A new politics – it’s about content as well as process
I am quoted in this morning’s Guardian in a link to a longer piece. Here it is.
“The moment should be seized for radical democratic reform. This should include:
• Electoral reform so we get fairer outcomes and people can vote for their Party without voting for a person they dislike, and vice versa
• Devolving more power to more city mayors
• Greater use of high profile citizen forums with real power to recommend changes direct to Parliament
• Greater transparency during policy formulation
• A new second chamber including a third of the seats filled by ordinary citizens drawn by lots
But the problem is not just the processes of democracy it is the framing of political discourse. The era of consumer politics has run its course. For fifty years the deal has been ‘elect us and we will satisfy your demands as private and public sector consumers’. The problem is that the economic cycle means Government regularly fails to deliver and, more fundamentally, it turns out that our demands as consumers are insatiable; the more we get the more we want and the more angry we become if we feel let down.
Politicians in their turn are self pitying, trapped by the impossible demands of sixty million difficult customers. The MPs’ expenses saga exposes the story politicians have been telling themselves for years: ‘politics is impossible, it’s not fair, so I should be able to do what I can to make things more bearable’. And the competitive nature of politics makes is incredibly hard to reform. Every politician knows the system is bust, every politician wants to engage the public more honestly, but every political party would rather win on a 20% turnout than lose on an 80% turnout.
We need political leaders who ground their appeal on a citizenship democracy rather than a consumer democracy. This means moving from an ‘us and them’ politics in which we the people – egged on by a media which is little more than a disorganised conspiracy to maintain the population in a perpetual state of self righteous rage – make impossible demands. Opinion polls show we demand cheap flights and action on climate change; affordable houses but not built where we live; Swedish welfare on American tax rates. Instead we need an ‘us and us’ politics. This starts from citizens deciding what they want, citizens engaging with the trade offs between different interests and objectives, and citizens understanding the role they themselves must play in creating a better future. Occasionally, political leaders have this capacity to turn a problem outwards and make it one we all own – for example Obama’s speech on race last year. Cameron occasionally sounds like he has this in him but in the end he seems happy to win the old way.
How politics is conducted from the cabinet to the local constituency is profoundly dysfunctional, thirty years and more behind the way successful modern organisations run themselves. A new politics needs new institutions and new processes but it also needs a radically different culture, and a style of political leadership that is open, collaborative and emotionally literate. “
Democractic reform: we still aren’t having the right discussion
David Cameron’s lengthy Guardian essay about democratic reform is welcome, even if there isn’t much in it that is both new and a concrete commitment. As a long standing supporter of electoral reform, I also supported Alan Johnson’s call this weekend for a referendum on the day of the next General Election – indeed, I advocated exactly this policy in my blog a few days days earlier.
While it is important to debate the rules and procedures of politics I continue to believe that the bigger issue is the content of democratic discourse. My first RSA annual lecture, back in 2007, was about ‘pro-social strategy’. This is what I said:
“The way we do politics not only reflects but reinforces a loss of confidence among citizens and communities about solving problems ourselves. The most disabling aspect of political discourse is the paradox (exploited by the news media) that Government is seen simultaneously as omnipotent and incompetent….
By creating a vibrant debate about common problems, aims and responsibilities, pro-social strategy seeks to reinstate democratic politics as the process by which citizens give permission to their representatives to act on their behalf.
This shift in thinking is not simply about rolling back the state or taking politicians down a peg or two. The implications for government are not so much about its size but as about its ways of working. The implications for politics are not so much about politicians letting go as about citizens taking hold.’ Pro-social politics’ would not be seen in terms of conflict between us (citizens) and them (politicians). Politics would be about us and us and us.
‘Us’ because it would be about what we as citizens want to achieve and what we need to do to achieve it.
‘Us’ because it would be about recognising the different interests, views and resources of different parts of society and accepting the challenge of reconciling these differences rather than simply asserting our own demands and resenting any attempt by politicians to sort it out.
