We need a state that responds to regional issues, not a Big Society

Conferences are supposed to highlight the differences between parties. Members and MPs are paraded before the media to denounce their rivals and rally the troops in anticipation of the next round of political combat in the Commons.

However, the bombastic rants of shadow cabinet ministers (think Ed Balls and his criticism of “Butch Cameron and the flat-line kid”) tells us less about the differences between the two main parties than the more subtle ways Labour MPs respond to issues on which there is broad agreement on across the political spectrum. It is by listening out for those key phrases spoken at Fringe events that are repeated again and again that the humble party supporter can understand where his/her politicians will draw the battle lines against the opposition.

At this year’s Fabian Fringe, the emphasis has been on building a more intelligent, more flexible, and more responsive state. The need to “innovate” has been stressed at various events, as has the need to accept and adapt to a post-financial crisis landscape where old ideas and values no longer have the same relevance. In particular, we have witnessed at this conference a de-emphasising of redistributive measures and the role of central government in securing economic fairness in favour of ‘higher level’ mechanisms of achieving more equality, and local or regional means of stimulating change.

There is overlap here with the Conservatives’ rhetoric on the ‘Big Society’, where the powers and responsibilities of providing state welfare and services are devolved to voluntary organisations, civic society, and local government. Is Labour seeking to adopt the ‘Big Society’ from David Cameron in the same way that Ed Miliband adopted ‘One Nation’ from Benjamin Disraeli?

‘NO’ is the resounding response. While both parties are emphasising the importance of localism, participatory democracy, and regionally-tailored services, only Labour is making the connection between these three objectives and central government’s role in making it happen. On the evidence of this year’s conference, Labour is aware that divorcing issues of regional investment, regional pay, and regional welfare from regional democracy and regional funding is a recipe for disaster.

Helen Goodman, writing in The Shape of Things to Come: Labour’s New Thinking, explains that for a more decentralised state to work for the people, Labour must build regional responses on the basis of trust, rather than control:

“The localism agenda of this government purports to give more local accountability, but the various arms of policy are pulling in too many opposing directions for this to work. Labour needs to develop its own collective approach, building on local democratic institutions and expanding and strengthening accountability. Even on a practical level, extracting maximum efficiency from funds will mean trusting local politicians to know their own areas and deliver on priorities in the most efficient way possible.”

However, the party can go further than this. Instead of relying on local representatives to deliver what is needed, Labour could embrace participatory budgeting and champion micro referendums on issues of community spending to ensure that council decisions are fully democratic and placed in the hands of those most affected.

A Labour government would also have to ensure that regions had access to an adequate supply of funding. To this end, it would be prudent to stop talking of a ‘British Investment Bank’ now and start talking about the need for ‘Regional Investment Banks’ instead.

The party could also revive the idea of regional parliaments, buried in the first term of New Labour. These don’t have to consist of expensive ‘white elephant’ legislative buildings or the creation of an extra layer of bureaucracy. Instead, they should be hotbeds of creative thinking on local government, given real powers by Westminster but then left alone to come up with imaginative solutions to their own geographical areas of responsibility.

The truth is that some councils are more innovative and willing to try new things than others. It is up to the state to promote best practice and provide the funds and expertise to ensure each locality is properly equipped to tailor the solutions right for them. The above are just a few ideas on how to achieve this.

Perhaps if some of them are taken on board, we can replace Cameron’s bankrupt ‘Big Society’ with a Britain where communities are fair, free, and properly funded.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog 

Why are young people locked out of economic and political systems?

At the Young Fabian Jobs Plan held in Manchester yesterday, Victoria Desmond explained how and why youth unemployment must be tackled now. Here, she describes how young people’s economic and political troubles are closely entwined.

Youth unemployment is at epidemic levels. One million 16- 25 years olds have no job. This has the potential to leave a long-lasting impact on the lives of an entire generation, but also has implications for the wider economy. Long term unemployment has detrimental effects on productivity and output, diminishes skills and wastes talent. As young people, we are the ones most affected by the economic crisis; however we are also the ones least likely to engage in the political system, and be engaged by politicians.

Many commentators such as Guardian journalist Shiv Malik go as far as to name us the “jilted generation”; not only are we ignored by the system, but we are wilfully locked-out of the policy debate by those in power.

At a time of acute economic difficulty, this is unacceptable. However, many young people do not make the connection between economic issues, in terms of pay or employment, and political participation, or realise that political participation is vital for the promotion of economic interests.

