Democracy – this is new

A delightful documentary was buried in the BBC4 schedule late last Sunday. Please Vote for Me remains on iPlayer over the weekend, and I’d urge you to watch it if you’ve got an hour free.

Weijun Chen’s film, in which he records schoolchildren in China undertaking an election for class monitor, is in equal measure funny, touching, disturbing and fascinating. In a country without national elections, how will the youngsters deal with the challenge of seeking office with democratic legitimacy?

It begins with their teacher explaining the process they are about to undertake, and indeed democracy itself: “This is new,” she understates. And it ends in tears as two of the candidates (unlike our recent election) have to deal with defeat.

In the end it is a landslide victory (I won’t spoil your enjoyment by telling you who wins) but the process which brings the class to this outcome is fascinating to observe.

There is something to be learnt about children and about human nature no doubt. But, ultimately, it is amazing – given the assumed lack of exposure these eight year olds in Wuhan, the capital city of the central Chinese province of Hubei, have had to democratic political processes – how quickly the youngsters adapt to politics, and in particular, how similarly they adopt the characteristics we can associate with politicians.

This is evident in the language they use, the way they interact with each other, (look out for attack-laden debates), the candidates’ grasp of deal-making and carrot-dangling (and, sadly, bribery and lies), their understanding of the need to consult with the electorate, the eagerness of others to advise and fulfil their own ambitions (primarily the kids’ parents), and a macho male aggression. Plus the frailty and insecurity political candidates can display in private. It was not hard to make the leap from despondent child head down and holding hands with father to the Western politician being reassured and looked after by adviser or bag carrier.

A remarkable piece of work; it’s not hard to see why it won awards around the world. It’s not a new film – indeed I understand the BBC first showed it a couple f years ago – but if you’ve not come across it before, I’d highly recommend a viewing in the next couple of days.

You can watch a trailer of Please Vote for Me here.

Seriously, what are MPs for?

It struck me when reading the post by my colleague, Vincenzo Rampulla, on Nick Clegg’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that there is something else missing from this debate that was almost entirely absent too from the commentary on the expenses crisis last year.

Really it’s the first principles of making the sort of administrative changes IPSA has led, and constitutional changes, now being sought by the Coalition government: the role of MPs in 2010, and beyond.

The work of an MP has evolved and it seems incredulous that changes to how the offices of MPs are financed and, right now, how many people an MP should represent, are being pushed through without proper discussion; in parliament or amongst the general public.

Surely we should be asking what, in the twenty-first century, MPs are for, seeking to reaffirm why the public need them, and agree somewhat on what they are expected to do, before we determine how many are needed and how we provide funds for them to carry out their duties and represent their constituents?

The evolution has seen a massive increase in casework and the huge demands of extensive scrutiny and pressure led by mass media, and latterly, new media. The British public – but particularly those people that rely upon governments more like the last than the ideological service-cutters currently residing in Downing Street – deserve to openly discuss where the focus of their representatives’ work should be before they are told they have to get in the queue behind more people.

Shortly before parliament was dissolved in April, retiring Labour MP, Mark Todd, in a criticism of parliament’s failure to address this core issue, conveyed the nature of change:

First, what are the understood functions of a Member? In Churchill’s definition, published in the 1950s, the role was threefold, and in order of priority. I have edited it to remove the explicit sexism from his text. He said that the roles of a Member were: to exercise judgment in the interests of Great Britain; to act as a representative, but not a delegate, of his or her constituents; and to serve his or her party’s interests.

The Select Committee on Modernisation’s report on the role of Back-Bench Members, published in 2007, set out the following functions. Unlike Churchill’s, they are not in priority order. They were: supporting their party in votes in Parliament; representing and furthering the interests of their constituency; representing individual constituents and taking up their problems and grievances; scrutinising and holding the Government to account and monitoring, stimulating and challenging the Executive; initiating, reviewing and amending legislation; and contributing to the development of policy, whether in the Chamber, Committees or party structures, and promoting public understanding of party policy.