‘Us’ because this would be a process in which we would need to confront more fully the truth that we each of us have our own conflicting interests, views and aims. The apparent incompatibility of our own individual preferences is a growing characteristic of modern policy problems. For example, we want to fly cheaply and protect the planet, to see our children as home-owners but to protect the green spaces around our towns and cities……”
As Ben Page from Ipsos-MORI often says ‘the British public demand Swedish welfare provision on American tax rates’. The real problem with politics is not the expenses claims of MPs, nor even the power of the Executive, it is that we are unable to have a grown up conversation about the challenges which politicians can only resolve if we work with them: notably, public spending restructuring, population ageing and climate change.
We the citizens are stuck in a bad place; increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet willing to govern ourselves. Proposals for reform should be judged by whether they are likely to move us towards a more realistic and responsible democratic discourse.
Andy Burnham, Steven Gerrard and the spiral galaxies
Earlier this week I did a Fabian Society event with Culture Secretary Andy Burnham (before I get my usual ‘Blairite stooge’ comments, I am also due soon to speak to the Bow Group). Discussing how to generate mass participation in the arts, I made a point I find myself making often when talking to Government folk.
The state is forever trying to get people to do things; lose weight, stop smoking, get trained, get fit, recycle, pay tax on time etc. So we the citizens are overwhelmed with messages with the net effect that we feel put upon and somehow diminished. But instead of starting from what we are not doing, why isn’t Government better at latching on to our enthusiasms?
The daft example I gave Andy concerned one of my favourite YouTube clips in which a previously unknown Scouser stands in his corner shop doing terrific impersonations of Steven Gerrard and various other Liverpool FC celebrities. Almost 1.4 million people have now watched and loved this clip. How about, I suggested, an Arts Council link, next to the clip, to a site where people can find out how they might learn to be an impressionist, and from that connect to the bigger idea of acting and performing?
The scale of voluntary mobilisation possible if you start with people’s enthusiasms is underlined in a today’s Technology Guardian. Dr Chris Lintott, a researcher in the Department of Physics at Oxford University, has enlisted the efforts of thousands of amateur astronomers to help classify galaxies as ’spiral’, ‘elliptical’ or ‘merging’. This is only the latest example of mass on-line amateur scientific collaboration.
Start from what people like and what makes them feel good about themselves and we can tap into a deep well of goodwill and ambition. Tell people off and ask them to change and you’re shouting into the wind.
2020 Public Services Commission – and some nerve wracking memories
My busy Tuesday ended with the launch of the 2020 Public Services Trust, an independent, all-party inquiry which we are hosting here at the RSA and on which I sit as a Commissioner. Having Times columnist Camilla Cavendish in the chair helped compensate for the rather white, middle-aged, male feel of the panel (and, yes, that does include me).
Originally, the 18 month time scale for the Commission was designed with the idea in mind of reporting around the time of the next General Election. But now it fits neatly with the point at which public services will experience a massive deceleration in revenue and deep cuts in capital allocations. This is a vital turning point for public services and provides a good focal point for our deliberations. Anyway, I suspect that next spring is now the most likely election date.
Personally, I will be relieved if we are not publishing at election time. I will never forget being woken at 6.00 in the morning on 16 May 2001 with the news that the Guardian had splashed with Labour’s secret plan to privatise public services, a plan apparently based on the recommendation of the IPPR Commission on Public Private Partnerships. As the Director of IPPR, I was at least relieved of my worries about how we were going to generate interest in our learned but rather dull and worthy Commission report!
I still don’t know who gave the draft report to Patrick Wintour. I was told the leak was authorised by Labour strategists worried that the 2001 Manifesto was insufficiently New Labour. Unsurprisingly, elements in the Labour Party and trade unions were apoplectic with rage.
Later that day I got a call from a friend in Millbank with a warning:
‘I overheard one of Gordon’s people telling a journalist to try to do you and the Commission in. Be prepared’
Ten minutes later a call came from a journalist. ‘About this Commission, I see it was part funded by firms that sell private services to the public sector. How do you respond to the charge that you were paid to call for privatisation?’
I won’t reveal the name of the journalist as I don’t bear a grudge and we are now friendly acquaintances. Anyway, as he’s a Sunderland fan, I will be hoping to get more morsels of revenge when the Baggies go to the Stadium of Light on Saturday!
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