Alternatively, many young people simply perceive economists and politicians to be in cahoots with the ‘bad banker guys’ who bankrupted the system. Simply put, the majority of young people think that economics relates to money and banks, whilst politics relates to a remote, and disconnected distribution of power in the hands of elites.

Helping young people develop a better understanding of the connection between economics and politics is paramount. The problem that this alludes to is both educational and representational; a key reason why young are locked out of economic and political systems is simply lack of knowledge. Young people should grasp that they are already at a disadvantage because of these systems but that the opportunities to become more engaged exist.

They could be helped to this realisation if the mainstream media bothered to connect questions of economic disadvantage with issues of political representation. News outlets rarely present issues such as the living wage as both a political and economic project that has a real impact on young people’s lives.

Perhaps we can make up for failures of the mainstream media by embracing our status as the ‘socially connected generation’. Of course, there are many accessible forms of engagement; for instance we can follow our elected representative on Twitter, I can ‘like’ the “We hate David Cameron” Facebook page, and I can sign a petition in less than a minute to support the latest campaign fad.

Engagement with social media is important, but we have to accept that there are limits to what it can achieve. Sometimes we miss the obvious fact that those who engage politically on social networks are the same people who engage in the political system anyway.

In addition, when young people who do not usually get involved in politics do take part in an online campaign, they too often limit their participation to a quick tweet or a one-off email. They contribute too little and get back even less from the experience. In light of this, a question we should ask is: ‘when do social networks trivialise political debate to such an extent that it actually harms the cause of further engagement?’

Despite technological advances, it remains the responsibility of political organisations to engage the younger generation. We all know groups that have long mailing lists and comfortable membership numbers, yet still have a problem in getting these people to move from more casual or passive engagement to proactive commitment.

When push comes to shove, political organisations need people to attend events, campaign on the streets and devote time to recruiting new members. Otherwise, a terminal decline in participation is inevitable. People who are already engaged must remember that they have a social responsibility to attract new members – particularly younger members – to ensure future generations reap the benefit of a thriving political culture.

This also means rethinking the terms, themes and direction of campaigns toward younger audiences. We also have to take a critical look at ourselves in the mirror and ask: ‘are we the ones to blame for disenfranchising a generation?’

It’s easy to list the problems facing young people today. Finding serious policy solutions that can be framed and presented on young people’s terms is ultimately the best way to address the twin issues of political disengagement and economic vulnerability.

The father of Burmese heroine Aung Sang Su Kui once said: “you may not think about politics, but politics thinks of you.” The answers that we are looking for are not to be found in a convoluted political thesis or a miracle equation.

The key to solving the lack of active engagement is to go back to basics. Remind people of this simple quote. Perhaps if they feel more connected to political and economic systems they will be more inclined to engage. We need to start talking to a wider audience in a more accessible language, stop debating with ourselves and turn our attention to the people who don’t think that politics is for them.

When they start believing politics can bring real change, the seeds of engagement will be planted and perhaps then my generation can stand up for itself and make our voices heard.

Victoria Desmond is a Young Fabians member

The importance of trust

All manner of relationships, whether in the local community, in the workplace, or in politics, rely on trust to function successfully.

Trust is a valuable social lubricant, facilitating cooperation between individuals and regulating dealings between corporations and governments. It is also increasingly seen as an important economic resource that may help explain the differences in GDP growth between countries.

Stephen Knack, a scholar whose work involves probing the mysterious qualities of trust, even goes so far as to suggest that the entire difference between the per capita income of the US and Somalia is down to the different levels of trust in each country.

Knack’s claim reflects one extreme view of the utility of trust to economic and social relations. The truth is that no-one agrees on the added value that trust brings to balance sheets or “community spirit.” The basic argument is quite straightforward: trust, or ‘social capital’ as the economists call it, is an invisible asset made up of the “networks, norms, relationships, values and  informal sanctions” that help “shape the quantity and co-operative quality of a society’s social interactions.”

High levels of social capital in a country boosts the economy by reducing the likelihood of fraud and theft eating into revenues and saving managers thousands of working hours on supervisory duties.  In an environment where bosses trust their workers, they are less likely to devote time and resources policing their activities. These savings in so-called ‘transaction costs’ could run into millions of pounds.