He goes on to highlight one such moment in time that accelerated change:

An MP serving between 1935 and 1950 said that, ”before 1939, unless there was some controversy afoot, I rarely received more than twenty letters a week…But after the election of 1945, everything was changed…suddenly the MP ceased to be a politician and potential statesman and became an official of the welfare state. Thousands wanted houses; old people wanted pensions; ex-service men wanted jobs; everybody wanted something and ‘write to your MP’ became a cliché”.

But it wasn’t the only instance – change has been both rapid, and inconsistently distributed amongst constituencies.

IPSA has set out its stall. Instead of taking the moral and long-term approach, the new independent authority took the populist approach of clamping down on ‘expenses’ (and this did need action even if I may not have chosen the exact same route to doing so myself) without considering the very real need to provide finances for MPs to act in their constituents’ interests. The media were allowed to get away with a characterisation that most MPs were on the take rather than a sensible dialogue being cultivated about the need for (fairly paid) staff with the resources to do their jobs. I sense no movement here.

But the Coalition’s intentions to reduce the number of MPs present an opportunity to discuss why – beyond a simplistic, yet dubious, argument of savings to the public purse – British people’s representation should change, not least as the reforms are not linked to a democratisation of parliament’s upper house. I suggest to the prime minister that this country needs effective representation, not less representation. Debating and consulting on the role of MPs would help determine whether I, or Mr Cameron, is right. If the expenses crisis taught us anything, it is that Britons very firmly expect more of their MPs. It is hard to see how the Coalition’s reforms can possibly provide this.

We can reach the moon, but you can’t vote on weekends.

Over at Left Foot Forward, Will Straw has highlighted the issues MPs are currently debating given the content of the Government’s Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. Labour will be rightly worried that the proposals of a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system is being used to push through proposals that will restrict electors representation and gerrymander constituencies to the benefit of the parties in power rather than the electorate as a whole.

Whilst I think it is important stuff, I do wonder whether this is what the average voter on the street worries about. I suspect the ‘average voter’ has more simple electoral questions on their mind (whenever elections do pass through their minds):

Currently these simple, practical questions are rarely discussed. Why do we seem to have ignored the debate? Everyone is focused on what system of voting we should be using with no real attention given to what could be done to radically overhaul the way the vote is actually conducted in the UK.

It is easy understand why. The move to include postal and proxy voting proved hugely contentious for John Prescott when he introduced it for the Labour Government in 2001. Since then scandals and fear of manipulation have meant there has been little will to push innovation further. Yet everyone agrees about the importance of voting and the need to get people voting in elections, especially since voter turn-out has dropped since the early 90s.

I have some sympathy for those responsible for the system. It isn’t the easiest of subjects to try and tackle. The fact is that helping 29,691,780 people put an ‘x’ on their ballot paper to vote for one of the 4,150 candidates that contested the this year’s General Election, in a single day, is an incredible feat of modern administration.

But there’s something disappointing in the fact that people can travel to the moon, regularly and comfortably move vast amounts of money across the world through telephone cables, and choose in their millions their favourite X-factor contestant by text, but making it easier for people to vote for their MP seems beyond us.

Some of the biggest headlines of 6/7 May were of the queues outside 27 polling places across the UK as people scrambled to make their vote, albeit in some instances at the last possible minute. 1,200 votes were affected across 16 constituencies. Small fry given the number of successful voters but surely a rationale for looking seriously at some new ideas?

So I feel this year’s report by the Electoral Commission on the 2010 election was a missed opportunity. The Chair of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, did not use her interview on yesterday’s Today programme not to put forward a radical plan but simply suggested that voters who have joined the voting queue before 10pm should have the legal right cast their vote. Simple to understand, but hardly radical.

Credit where credit’s due, the Electoral Commission had been successful in increasing voter registration. Their “About my Vote” campaign successfully produced 700,000 new electors between December 2009 and April 2010. But the majority of these new voters are presumably more comfortable with the smart phones, Internet and mobility that is part of their modern lives. Voting doesn’t compare, so is it any wonder that  the highest rates of non-turnout are with voters under 34.

There is no point in trying to argue that all non-voters don’t vote because they are uninterested in politics (for instance, the LSE found that voters were as interested in the battle between Gordon Brown and David Cameron as they were between Wilson and Douglas-Home). But modern, busy lives mean that our pre-21st system of casting your vote on paper and in person makes less and less sense to these non-voters and makes it harder for them to cast their vote.

