Archive for the 'British politics' Category

Fixed Britain: Social mobility on the up and up

Published
by
James Crabtree
on November 19, 2008
in Academia and British politics
. 1 Comment
Im upper class. Im more mobile than him.

I'm upper class. I'm more mobile than him.

British social mobility, so the received wisdom goes, is falling through the floor. A combination of conservatives, seeking to bash the Government, and the Government, seeking to justify further investments in social-mobility boosting public services, have agreed that Britain is now less mobile than it used to be.

One paper has been especially influential, the Sutton Trust’s work from economist’s Jo Blanden, Stephen Machin and Paul Gregg, who used British cohort studies to find a decline in upward mobility between the cohort born in 1958 and that born in 1970. Their 2005 paper has, arguably, had more influence on public debate than any academic paper of the past 20 years. So, mobility is falling? Not so fast, argues Prospect’s own David Goodhart. He finds problems with the findings, their use by politicians, and in particular different methods used by economists and sociologist. The result:

The lazy consensus which has decreed the end of social mobility is both wrong and damaging—implying that despite the billions that Labour, in particular, has poured into pre-school support and so on, nothing will ever change.

As a companion piece to David, we are also luck enough to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy with a wry essay from his son, Toby Young, on the rise of the celebritariat - “the people featured in Heat magazine, rather than Hello!, the premier league footballers and their wives, pop stars, movie stars, soap stars and the like.” Toby thinks this celebrity class is surprisingly meritocratic, and because of its visibility, it helps to persuade people that Britain is a fairer place than it really is.

Read David’s essay here, and Toby’s here.

The audacity of Dave

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on November 19, 2008
in Books, British politics and Inside Prospect
. 1 Comment
The old and new faces of change?

The old and new faces of change?

In our latest lead review, Daily Mail political columnist Peter Oborne takes a second look at Dylan Jones’s much-maligned book of interviews with the Tory leader, Cameron on Cameron, and at Douglas Carswell & Daniel Hannan’s manifesto for Cameron’s Tories, The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain. The Cameron that emerges from Oborne’s reading is far from the vacuous PR-man of popular criticism, although he is certainly a toff, a profoundly ambitious man, and a ruthless leader when he needs to be. The future of our country, he suggests, may be in the hands of a man with a very particular vision of conservatism, and of “a tradition of sceptical political enquiry that can be traced back to the origins of the Conservative party in the late 18th century.”

As to whether Cameron can or will deliver on such a vision—well, that remains to be seen. If Cameron’s core beliefs are followed to their logical conclusion, however, Oborne suggests that we could be in for some profound changes in the way the UK is governed. At the least, it seems, we will be in for battles rather than blandishments.

Mapping the BNP in Britain

Published
by
Tom Chatfield
on November 19, 2008
in British politics
. 3 Comments

Perhaps inevitably, the leaking of the BNP membership list has bred a plethora of responses, one of the more interesting of which has been to plot the locations of members on a map of the UK. A “pin” map that appeared to show exact addresses has already been created and taken down (as the discussion on the blog I’ve just linked to notes, this was both morally and legally a dubious exercise, and also gave a false impression of accuracy given the data used). But a general “heat map” of the country, showing membership concentrations, does exist. You can view it here—for ease and interest, I’ve pasted a miniature copy of it at the bottom of the post, beside a population density map taken from the 2001 census.

As the heat map’s creator notes, the results “mirror the population centres of the UK.” As indeed they do—incredibly closely. Shown to a statistician, they could be a map of almost any uniformly-distributed trait in the population: the ability to curl your tongue, blonde hair, left-handedness. It’s not a picture that suggests something regional, factional or transient: this is a contemporary extremism with deep roots. Moreover, judging by the latest screed on the BNP’s website—currently a “temporary” version “due to high traffic volume”—the party has become increasingly adept at appealing to the broadest of resentful, paranoid and insecure feelings.

