We’ve never had it so good – or have we?
I am on my way to speak at the Chartered Institute of Housing conference in Harrogate, but here is a piece I have in today’s Times – would be really interested to hear readers’ views.
Happy faces, happy places
I have Libby Purves in the Times today to thank for putting me on to the research of Dr Jason Rentfrow. Working initially in the US (with Dr Sam Gosling from Texas), and now in the UK, Dr Rentfrow claims to show that there is a geographical basis to personality type.
Certain personality characteristics are clustered in certain regions with, for example, people from the South East being outgoing and creative but not very agreeable.
Dr Rentfrow suggest his findings could reflect three processes:
• Selective migration – we move to places that match our personality
• Emotional contagion – moods and attitudes transfer from one person to another
• Environments – certain places contribute to moods (for example, the long dark winters of Scandinavia contribute to a more depressive personality type while the long warm evenings of the southern Mediterranean makes for a more sociable type)
The second thesis is reinforced by the Framingham Heart Study, a uniquely detailed longitudinal study of the residents of a town in Massachusetts. A new analysis of the data shows that happiness is catching. The happiness of others influences our happiness, with a significant effect being found up to three degrees of separation.
Renfrew’s findings are fascinating, and as Libby suggests, provide the basis for legitimising loads of stereotypes. The hard question is whether we can draw any implications for policy. There are many reasons to think not. How well do we understand these effects? Do policy analysts have the capacity, or the policy makers the right, to interfere in naturally occurring patterns?
Having said which, I have argued in the past that, as public service face a squeeze, we need to look for a social multiplier effect from public spending. If happiness – and other socially benign personality traits – spread, then discovering and applying ways of enhancing them would start to look like a very good investment. It might, also, for example, strengthen the case for incentivising more positive and resourceful people from deprived communities to stay in those communities for longer.
Party like it’s 1991?
I found myself on Newsnight yesterday debating election promises with Danny Finkelstein from The Times. I say ‘debating’, but we were so in agreement that among the abusive text messages I received on the way home was one reading ‘why don’t you and that bloody Tory get married?’ This is an outrageous suggestion: Danny already has a wife.
The Conservatives’ problems over tax raise the question of whether 2009 is most like 1991, before the ruling Party scored a stunning victory, or 1996, just before the Opposition won a landslide. Try these three key indicators:
State of the country
Just like in 1991, the economy, public and family finances of 2009 are in a mess. In 1996 we were three years out of recession. People may not feel this is a time to take risks. In 1996 there was a powerful feeling that people wanted a fundamental change of direction in society. In 2009 people are angry with the Government but it isn’t clear they are rejecting Labour values in the visceral way they recoiled against Conservativism in 1996.
Verdict: 2009 more like 1991
Standing of the leaders
David Cameron hasn’t hit the heights of popularity attained by Tony Blair in opposition but he isn’t that far short, with a current rating from MORI of plus 22%. He is certainly considerably more credible with the voters than was Neil Kinnock. Gordon Brown has not plumbed the depths of John Major in 1996 (although Major was generally ahead of his Party in the polls) but he is a long way behind Major in 1991.
Verdict: 2009 more like 1996
Mindset of the parties
This isn’t easy to call. Although the Labour Party is hollowed out in many parts of the country, just as the Conservatives were in 1996, sitting MPs tell me they can still get people out canvassing and leafleting. More importantly, the vast majority of Labour politicians and members remain hungry to win again. This is in stark contrast to senior Tories in 1996, most of whom had given up on the next election and were much more interested in fighting about Europe than taking on Blair.
On the other hand, the tax row over the last few days suggests there is still a significant group of Conservatives who put ideological rigour above political pragmatism. To suggest that the Conservatives commit themselves to major tax cuts for the most well off during a deep recession and on the verge of a crisis in public expenditure is surely barking. But it is also the firmly held position of a cluster of commentators around The Telegraph, The Spectator and the lively Conservative blogosphere. In having still to keep one eye on his Party faithful, while trying to woo a not quite convinced electorate, Osborne and Cameron share more in common with the dilemmas of Kinnock and Smith than the untrammelled authority of Blair and Brown.
Verdict: On balance, 2009 is more like 1991.
Two things drop out of this analysis: First, that 2010 will probably be somewhere between 1991 and 1996, which may be why most people I speak to predict the Conservatives will be the largest party but not, perhaps, with an overall majority; second, the reliance of the Conservatives on the leadership dimension. If Cameron were to lose credibility and Brown to gain it, the Conservatives would lose the one dimension with clear parallels to the New Labour landslide David Cameron wants so much to emulate.
‘The progressive consensus’ – and me, me, me ….