I know that people need to trust our voting system and in many cases innovation has led to scandal. But if our elections are going to be more contentious, with ever closer results and if truly believe in making ‘every vote count’ , then shouldn’t we also aim to get almost everyone voting?

Finding a difference is taxing

The debate around a graduate tax rumbled on this week – with decreasing certainty as to the coalition’s position. Here, Young Fabian Policy Development Group member, Dan Harkin, struggles to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The YF Aspiration and Equality PDG will be addressing university funding in a future meeting.

Everyone from the BBC to the Telegraph has reported Vince Cable’s recent speech as in favour of a graduate tax. Most of the Labour leader candidates and the NUS have come out in favour it. But this isn’t really much of a debate. The difference between the two systems is skin deep.

Before tuition fees were brought in, higher education was free. Sort of. With the expansion of student numbers the grants were successively diminished and mortgage-style loans were brought in to cover the gap. Labour brought in a new student loans system, which was income contingent and means-tested. The rate of interest was (and continues to be) subsidised. When so-called top-up fees were brought in, the fees were added to the loan. Universities were required to use part of the income generated to support poor students.

I remember being sat in campaign groups at university, having paid a token fee for the year, surrounded by many over-privileged individuals campaigning against the fact that they had to pay full fees (this was the earlier tuition fees system). Never mind that the individuals on whose behalf they were supposedly campaigning didn’t pay any such fees. Under the current system the provisions for poor students is even more generous.

Student leaders talked about the burden of debt. But let’s get one thing straight, a student loan is not a mortgage. Loan providers don’t take it into account because it is paid back through your tax bill. To be frank it is either this form of debt or the real debt burden of a credit card or overdraft. And there is nothing wrong with the principle of distributing your income in your highest-earning years to your leanest years: that’s what we do with pensions. We take out loans to help us start out and we save to help us later on. Therefore loans are an entirely rational way to finance one’s education.

So what about a graduate tax? Imagine if we got individual A, with a student loan, and individual B, who pays a graduate tax, to exchange places. Both graduates would start repaying after a certain income level (£15,000 under the current system). The amount they pay back would be a portion of income, not fixed payments (10 per cent above the earning threshold). They would both cease paying after retirement. It’s a bit like asking two people at different weddings, one dancing the Macarena and the other the Time Warp, if they’d prefer to swap. Doing the Macarena with your aunty is painful but doing it wouldn’t be any more enjoyable if the friend of the family in the DJ booth put on his only other CD. (Incidentally, I’m fairly certain Mr Cable is technically proficient whatever the track.)

The only difference I can make out is that the loan repayments are, by their nature, finite. The Scottish system had a cap on the total amount an individual would pay back under its graduate contribution scheme. So either the graduate tax would replicate that, in which case it would be utterly indistinguishable from the current system, or it wouldn’t – in which case it appears to be somewhat sinister. But a graduate tax is problematic for a whole host of reasons: it’s not a direct payment to an institution; it’s hard to define a graduate; it’s hard to chase non-UK nationals with a “tax”; and, as there’s no borrowing element, it delays the funds available to universities.

Last there is something rather unholy about charging a class of citizens a different rate of tax. Taxes normally fall on a particular economic activity. Picking out a group of individuals and taxing them separately is an ill-paved road to start travelling down.

There isn’t space to go into all the arguments surrounding whether students should contribute towards the costs of their study. My argument assumes that will be the case, especially if student numbers need to rise as our economy changes. Given the large private benefit derived from having a degree it seems dodgy to suggest that the taxpayer should pay for the whole cost of a degree – especially when further education and part-time students get such a rum deal.

There are loads of ways to reform the current system to extract more money from those who should stump up the cash and still make it accessible to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. (Means-testing the share between the state and individual could be a goer.) But just rebadging it won’t help anyone. Hey, Macarena.

Young Fabians nationwide participating in new policy development

Building upon the success of 2009’s YF Policy Forums, Young Fabian Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, established four new Policy Development Groups to answer some of the key questions the centre-left needs to address in order to retool following Labour’s general election defeat. 

