David Goodhart
How many new friends does Cameron need to win?
Here at Prospect we eschew the wearisome political cynicism of our age and look forward to the election with a whistle and a skip. Like all national elections it is a festival of democracy—a chance for the country to talk to itself about how to cut the deficit (and whether a hung parliament would make it harder). We have sneaked in with an early “election special” to help to prepare you for the deluge of commentary. But it is not shaping up to be a historic contest.
Indeed, it may be encapsulated by a poignant exchange between a husband and wife (David and Karen) in Luton’s main shopping mall, reported by Sam Knight. “I ask David if he plans to vote Conservative. ‘It’s got to be better than the Labour lot, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘That’s just the way I see it. Maybe it isn’t…’ He is suddenly filled with doubt, and turns to his wife. ‘Karen, if you was voting, who would you vote for? You think they’re probably all the same don’t you.’ Karen looks down the mall. It is full of families. She speaks quietly. ‘I’d give the other ones a bit of a chance,’ she says.”
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David Goodhart
Here at Prospect we eschew the wearisome political cynicism of our age and look forward to the election with a whistle and a skip. Like all national elections it is a festival of democracy—a chance for the country to talk to itself about how to cut the deficit (and whether a hung parliament would make it harder). We have sneaked in with an early “election special” to help to prepare you for the deluge of commentary. But it is not shaping up to be a historic contest. Indeed, it may be encapsulated by a poignant exchange between a husband and wife (David and Karen) in Luton’s main shopping mall, reported by Sam Knight. “I ask David if he plans to vote Conservative. ‘It’s got to be better than the Labour lot, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘That’s just the way I see it. Maybe it isn’t…’ He is suddenly filled with doubt, and turns to his wife. ‘Karen, if you was voting, who would you vote for? You think they’re probably all the same don’t you.’ Karen looks down the mall. It is full of families. She speaks quietly. ‘I’d give the other ones a bit of a chance,’ she says.”
Britain may not be feeling happy and confident but it is not broken either; the Tory slogan “It can’t go on like this” seems rather silly, when it so obviously will go on roughly like this whoever is in No 10. Moreover, it has been an oddly calm recession with no hint of the summer of rage we were promised—despite the fact that the slowdown follows Britain’s biggest ever immigration wave.
Many of the pieces in this issue—including David Willetts explaining how the Tories can foster co-operation without the state, and our special section on brain science—explore how insights from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology can inform politics. The drift of the debate seems to be favouring moderate Conservative positions, so perhaps it is the political zeitgeist leading science rather than the other way round. On most big questions of the day, however, it is shocking to realise how little most of us actually know about anything. Or rather, despite all that data on the web, we know almost nothing at first hand, relying instead on our chosen interpreters to help position ourselves along a spectrum of views and values. This was brought home to me by Roddy Campbell’s piece on why climategate matters. I had believed that the temperature record was a simple thing that gave us an even simpler message about the dangers of global warming. Now I’m not sure. It is still likely that pumping all that C02 into the atmosphere will lead to warming, possibly catastrophic warming, but the record is not yet convincing and its scientific guardians must surely be neutral dullards, not activists. A proper scepticism towards the data is not only legitimate, but necessary, before we change the way we live.
James Crabtree
Last night Prospect held our 9th annual think tank of the year awards, Britain’s most pointy-headed award ceremony, at the RSA in London. The awards are decided by a bi-party panel of six judges over a series of meetings in the months prior to the awards, a process greatly helped by the willingness of nearly 40 think tanks to fill in our various nomination forms.
David Willetts MP, shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills gave the evening’s key note address, making two striking statements. First, having joked that progressive think tanks like the IPPR faced a choice of whether to become part of the “official opposition” he called on traditional tanks of the left to work with an incoming Conservative government, rather than against it. Then, in a neat turn of phrase, he argued that British think tanks (as opposed to their more staid American counterparts) were the policy equivalent of hedge funds: entrepreneurial, lightly regulated, and prone to taking risks in search of headlines.
Then, following Willetts remarks, we unveiled the winners, which were:
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James Crabtree
Those kids in red jackets
Next month in Prospect we review Economist editor John Micklethwait’s new book about the rise of world religion, which reproduces a familiar argument that the success of faith in America owes much to the lack of an established church. Many churches, competitive with each other, win more converts. It was a thought, in a different context, brought up this morning at a breakfast seminar I went along to, jointly hosted by Demos and the Private Equity Foundation, on national civic service.
David Willetts was the main speaker, along with a visiting representative from City Year, an American outfit who send an annual cohort of a thousand or so teenagers in striking red jackets into inner city schools, aiming to mentor and inspire children a little younger than themselves. My interest in this stems from the article I wrote with Frank Field a few months back, calling on this government (or the next) to institute a mandatory, national scheme for every young person. And it was Willetts’s point that such a programme risked ending up like the Church of England—national, tied to the state, and unloved. If your aim is to develop a national culture of service, as the Americans put it, better to do so from the bottom up—following the example of American Protestantism, where many churches (or, in his analogy, charities), compete with one another to win over the faithful.
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James Crabtree
No turning back
2009 is the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election victory—three decades in which the legacy of the Iron Lady has proved enduringly controversial. A few issues ago, Prospect published Phillip Blond’s Red Tory front cover, which charted new territory in its attempt to find an authentically conservative rejection of Thatcher’s legacy; one, indeed, which shares much in common with criticisms more commonly found on the political left. This month we publish a different, and perhaps more nuanced rejection of her from David Willetts, perhaps Britain’s most thoughtful politician. In a striking analysis, Willetts explains his personal rejection of Thatcherism—a journey taking him from his job as a young researcher, and ardent supporter, in Thatcher’s policy unit to his current, subtle take on her legacy.
Going against the popular view of a government driven by a small cadre of ideological Thatcherite insurgents, Willetts locates the early strains of Thatcherism much earlier, in a conservative rejection of post war austerity and central planning which distinguished Tories from social democrats, even in the era of Mr Butskell. His conclusion, in particular, notes changes in the conservative appreciation of social inequality:
There are of course limits to what governments can do, especially about the petty differences between us and people we know, which are often the inequalities people worry about. Nevertheless in dismissing all this as just the politics of envy we showed we did not understand something which does affect wellbeing. Back then we just assumed that there was a robust British society and all that had gone wrong was that statist economic policies had messed up the wealth producing bit, but when that was sorted people would stop being so angry about things. Now, even at the bottom of a recession, the social question looms much larger than we thought then.
Willetts is often cited as one of the most canny advocates for David Cameron’s modernisation project. Occasionally, as in the bust-up over grammar schools a few years back, he has also been instrumental in using original analysis to change previously unmoveable Tory policies. But, in this essay, he has produced not just an insider’s portrait of his old boss, but also a balanced, and thoughtful justification for Cameron’s post-Thatcherite project. Read the article here, and as ever, let us know if you agree with his take, in the comments below.
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