Is this leak, then, a “devastating blow” to the BNP, as some of its more eloquent opponents have said? I’d like to think so. But I worry that it may equally be a highly public display of its breadth of appeal—not to mention a sop to its claims of victimhood at the hands of the “liberal elite.” Could the leak end up a strategic coup for the party, or even have been a deliberate tactic? It seems that paranoia, like extremism, is alarmingly infectious.

Baby P: For once, the “reasonable” voices are wrong

Published
by
Katharine Quarmby
on November 19, 2008
in British politics
. 1 Comment
The sun gets it right

The Sun gets it right

The comments posted by many of those who responded to my blog yesterday were heartfelt and thought-provoking – demonstrating the wide-spread dismay caused by the torture and death of Baby P.  Paul, however, disagreed with my argument that Haringey Council and other agencies involved in child protection should be held responsible at this early stage, even before Lord Laming’s inquiry has reported.

This view has got some traction in the media, part of a broader tendency on the progressive side of the fence to view media storms with suspicion. Peter Wilby, for instance, is a normally shrewd observer of the worst excesses of Daily Mail journalism. In his latest guardian piece Wilby tries for balance, placing at least some of the blame for the current controversy with: “the tendency of rightwing newspapers to assume social work and socialism (along with sociology) are the same sort of thing, and that the profession’s very existence contributes to “the dependency culture”.

I understand this point of view, and those of Paul in the comments to my previous post, and those of others like them want to let the review take its course. But I disagree with them, profoundly, at least in part because I, too, was once put in the care of social services….

Continue reading ‘Baby P: For once, the “reasonable” voices are wrong’

Has David Hare seen the light?

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on November 18, 2008
in Arts and culture, British politics and In the news
. 0 Comments

Tony, seeking redemption

Since New Labour’s landslide in 1997, David Hare has acquired a pedigree in bashing its leaders, its policies and its philosophy (or lack thereof). At first glance, his latest effort, Gethsemane, is another thinly-veiled critique: there’s a Levy and Blair doppelganger, and Hare’s verdict on Blair’s last days in characteristically blunt: “Something’s deeply wrong. I can’t say if your government is the symptom or if it’s the fucking problem. Whichever it is, it’s ugly.”

But beneath this, argues Steven Fielding, the play offers a surprisingly sympathetic account of a politician under pressure, and it ends on a note of cautious optimism. A new degree of subtlety, one might observe, from a playwright not typically prone to it.

Lammy - change we can believe in?

Published
by
Tom Nuttall
on November 10, 2008
in British politics and United States
. 0 Comments
The hub of a British revolution?

The hub of a British revolution?

The office of President of the United States, with its potent combination of symbolic and executive power, has no real equivalent in the United Kingdom, which is one reason why the question of whether there could be a British Barack Obama feels slightly beside the point. Another is that we don’t, at least constitutionally, directly elect our prime ministers.

Interestingly, however, the most powerful directly elected post in Britain - the mayoralty of London - could well be occupied by a black man in four years’ time (and no, I’m not talking about Dizzee Rascal). David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and a higher education minister, looks increasingly likely to run for the Labour candidacy in 2012.

A few months ago, Prospect first alerted the world to the possibility of a Lammy run in 2012, describing him as “Tottenham’s answer to Barack Obama.” While Lammy is, in truth, no Obama - on the one occasion I was in the same room as him, it conspicuously failed to light up - by 2012, with a Labour party presumably languishing in national opposition and in desperate need of a new young star, Lammy’s combination of executive experience and strong roots in a multicultural inner London constituency could make him a very attractive proposition. And if Obama’s star doesn’t wane over the course of his first term, Lammy’s friendship with the president - which he highlights at every available opportunity - could give him that bit of celebrity glitter every mayoral candidate seeks.

At the time of writing, you can get 25/1 against David Lammy as next mayor of London with Ladbrokes. To give you an idea of what good value this is, the firm is offering the same odds against Hillary Clinton winning the US presidency in 2012.