If the Fabian Society is about ideas, and the Young Fabians is about the next generation, then the YF Policy Development Groups (PDGs) are about realising that there is no time to waste. The context of a Conservative-led government and the first competitive Labour leadership election since today’s oldest Young Fabian members were at school offers a huge opportunity for centre-left ideas on domestic policy, Britain’s policy abroad, and even the way the Labour Party organises and presents itself.

The four groups – Livelihoods & Resource Security (looking at development and foreign policy); Work & Families; Aspiration & Equality (focusing on education policy); and a special project group, Transforming Our Party – have Young Fabian members, with a range of interests, expertises and experiences,  signed up in their hundreds.

The PDGs are seeking new policy ideas with the aim of developing these collectively to inform decision-makers and senior party figures as well as other Young Fabian and/or Labour Party members. Published outcomes from the PDGs predecessor in 2009 have been cited from the top table at leadership hustings and 2010’s work promises to be just as important and influential.

But they’re not just about influence. The strength of the PDGs lies within our membership. Recognising the need to harness the talents of all of our members, we have redoubled efforts to involve and empower and have utilised web-based resources to make this easier for Young Fabians across the country. Members have been encouraged to participate by email, blogging, joining a Facebook group, and accessing the many resources in the PDGs hub on the Young Fabian website, as well as attending meetings in person.

And the PDGs have hosted a first for the Young Fabians – online meetings. We’re not using webcams just yet, but members are finding the chatroom software both productive and easy to use. Plus the work of the groups benefits: the breaking of geographic boundaries brings in wider perspectives from the length and breadth of Britain than meetings in London often allow.

We are looking into using wikis for policy development and remain open to other ideas members want to suggest. Young Fabians are getting involved in whichever ways suit them best – members in Manchester have organised their own meeting to feed into the discussions of the Transforming Our Party PDG.

The PDGs will report later in the year so it’s not too late to join in. If you’d like to participate in any one of the PDGs, or would like to find out more about their latest work then please email Adrian, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk, or visit the PDGs hub on the Young Fabian website: http://tiny.cc/yfpdgs.

Osborne’s apparent lack of understanding of the National Accounts

Perversely, today’s surprise GDP figures have provided meat to all sides. Labour claims it was their action while in government that helped grow the economy 1.1% in the second quarter compared to the first. The Coalition claim the figures validate their approach of expedited deficit reduction, pointing to the fact that the majority of the 1.1% growth (around 1 percentage point of it) came from the private sector.

AFP reports Osborne as saying:

“Today’s figures show the private sector contributing all but 0.1 percent of the growth in the second quarter, and put beyond doubt that it was right to begin acting on the deficit now.

“While I am cautiously optimistic about the path for the economy, the job is not yet done.

“The priority now is to implement the budget policies which support rebalancing and help ensure … sustained growth.”

This is, of course, a bit misleading. GDP is calculated on a value-add basis – the difference between the value of a produced good or service, and the value of the materials used to create it.

What this means in practice is that the stated government contribution to GDP doesn’t accurately reflect government expenditure. For example, the government could buy £1bn of baked beans and fill the House of Parliament with them, and it would add very little to the government share of GDP. The value add would end up elsewhere – in consumer expenditure or exports/imports, for example.

So quite a lot of Government expenditure doesn’t show up in the government consumption share of GDP – this is the difference between what the Government produces on a value-add basis, and the total income it derives from taxation and borrowing (a lot of government expenditure is just a transfer from one group to another).

This is quite an important point in the context of savage cuts to government department budgets. When the government scales back expenditure, the feed-back effects are more broadly felt – we can expect wider consumption and capital investment to fall because some business and consumers rely on government transferring tax revenues to them (for which they may or may not provide services).

And if you scale back government expenditure by enough, you can start having material effects on non-Government components of GDP because of the way the national accounts are assembled. This may mean lower or negative GDP growth.

Osborne’s analysis of these results therefore seems a little naïve, or deliberately misleading.

Cameron and the spirit of Stanley Baldwin

In this guest post, Young Fabian member Laurence Turner reflects on the historical comparisons made with the current coalition government.

