Fred, the rich and compulsory good causes
A bit of a consensus is emerging about the ‘Fred the Shred’ pensions debacle. On the one hand, people find Goodwin’s determination to hold onto his pension inexplicable and obscene, given the misery his bad decision-making is causing. On the other hand, there is a strong suspicion that Government ministers are using Fred-baiting as a useful way of avoiding more difficult discussions about the overall crisis, or as a way of currying favour amongst Labour activists.
No one would call Sir Fred a deserving cause but the row reinforces a growing public concern about just desserts. The laissez faire attitude to massive rewards espoused by, among others, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, is no longer fashionable. The old orthodoxy (and when I say ‘old’ I mean spring 2008!) was that for the state to interfere in how the private sector rewards people would be counter productive and, anyway, in a free-market what you earn is, by definition, what you are worth.
There would be huge problems about Government trying to decide who deserves what salary across the whole economy. Having said which, at a time like this, it is corrosive to public morale to be confronted by people being paid thirty or forty times more than their fellow hard-working citizens. It may be better to address mega-salaries as a whole rather than ministers being pressured to determine the pay of every senior executive.
We all hope that Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and other world leaders find a way of tacking the immediate economic crisis. Even if they do, though, there can be no return to the excesses of the past. Unless we are to saddle our children and grandchildren with an impossible burden, the baby boomer generation is going to have to work harder, save more, consume more carefully. One of the symbols of life in this new world may be that it is hard to justify ‘super wealth’. This might lead us to explore new ideas which balance personal freedom with social solidarity.
For example, how about saying that those who earn, say, over £250,000 have to give a quarter of the income earned above that amount (over and above the tax they pay) to a charitable cause. This way the rich still have motivation to get richer but now it is a socially benign motivation (to help their favoured good cause) rather than simply looking like greed. And, given the problems of tax evasion, the rich would be less inclined to try to avoid such an obligation. It’s one thing to try to fool the taxman, it’s another entirely to welsh on your duty to society.
It’s good to talk
One of my minor achievements in politics was having the idea of the Big Conversation. This was an attempt by the Labour Party to reconnect with its supporters in the wake of the divisive decision to invade Iraq. I remember writing a chunk of text for Tony Blair’s conference speech calling for a national debate over future policy and being both flattered and terrified when he delivered it verbatim.
The Big Conversation was successful in one way and a failure in another. It helped to accelerate the shift away from politicians engaging primarily by delivering speeches to the process of participants engaging with each other, with politicians responding to the points raised by the groups. This process helped to identify some key issues which Labour leaders then agreed to push up the agenda – for example, expanding flexible working rights for parents and carers. The process was seen to fail as a way of developing detailed policy recommendations, which was slightly unfair in that no one sensible would ever have thought such a thing was possible in the first place.
I was reminded of the Big Conversation when reading ‘Conversation: how talk can change our lives’, a book of lectures by Theodore Zeldin. It’s one of those books that is impossible to summarise, so full it is of fascinating perspectives and insights. But running through each perfectly formed lecture is a simple assertion that runs doubly counter to intuition. We tend to think of conversation as easy but unimportant; in calling for a ‘New Conversation’ Zeldin says the reverse: conversation is vital to well being, growth and social harmony but it is also hard to do well.
‘Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts; they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards it creates new cards…It’s like a spark that two minds create. And what I realty care about is what new conversational banquets one can create from those sparks’
Yesterday I had a conversation with Matt Grist who is running our ‘social brain’ project here at the RSA. We are at the difficult early stage of the project, trying to develop a conceptual framework both for the ideas themselves and for the method and purpose of the project. It is a good investment of time to work away at this but the sense that we might never crack it generates anxiety. We were discussing the three levels from which human action emerges: the physiological (hard wired-automatic responses), the socio-cultural (the norms which tacitly determine behavioural options) and the cognitive (the decisions we choose to make).
Human development can involve moving actions from one level to another, and, interestingly in both directions. Learning a skill, for example, a new language or musical instrument or sporting prowess involves moving down the levels. We start off having to think about everything but – if we persist – more and more becomes automatic. Cognitive and behavioural therapy involves a reverse process by which patients are given insight into dysfunctional hard wired mechanisms, which they must learn to identify and deliberately block if they are to relieve anxiety or depression.
Good conversation involves action at all three levels. Research in neuroscience and psychology has shown the powerful automatic processes of empathy taking place when we enjoy speaking with other people. A conversation will also conform to powerful cultural rules governing what is appropriate. And, of course, during the conversation there will be moments (although probably not as many as we tend to assume) when we ‘decide’ to listen or speak in a particular way.
In my annual Chief Executive’s speech last year, I offered the inelegant phrase ‘neurological reflexivity’ – the idea that important consequences would flow from more of us better understanding the ways our minds work. I am planning to have lots of conversations today, ending up with a Fellows’ evening in Leeds. I’ll report back later on whether thinking about conversation affects the way I experience it.
The Blair years
Having worked for the Labour Party and the Government I hope I can be forgiven being a little emotional. Strictly in my capacity as a former Number 10 advisor I will today do my share of media commentary on the Blair 10 years.
The key question is whether Tony Blair passes on a better country than he inherited?
Labour’s argument is that 10 years ago we saw economic recession as a cyclical inevitability, public services were threadbare with crumbling hospitals, lengthy waiting lists and hundreds of failing schools, and poverty among pensioners and families with children was high and rising.
Certainly much of this seems to have changed. And there have been other aspects of progress including improvements ranging from child care and support to working parents to new rights for gay and disabled people to the urban renaissance in places from Inverness to Bristol, from Leeds to Cardiff.
Over any 10 year period there will be also be mistakes. I would pick out the culture of spin and command and control, the failure to drive reform when the extra public service investment first came on stream, the corrosive bickering of those who claimed to speak for Brown and Blair.
Ask commentators from Europe or America and they will say that Britain is a success story. Even internationally the disaster of Iraq has to be set against the UK’s leadership role on Africa and climate change.
But ultimately Blair’s legacy will depend on whether his successors build on his record. Gordon Brown and David Cameron will distance themselves from the less popular aspects of New Labour but no one is arguing for a fundamental shift from the progressive centre ground on which Tony Blair pitched his big tent.
And this is the opportunity for the RSA. As a determinedly independent organisation it is easier for us to engage and speak to a wide audience at a time of ideological convergence.
Ed Miliband responded positively to my inaugural speech on ‘pro-social’ behaviour and then, last week, David Cameron was here at the RSA talking about the relevance of the idea to the direction he wants to take his Party.
Some people will dislike what they will see as a soggy consensus, but in enabling politics to move beyond old political and policy dichotomies and to start asking more fundamental question about the kind of society we want to live in and the kind of citizens we need to be.
Tony Blair provides a fruitful context for the RSA to become a powerful source of ideas which can engage people of all parties and none.
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