Could the UK economy be depressed by a deficit of trust? By linking together the research of academics like Knack with the findings of Wilkinson and Pickett in their groundbreaking book on the benefits of equality, The Spirit Level, it becomes clear that low levels of trust among Britons could be partially responsible for both the business and social problems blighting the country. Wilkinson and Pickett say “high levels of trust mean that people feel secure, they have less to worry about, [and] they see others as co-operative rather than competitive.”

The Spirit Level reveals that the UK ranks fourth lowest among the developed countries for levels of trust, behind Portugal, the US, and Singapore. Not only this, but academic studies suggest trust has been in decline in the UK for a long time now. Surveys taken in the immediate post-war period reported that between 50-60% of Britons felt they could trust their fellow countrymen. However, by 1981 this percentage had fallen to 42.5%, and by the time of New Labour, was at a historic low of 30.4%.

These figures suggest that over time individuals have become more suspicious of, and even hostile to, other people. This change in attitudes naturally has a corrosive effect on social and business relations, and may have some part to play in explaining declining levels of economic growth since the 1980s and, by extension, the current difficulties getting out of recession.

The reasons why trust levels have fallen through the floor are debateable. However, the evidence provided by Wilkinson and Pickett makes a compelling case for blaming it on the exploding economic inequalities Britain has experienced over the last few decades.

Utilising the research of Eric Uslaner in his book The Moral Foundations of Trust, they claim that “income inequality is the ‘prime mover’ of trust, with a stronger impact on trust than rates of unemployment, inflation or
economic growth.”

Why should restoring trust within society be a priority now? Because a lack of social capital harms the prospects of young people most of all. A Cabinet Office report in 2002 stated that trust and fellow-feeling helps young adults acquire the wide network of contacts and links with associations that help them to find work. In a world where the key to satisfying employment is still who you know, not what you know, young people are disadvantaged by living in a society where people don’t trust each other enough to reach out beyond their own little worlds.

We must act now to stop trust draining out of our country. As Project M argues, there is no reason to be complacent about a depletion of social capital. “When trust is used it can foster greater trust, but it can also be dissipated, particularly when inequality grows within society.” Boosting levels of trust in society may not solve all society’s problems, but it would certainly help foster an environment where people, and businesses, are better able to work in harmony with one another.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

Participatory Budgeting can save local democracy

Local politics is staring into the abyss.

Turnout at the 2012 council elections was a paltry 32%, and in Wales almost 100 councillors were elected unopposed. During a time when the naked power of democracy to inspire people is being demonstrated on a profound scale in the Middle East, British leaders should be seeking to re-energise our representative institutions and engage people in the governance of their localities. Participatory Budgeting (PB) is an innovative tool with which to achieve this.

PB offers citizens the chance to get involved in allocating part of their council’s spending, allowing the people that consume public services and use public spaces to actively shape them.

In the UK, PB is only 10 years old, but the idea has an impressive international pedigree, stretching back to the early days of Brazilian democracy in the 1980s. The last Labour government recognised PB as a powerful tool to facilitate the new constitutional settlement it sought, following on from the success of devolution and the humbling of the House of Lords. Under Labour, over 150 communities experimented with PB, with great success.

Today, the Coalitions’ rhetoric on the ‘Big Society’ suggests that conditions are ripe for PB to become mainstream. The Open Public Budgets white paper and experiments with community and neighbourhood budgeting offers PB a real opportunity to become a stalwart feature of all local public sector budgeting cycles.

Why should progressives embrace Participatory Budgeting? First of all, it can be used to create the more open and dynamic society that allows progressive ideas to grow and flourish. Permitting residents a say in how their taxes are spent and what the priorities of their community should be helps dispel the illusion that government is an impregnable entity alien to the experiences of everyday life. By making government more porous, we make it more likely that citizens will take initiative to shape it from the inside.

Second of all, it can nurture a more inclusive form of local democracy that goes beyond the simple box-ticking of elections and referenda. PB has been trialled in Tower Hamlets, London, for two years now, and 62.2% of attendees felt that the process helped strengthen their level of influence over local services.

This sense of empowerment is the secret to a revitalised democracy. Marc Stears, in an essay for the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), claims that the success of a new kind of ‘Everyday Democracy’ rests on the extent to which decisions made by local groupings are properly enforced. Participatory Budgeting that is truly democratic, properly deliberated, and assessed by the maximum number of local people possible, has the effect of channelling significant power away from municipal offices and into the hands of the everyman and woman on the street. This in turn strengthens people’s faith in democracy- and local democracy in particular- to affect real change.