Nick Clegg would have us believe that we live in an age of reform comparable to the 1830s, but in truth it feels more like the 1930s.

On May 12th, David Cameron announced that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had ‘overcom[e] political differences to forge a new government in the national interest.’ This was powerful rhetoric, but the words were of a different age. They could easily have been uttered by a triumphant Stanley Baldwin almost eighty years earlier.

As historical actors, Baldwin and Cameron strike a similar pose. Both modernisers, both easy media performers, both leaders of anti-Labour coalitions. It seems from his speeches that Cameron is taking Baldwin’s style of leadership seriously, and so should we.

Like Cameron, Baldwin transformed the Conservative Party from a sectional organisation, ill-equipped to appeal to a changed electorate, into the dominant force in British politics. Most importantly, he successfully established his Party’s ‘non-political’ credentials and, by way of contrast, associated his opponents with the stigma of factionalism.

Of course, ‘non-political’ appeals are by their nature political, and inclusive rhetoric can be one of the most effective means of excluding and marginalising opposition groups. Baldwin spent almost ten years building a contrast between the ‘National’ Conservative Party and a ‘Socialist’ Labour Party – a strategy which provided the National Government with its rhetorical clothing.

There is a present danger for Labour here.

As Philip Williamson has argued, after 1931 ‘appeals to national interest, national unity, equal sacrifices, and responsibility overwhelmed those to socialism, social justice, and class’. The proof is striking: the National Government ticket won the 1935 General Election with 53.3% of the vote. Labour must engage more meaningfully with values and ideology, but if we phrase our appeal too narrowly then we will be similarly outmanoeuvred. The Left’s intellectual renaissance during the thirties needs to be emulated today, but that in itself was small compensation for a decade of Tory ascendancy.

Cameron and Clegg will try to emulate this achievement. The Left must develop the arguments needed to prevent this from occurring. History provides us with one small example: how can this be the ‘New Politics,’ when even the rhetoric has been lifted from the era of the Great Depression?

Of course, the parallel is inexact, and the contrasts are encouraging. Labour is not so hopelessly fractured as in 1931, and Cameron – though he has taken to coalition life well – does not seem as formidable an opponent as Baldwin. In terms of grand vision, for example, the Big Society is weak stuff compared to the enduring appeal of the Property Owning Democracy.

The spectre of The National Government does, however, help us to define the scale of the challenge that must be overcome if we are to see a genuinely progressive government back in Number 10.

How best to solve gender imbalance in the workplace?

A new paper by researchers at the University of Innsbruck suggests that from a young age – three years old – boys are more likely than girls to enter into competitive behaviour, and that this observed behaviour persists through childhood into adolescence. The paper is consistent with earlier studies which find a persistent and large gender gap in the willingness to compete amongst adults, but its conclusions are more instructive – willingness to compete may be less likely to be contingent on nurture, rather than nature, than we had previously thought.

Willingness to engage in competitive behaviour is important in the context of labour markets, where competition is likely to be higher (in general) for high-profile or well-remunerated jobs. This research might have important considerations from a policy perspective when designing programmes to promote competition in the workplace. Namely, when is the right time to intervene?

It might be possible to have greater impacts on outcomes later in life by targeting intervention from a very early age (pre-three years old) to boost the willingness to compete amongst females. However, this implies that the impact of nature and nurture are more balanced before the age of three (as there are no studies into competitive behaviour at such a young age, it is difficult to know).

Of course, if willingness to compete is largely innate, then it may not matter too much at what stage any interventions occur and, on balance, programmes are likely to have greater impacts if they focus on reducing competitiveness in the labour market to encourage wider participation amongst females.

On a broader, normative point – if we accept there are differences in willingness to compete given gender, then I’m not sure which course of action is more preferable – encouraging females to be more competitive, or making labour markets less competitive? Thoughts welcome…

Why would someone want to fight an unwinnable election?

Young Fabian Jack Smith has chosen to fight his first election contest for a Tory safe council seat on Camden Council. Crazy? Here he tells us why it is an important campaign to fight for…

This is a question particularly apt for me at the moment as I am doing just that. I am the Labour Party candidate in the Frognal & Fitzjohns by-election for Camden Council and to say the ward is a Conservative safe seat would be an understatement. So why, you may ask, would someone spend their time putting together and running a full campaign for a council seat that has such a slim chance of success?