Prospect online this week: America (and Glenrothes) decides

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on November 4, 2008
in British politics, Elections, Inside Prospect, Media and United States
. 3 Comments

David Cameron's cup of tea?

While the eyes of the world have been trained on America’s bellwether states, Prospect has not forgotten that a “bellwether” by-election is also taking place in Scotland. Jamie Stevenson argues that Cameron’s Tories have most to gain from a resurgent SNP; even if this means a successful independence bid in 2010. And Alice Onwordi looks at the party most auspiciously absent from the Scottish fray: the Greens. Although the Greens have grown significantly in the last 5 years, with the combined threats of a resurgent BNP, mainstream parties stealing their policies, and their own hopeless disorganisation, they have a tough battle on their hands to remain Britain’s fourth party.

Plus, not wishing to neglect the other election taking place this week, Erik Tarloff will also exclusively report from inside the election night party at Obama HQ in Chicago.

Andrew Gilligan on race and the met

Published
by
James Crabtree
on October 23, 2008
in British politics, In the news and Inside Prospect
. 2 Comments

Mayor Boris’s delicate putsch of Met chief Ian Blair in October distracted from, for a moment at least, the simmering racial tensions which now seem routine among London’s police. Before Blair’s ousting, the Metropolitan Black Police Assocation had even taken the seemingly extraordinary step of taking out advertisements discouraging minorities from applying to police the capital’s streets. Indeed, the situation can hardly be good when every one of the Met’s five most senior non-white officers have brought discrimination cases. Prospect asked Andrew Gilligan to take a view behind the scenes, and in particular to dig into the truth behind the occasionally colourful personalities (including Ali Dizaei, the man many think is central to race tensions in the force.) Gilligan takes an even-handed view:

“The Met’s problem is that both diagnoses are essentially correct. Many black officers in the force have grounds for complaint. But they have been badly served by the behaviour of the MBPA, and the standard-bearers of Met diversity, such as Dizaei.”

A good recession

Published
by
James Crabtree
on October 22, 2008
in British politics and Economics
. 4 Comments
recessions are good for you

Recessions are good for you

Nobel laureate economist Paul Samuelson once joked that “the stockmarket has forcast nine out of the last five recessions.” But what if some of this gloominess was, instead, eager anticipation? David Goodhart asks a similar question this month: might the UK’s coming recession do us some good? Recessions are a relatively simple phenomenon, occuring when people decide not to spend money. Economists, like Samuelson, argue that such slumps have their good points, for instance by helping to weed out less competetive firms, allowing capital to be reallocated, and lowering trade deficits. In his piece David takes this notion further to ask if the coming recession might also have some political and cultural upsides:

“Socially and culturally, a good recession would mean a narrowing of income differentials and a rebalancing of status between the business middle class and the public sector middle class… Politically, a good recession would make people realise that political institutions matter, and while they might not want to go as far as joining political parties again they would at least turn out to vote”

Read the rest, here, and be reassured about the good times ahead.

Biscuits and Bail-outs

Published
by
William Davies
on October 13, 2008
in British politics and Economics
. 0 Comments

There is a chastening appendix in Michael Porter’s 1990 book The Competitive Advantage of Nations, in which he offers tabulated examples of how nations come to specialise in certain areas of production, just as businesses do. I paraphrase, but it reads something along the lines of:

Germany: Machine tools, luxury cars, petrochemicals
Japan: consumer electronics, cars
USA: software, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals
UK: Biscuits

But this week, surely our biscuit manufacturers can be joined by designers of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) as the envy of the world. While the precise design of the banking bail-out is no doubt determined by the contingent economic and (to a lesser extent) political vagaries, it is surely no coincidence that we are leading the world in an area that we have been dabbling in since the early 1980s: tweaking the legal and managerial boundary between the state and private enterprise. Continue reading ‘Biscuits and Bail-outs’