Bad news Ringen in New Labour ears

September 15, 2009 by
Filed under: Politics, The RSA 

For all of you dismissive of New Labour’s record there is now a perfect primer for your case. Its diagnosis is powerful but, in my view, its prescription less so. 

Stein Ringen is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Oxford. He speaks in clipped precise tones and with a bone dry sense of humour. So when last night at the RSA he summarised his short but powerful book ‘The economic consequences of Mr Brown’ thus: “Gordon Brown promised prudence with a purpose. He failed”, the Great Room audience sat up and took notice. 

Ringen shows that since 1997 the UK’s very high child poverty levels have hardly moved, that health inequalities have grown, the downward curve of crime has hit a plateau and, while there have been some gains in educational outcomes, even these are contested.

It is a powerful analysis and not one that anyone involved in New Labour should dismiss lightly. Having said this, Ringen does look through the darkest of lenses. For example, he doesn’t ask what the trends would have been without a Labour Government (which had for example to deal with underlying drivers of greater inequality and cost generating shifts like population growth and the threat of terrorism). Nor does he recognise that some of the things Labour delivered (like the abolition of long waiting lists) were public priorities even if not ones he thinks important. Finally, the good professor doesn’t recognise the impact of major increases in capital spending, particularly on schools and in the NHS.

But while I might want to qualify Ringen’s assessment, I absolutely agree with his diagnosis. Labour’s big failing, he argues, was that it did not mobilise the public or public service professions behind its core social and public service objectives.  Having failed to build this trust and commitment (which was there waiting to be tapped in 1997) ministers came to rely more and more on central control, which in turn led to public service overload and demoralisation. Anyone who has ever run an organisation knows how easy it is to get into this downward spiral.

But why was mobilisation so difficult? For Ringen it all comes down to our creaking constitution. He argues that only measures such as increasing the power of Parliament, devolving more power to local Government, and taking money out of politics will lead to better, more coherent, more honest policy making. I support these measures but I don’t think that they alone solve the challenge of mobilisation.

This, I think, comes down to some bigger problems about the way English people think about the English state, and the deeper culture of public life and democratic discourse. (It is now nearly fifty years old but still for me the classic text here is Perry Anderson’s ‘The origins of the Present Crisis’.

This is why I have argued that an incoming Cameron Government (assuming there is to be one) needs to use its honeymoon period to embark on the long process of changing the terms of trade between Government and citizens. Ringen is right that bad governance leads to bad policy leads to disappointing outcomes, but it is the content of the conversation between governors and governed – indeed the very idea of this relationship – that has to change, not just the rules that frame that conversation.

Share

No related posts.

Tags: , , ,

Comments

5 Comments on Bad news Ringen in New Labour ears

  1. Richard Smedley (richardsmedley) 's status on Tuesday, 15-Sep-09 10:40:59 UTC - Identi.ca on Tue, 15th Sep 2009 10:41 am

    2. [...] http://50.116.84.209/~thersa/matthewtaylor/thersa/bad-news-ringen-in-new-labour-ears/ a few seconds ago from web [...]

  2. Best of the web 15/09/09 | www.the-vibe.co.uk on Tue, 15th Sep 2009 1:17 pm

    3. [...] Bad news Ringen in New Labour ears Ringen shows that since 1997 the UK’s very high child poverty levels have hardly moved, that health inequalities have grown, the downward curve of crime has hit a plateau and, while there have been some gains in educational outcomes, even these are contested. Labour’s big failing, he argues, was that it did not mobilise the population or public service professions behind its core social and reform objectives. http://50.116.84.209/~thersa/matthewtaylor/thersa/bad-news-ringen-in-new-labour-ears/ [...]

  3. Ken Hope on Wed, 16th Sep 2009 3:37 pm

    4. I attended Prof. Ringen’s talk on Monday and found it an honest yet limited analysis of why New Labout has “failed” and of what needs to be done differently. Apart from Parliament reasserting itself he didn’t offer much.

    I think this paucity of ideas as to where to go from here is a recurring and troubling theme – the BBC’s political programmes for example show, in my view, that there are few, if any, compelling visions out there. It’s the same old, tired arguments trotted out again and again.

    The only bright light is Wilkinson’s and Pickett’s equality argument and yet their proposals ultimately threaten the status enjoyed by financial and political elites, both of which have shown themselves to be deficient. So, is that actually the core problem: elites are only acceptable when they deliver, for the majority. Surely it is time to ask whether (or how) we can run our affairs without such powerful and self-serving elites?

  4. Thomas Byrne on Fri, 18th Sep 2009 12:50 pm

    5. I think a lot of issues have come about because of the quest for political capital, I have little knowledge on the subject but for example reading from Private Eye it is that that Labours NHS plan after centralisation was to bring about localism through foundation trusts.

    Now, if you’ve been following the NHS debate over the summer, Andy Burnham has went to great lengths to defend the centralised system and has either slowed (Or stopped? I’m not sure) foundation trusts moving forward.

  5. Liam Murray on Wed, 7th Oct 2009 11:28 am

    6. Onlu got round to listening last night so apologies for the delayed comment.

    Your objections are broadly similar to Polly’s on the night Matthew and, for me anyway, Professor Ringen dealt with them quite well. On the ‘economic consequences of non-Mr Brown’ he seemed to be saying there’s little evidence that New Labour even slowed (let alone reversed) the trends in most of the indicators they deemed important; their trajectory was more or less constant. I think he made the point that 94/04 (spanning two parties in power) saw broad improvement which later slowed – he suggested then a few drivers for this which only had tangential links to New Labour policy post-97 (or Tory policy before that).

    His most compelling argument I thought was his critique of Parliament, not least because addressing it requires ‘only’ the will to do so and no legislative change or even popular pressure for change. I’m a PR supporter and I take his point that the efficacy of Parliament is actually independent of that but still feel that collectively Parliament will only summon the will & courage it needs when it’s less hidebound by the party system, whips and all that entails.

    Great event though and I’m only sorry being stuck here on the west coast of Scotland means I’m unlikely ever to be able to attend RSA talks in person. Keep up the good work.

    p.s. there might be copyright issues etc. but it would be great if you could make the slides speakers use available online as well…?

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!