduates.
• We’re after people who have a great attitude, in spite of perhaps a lack of experience and skills.
• We’re flexible and we want to offer opportunity to people who need to work part-time or who are on benefits.
• We want to offer on the job training where possible.
• We want to continue a relationship with interns after the internship and help them find a job that’s suitable for them.
• And, last but not least, we’ll pay the London Living Wage.
We currently have two internship vacancies, in our Connected Communities and Citizen Power projects. We’re waiting to hear from you …
‘Policy based evidence making’
Between the recurring bouts of existential crisis brought on by a combination of the demands of RSA change management, the deteriorating form of West Bromwich Albion and night time flatulence (for which, apparently, the only cure is to give up every single type of food I enjoy eating), I have been thinking about the relationship between evidence and belief.
One prompt was an LRB review of Wilkinson and Pickett’s ‘The Spirit Level’ by David Runciman. David argues that Wilkinson and Pickett overstate the statistical evidence of the damaging effects of inequality on all levels of society. They do this, he argues, because they hope the statistics will relieve them of having to make what is ultimately an ideological claim; namely that inequality is a bad thing. If we are inclined to think this, says Runciman, there is enough evidence out there for us to make our case (and Wilkinson and Pickett assemble the best of it), but trying to prove it with facts alone is not only self defeating but misunderstands how political change works.
The question was also raised by a wonderful little paper recommended to me by my old IPPR colleague Joe Hallgarten. ‘On bullshit in cultural policy practice and research’, is by Dr Eleonora Belfiore from the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, at the University of Warwick. Dr Belfiore mines Government documents and ministerial speeches on the impact of arts investment on social objectives such as educational attainment and social inclusion. Not only does she find arts ministers making claims which have no basis in evidence but she also reveals how the same ministers occasionally drop their guard and admit the pretence is required of them in order to convince the Treasury or Number Ten to maintain cultural funding. She concludes:
“At the heart of the notion of ‘performance paradox’, thus, is the baffling observation that measures such as the imposition of targets, performancemanagement, evidence-based policy-making, pressures to evaluate the extent to which arts project have the socio-economic impact that policy makers presume they do – or in other words a whole range of measures introduced with the aim to improve transparency and accountability in the public sector – might have resulted, in reality, in more bullshit being produced and injected in public discourses around policies for the cultural sector, and in opaque political messages amounting to little more than doublespeak”.
The point I take from these two essays is that trying to prove arguments in social policy can not only be self defeating, but may involve us in hiding our beliefs behind ‘facts’. I am taking this to heart as I desperately try to finish my annual lecture before I am due to deliver it on Thursday evening.
The speech explores the relationship between new thinking about human nature (derived from behavioural research and neuroscience) and the attempt to close what I have called the ‘social aspiration gap’, enabling people to living more engaged, self reliant and altruistic lives.
The temptation in all this is to overstate the evidence. This is a criticism fairly directed at my piece on brains and ideology in Prospect magazine. Indeed this month’s edition contains a forthright letter from one of the magazine’s own editorial team making this point (is this a first I wonder: an essay so unfortunate that it made the commissioning magazine’s editors turn on each other!).
A theme running through my annual lecture is that we overstate how much control we exercise over our own behaviour and prospects as individuals, and understate not only the importance of, but the capacity we have to influence, our social environment. But I will be sure to make clear that, while there is research to reinforce this belief, there will never be enough to prove it.
RSA Book of the Year (3)
Two more books for the RSA top ten list:
Political Hypocrisy by David Runciman
David’s fascinating book draws the vital distinction between politicians’ personal hypocrisy (not living up to their stated values in their private life) and political hypocrisy (not living up to their stated values in the policy decisions they make). He shows how important hypocrisy is as a concept, both now and throughout the modern history of democracy, and bemoans the way we seem to take personal inconsistency and humbug so much more seriously than its political equivalents. It’s one of those books that make you want to pick an argument so you can rehearse all its powerful points.
Bernard Donoughue – Downing Street Diaries
Perhaps the highpoint of our Thursday series in 2008 was the discussion of Volume Two of Lord Donoughue’s diaries. I got a shiver down my spine being in the same room as Shirley Williams, David Marquand and Peter Riddell. As the economy spirals downwards, public sector trade unions become more restive and a Labour Government ponders its own mortality – the parallels between now and the late 70s are legion. For a sharp, honest and witty insight into a Government in crisis, Donoughue’s book cannot be beaten.
Both are available from the RSA Bookshop.
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