“For a relationship to count as truly democratic,” Stears explains, “people must come together in ways that enable some form of action that would not otherwise have occurred, in pursuit of common goals that otherwise could not have been achieved.”

Participatroy Budgeting has the ability to both enable these actions and clarify these goals for citizens and councillors alike.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

Why we need a Minister for the Internet

In the past decade Britain has experienced a revolution.

The scale of this revolution cannot be understated; it has altered the way we live our lives, the way our democracy works and the way our economy works. In this article, I will discuss how the internet has transformed these three areas and argue why it is time we had a dedicated Minister for the Internet.

For young people in Britain today, the internet is a vital part of their everyday lives. Through social networks we are able to communicate to, and stay connected with, our friends, family and communities. Indeed, we increasingly live our lives not with the internet, but through it.

On the face of it, Twitter is just a website that allows users to transmit messages of 140 characters to people who follow them. However, this simple idea has had a huge effect on society. For example, it arguably helped facilitate last year’s Arab Spring. The internet allows us to communicate our ideas and exercise freedom of speech in new ways. In the past, if we wanted information we would have to go to a library to look it up. Now we can Google for information instantly, or search for it on Wikipedia. This has allowed the public to have comparatively better informed debate on important issues than in years past. A better informed public openly voicing their opinions makes for a healthier and more open democracy.

Access to the internet has now become so important that it is registered by the United Nations as a human right. However, according to the Office of National Statistics, 16.1% of people in the UK have never used it. Many more are not able to make the most of the opportunities the web provides because of uneven broadband provision across the country. If the internet truly is a human right and a social good, then access must be distributed evenly across society.

Labour should start making bold plans to ensure that every citizen in our country has access to, and is able to use, the internet. A computer literate society is a more social, more accountable and more prosperous society. In 2011, the online giant Google made over $37.9bn in revenues, which is more than the GDP many countries produce. Businesses such as Valve Corporation and Apple have also generated enormous profits by making the most of today’s online economy. These businesses are unusual because Valve’s Steam and Apple’s iTunes facilitate a market in products which are not physical, but purely digital. The market for such products still has a lot of growing left to do, and so governments should grasp the opportunity to encourage investment in start-up web-based businesses. After all, no one knows where the next Google will come from.

However, not every development of the internet has been a positive one. When we put our information on Facebook, or when we Google something, we share personal information with these companies. It is not simply my family and friends who learn about what I’m interested in, but also the online businesses who facilitate these interactions. Most of us would not want the government to know personal things about us, so it is hard to understand why we acquiesce to businesses gathering the same information. The societal pressure for people to use and sign up to websites has undoubtedly given businesses an opportunity to take advantage of what we do online. This is why government must step in to ensure that users’ best interests are promoted at all times.

Legislation covering the internet is unevenly driven by private, not public, interests. Although copyright law may not seem like a salient issue to most people in Britain today, copyright legislation laws have inspired young people across the world to get politically active in order to stop acts such as SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. The success of Pirate Parties in elections across Europe is just an example of how mainstream politics has so far failed to engage with online issues properly.

This is why I advocate the creation of a Minister for the Internet. The internet is ultimately a public good and we must be properly represented in matters surrounding it. The online revolution has permanently changed our society, democracy and economy. Creating a specialist ministerial position would allow government to provide better access to information and facilities for citizens struggling to get to grips with the many issues surrounding internet use. The ministry would also be able to engage better and consult more widely on online issues. It would clearly set out the government’s online agenda, make its plans more transparent, provide a brief covering the right to internet access, and encourage the development of online businesses.

In years past we had a Postmaster General. In this online era, why can’t we have a Webmaster General?

Lewis Miller is a Young Fabians Member

Our Phantom Constitution

Last week’s heated debate over Lords reform brought unwelcome attention to the curious void at the heart of British democracy: our lack of a written, codified constitution.

Fabians have agonised over the structure of the British constitutional settlement since the Society’s inception, and founders Beatrice and Sidney Webb tackled the challenge head-on in ‘A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.’ The Webbs’ defined the challenge facing progressives in the following terms:

“The problem to be solved is how to remould the social institutions that have come into existence in such a way as to evoke, in all men and women, and not merely a favoured few, all their latent powers, to stimulate the whole population…to the utmost possible exercise of their faculties.”

Few would argue that our current constitutional arrangement empowers every member of the citizenry in this way. However, would a formalised, written constitution really help balance out the current democratic deficit?