Filed under: Credit crunch, Politics, Social brain, The RSA
Back to Number Ten this morning to discuss ‘the progressive consensus’. With only an hour for discussion, four presentations and 30 very clever people (plus me) round the table it was hardly surprising that the conversation comprised little more than the identification of a list of issues. But looking at what I found the most interesting points there is a line of connection.
• We are at an important moment in history. The goal must not simply be to mange the crisis and get back to business as usual. It is important to talk about what we might call the national ethos. In the face of uncertainty will people opt for greater individualism or greater social solidarity?
• Policy matters but so does culture – in institutions, in communities and in nations. Fascinatingly, research on values indicates that, despite globalisation and immigration, values are converging within nations but diverging between them (despite the event being under Chatham House rules I can attribute this point to David Halpern who is soon publishing a book about it). To take one small example, what Brits and Germans mean by equality and social justice is very different.
• One characteristic of contemporary British values is that we are hostile not just to the state but also to the market, or at least to big business. The over-riding national mood now is one of powerlessness in the face of events and big power of various forms. Adding to this, the credit crunch and the Government response may cement oligopoly in key markets – banking, supermarkets, mobile phones, energy companies.
• Government likes to talk about empowerment both as a good in itself and as a means towards more efficient and more responsive public services. But it is not clear the public want to be empowered (if this means transferring more responsibility to them) or that central Government has any clear account of who, realistically, is to do the empowering
• In all of this, conventional politics and the jargon-laden language of economic management and public service reform leaves people cold. Politicians need to find a way of speaking to people’s worries but also to their resilience, to their aspirations – and to their altruism. This is a time for leadership, people are open to new understandings and possibilities but leaders are not using a vocabulary people can understand, let alone be inspired by.
Interesting stuff.
Not that this is what I will remember from the morning. Before we went into the seminar one of the directors of my old haunt, the IPPR, said to me: ‘we all have a good laugh about your blog – it’s all me, me, me’.
Can this be true? I am shocked. I have decided to spend a lot more time thinking about whether it is true that I am obsessed with myself. Maybe it’s something I should blog about? I have also resolved to stop talking so much about myself, for how else can I create the space for other people to say what they think of me?
Despite this terrible blow to my frail self esteem, I was given some comfort when David Aaronovitch (whose column today is particularly brilliant) told me that my pals over at the Times Comment pages enjoy my blog.
It’s the stuff on the brain they like best so they can rest assured that with Elizabeth Gould here tonight and Norman Doidge (whose new book is stunning) here tomorrow, it will be the brain and not progressivism, nor even me, me, me, that will be my focus over the next couple of days.
A wake up call for the public sector
Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, gives it to us straight this morning in The Times:
‘Tax increases and spending cuts are inevitable immediately after the election….’
‘any managers of a public service who are not planning now on the basis they will have substantially less money to spend in two years time are living in cloud cuckoo land’
This message chimes with the detailed picture drawn last week for the 2020 Public Services Trust Commission (here at the RSA) by IFS Director Robert Chote. Put simply, we are talking about a period of at least three years, starting next year, in which public spending budgets will be squeezed more tightly than in the living memory of most public servants.
Which means three issues should be getting focussed attention in the public sector – but I see little sign of any even being seriously discussed.
First, we need to be exploring the scope for major productivity gains, not just cutting back office staff, but re-engineering services to achieve substantial cuts in costs. The example I have given in the past involves schools moving to a four day taught week for key stage four pupils with the fifth day being used for self guided study. With the right use of space, on-line tuition and teaching support this could make a substantial saving on teaching time and also be good for pupils. Another example is that if local authorities moved more boldly on individual budgets, putting in place the technological and community support necessary to do so, they should be able radically to reduce case and middle management costs in adult service departments.
Second, we need to be encouraging an intensified process of innovation in public services, designed to find ways of doing the same, or more, for less. There are many organisations out there, from Participle to Think Public to the Design Council (indeed the RSA itself) with expertise in citizen-led public sector innovation, but their work still tends to be at the margins. They need to be given more support and be incentivised to collaborate better.
Third, we need a frank and creative discussion between policy makers, practitioners and the public about the hard choices to be made over the coming years. Local residents may complain about moving to fortnightly refuse collection but they might feel differently if they understood this was one of the measures that enabled the council to protect other services. The creative question here is how could the actions of citizens themselves reduce spending pressures and enhance service outcomes?
These kinds of debates should be taking in every Government department and local authority. If public services don’t adapt, innovate and engage the public in new ways we face a demoralising and divisive era of cuts which will not only damage people’s lives but could fatally undermine voters’ faith in universal public provision.
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