Firstly, this is the first time I have run for any form of public office and so I want the experience. Going canvassing with and for other people is interesting, invigorating and inspiring, however, until you run your own campaign, you cannot appreciate the intricacies and difficulties there are surrounding it. Running this campaign has taught me some of the ins and outs of organising, all of which will be invaluable if and when I want to stand again in the future.

Secondly, because of the nature of politics at the moment, this is a great time to go out and talk to people about things that are affecting them, and even better, I am finding they want to talk back!

I have so far discussed everything from rubbish collection to the balance between prevention and cure of crime. Now obviously, in a safe Tory seat, I have been encountering a lot of difference of opinion on such matters, however, the people I have most enjoyed talking to are people who voted Liberal Democrat in the last election. Generally, they are not happy at all with the coalition; however, they are yet to be convinced that the Labour Party offers a fairer, more equal, more progressive option. This is why I feel the campaign is so important.

This is one of the first opportunities we have had as a party since May 6^th to go out and show the electorate that we are the only party that can provide a society where the most needy are protected and the proverbial ‘man/woman in the street’ gets the fairest deal.

If we can start convincing Lib Dem voters this early on in the current parliament that we are the party who they share their beliefs with, then we are well on the way to taking back parliament in 5 years time.

So come and join me this Saturday with other Young Fabians or on polling day, 22^nd July, and help me win an unwinnable!

We’ll be helping Jack campaign this Saturday with a joint event with London Young Labour. For more details see here or contact me, Vincenzo Rampulla, vrampulla@youngfabians.org.uk / 07900 912587

Good news for Chinese Workers

Change in China is often slow and incremental, here Young Fabian Benjamin Knight looks at the recent currency evaluation and government response to strikes by factory workers and argues that things are looking up for Chinese citizens.

As doubts about whether economic recovery can be secured through private sector growth are expressed here in the UK, key developments have taken place in China which are of great significance to the international economy.

Firstly, the Chinese Yuan was removed from its US Dollar peg. The hope is that by removing the peg to the US Dollar, the Yuan will appreciate in value.  After a long period of being artificially low this is good news for exporters trying to tap in to the Chinese market.

In making it more expensive to buy cheap Chinese goods, their competitive edge over more expensive but higher quality goods produced in the West is reduced. If the global economy is to recover then more goods need to move from West to East – the rise in the value of the Yuan will be crucial in bringing this about. This is good news for struggling manufacturers in the UK and Europe that are trying to sell things to Chinese consumers.

Another impact of this move is that it means the money in the pockets of Chinese workers will be worth more. China is a huge country with a huge economy and trillions of dollars in its reserves, but the average person still earns around $3000, and rural or migrant workers take home even less.  Such an unequal state of affairs gives rise to tensions between the rich and poor, and between employer and employee.

Because of the savings culture in China – brought about largely by lack of state welfare safety nets, and by the One Child Policy – the average Chinese worker is reluctant to consume goods in the same way as their Western counterparts. The Chinese authorities are attempting to shift the very nature of their economy away from export driven growth and towards growth through domestic consumption.

In another important development a series of strikes have taken place in the foreign owned factories across China. Whilst unrest is not a new phenomenon, what is different this time is the way in which the Chinese Government has responded to the strikes. The accommodation of the workers demands for higher wages and better living conditions, and the peaceful nature in which such industrial action is being resolved, is indicative that the Government is willing to ease the huge pressures faced by factory workers.

Millions of migrant workers have travelled from the impoverished rural regions of China, flooding in to the cities and industrial heartlands in search of work and a steady wage which can be sent back to their families in the countryside. These people have contributed greatly to the huge boom in China’s economic prospects over the last 30 years so it is high time that their efforts were met with fairer pay and a better standard of living.

It is all too easy to forget – when so much has changed here over the past months – but our economic recovery is intrinsically tied to the fortunes of up and coming countries such as Brazil, India, Russia and China. In securing our own recovery the UK should play a positive and active role in encouraging business to be done in such a way that delivers fairness for all, not just the privileged.