Britain has frequently flirted with the idea of a written constitution, but never advanced the relationship to one of solid commitment. At present, British democracy rests on a phantom constitution, comprising a hodgepodge of statutes, Acts, conventions and scraps of common law. It is a confusing, nebulous, and- most importantly- pliable doctrine that allows the government of the day a great deal of flexibility in defining the limits of what is and what is not ‘constitutional.’

The cornerstone of the current settlement is the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, which confers on Westminster supreme power to create and amend the laws of the land. What is interesting about this is that from a legal perspective, anything parliament decrees is law, and cannot be overruled. The devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales do exercise power, but their legal right to do so could be revoked by the Westminster Parliament at any time. No wonder the SNP are clamouring for a referendum. The same is true of Britain’s relationship with the European Union. The British government is obliged to conform to EU legislation as a condition of its membership- but it has not ‘constitutionally’ sacrificed any sovereignty to those across the channel.

A written constitution on the American model, meanwhile, formally sets out the legal powers of each level of government. The codified constitution serves both to enshrine the rights of the people and limit the powers of government in resolute terms. Yet written constitutions do little in practice to bring clarity to what these rights and limits entail. Take the classic example of the second amendment to the US constitution which supposedly guarantees the rights of all citizens “to bear arms.” Some say the wording unequivocally states that gun ownership is a constitutional right. Others say that it is qualified by arguing that the framers meant that weapon ownership was required only to defend the nation from external invaders.

However the problems with a written constitution go deeper than this, and should make all British cheerleaders wary of what they support.

All constitutions are the brainchildren of established political elites, and arguably serve to entrench the rights and powers of these elites over the rest of the population. Imagine how the process would play out in Britain: a cross-party commission of MPs and Lords would be established, take soundings from the most senior wonks in the think-tank world, debate principles with constitutional experts and foreign advisers, and engage in superficial ‘evidence-gathering’ exercises with the general public. After several years, the polished manuscript, approved by the government of the day and backed by the opposition, enshrining in perpetuity those principles that do not threaten the political status quo anyway, will be sold to the people and voted on via referendum. It is doubtful whether any constitution conceived in this way could really disperse power vertically down through British society, giving the man in the street a greater legal say in the running of the Kingdom.

An even greater problem is that any written constitution would have to be predicated by the abolition of the monarchy. It would be incongruent with the principles on which a democratic constitution is written to have it begin with the affirmation of an unelected head of state’s powers and prerogatives. Until Britain is ready to become a republic in both practice and principle, a written constitution is an impossible prospect.

However, the greatest problem with a written constitution is essentially an ideological one. An interesting argument made on Conservapedia suggests that constitutions implicitly endorse the idea of a transcendent moral order, a body of rigid universal laws that are both unchangeable and inalienable. Modern society, however, is sensitive to the fact that moral ‘laws’ are relativistic, and cannot be ordained for all peoples for all times. A written constitutions’ inflexibility harms the ability of progressives to genuinely reform society.

Look at South Africa- until 1994 its constitution legally debarred black citizens from engaging in the political process on an equal basis with white citizens. Even today, the written constitutions of Sweden and Denmark guarantee the positions of unelected heads of state. The latter one has been rewritten five times over the last two centuries in order to keep up with the times. Those who believe a written constitution is a magic wand that casts the spell of greater democracy over its host country are sorely mistaken.

In fact, as long as our constitution is unwritten, as long as sovereignty is invested in Parliament alone, the people have a better means of shaping the law of the land- through campaigning, lobbies, petitions, and other mechanisms. Vernon Bognador, Britain’s foremost constitutional expert, suggests one way to unlock the floodgates holding back the democratic impulses of the people would be to allow members of the public to launch initiatives, like they do in the US, allowing people to trigger referendums on issues important to their area.

Our world is evolving at a rapid pace. Ten years from now, there may be no such thing as a United Kingdom. One hundred years from now, a third of the British Isles may be underwater, and half our citizenry may be over the age of 100. How could a constitution drafted in 2012 enable the lawmakers of the future the flexibility required to legislate for the problems they face? Could a written constitution even tie Britain to an unjust, unfair body of laws that prevents society changing for the better? As long as such questions remain unanswered, the possibility of a written constitution remains remote.

Better a phantom constitution than a monstrous one.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

Time for Under-30 Shortlists

There is one democratic deficit at the heart of Parliament that has gone unnoticed for far too long.

Yes, it is true that in both Houses women are still woefully underrepresented, as are black people, those belonging to ethnic minorities, and the LGBTQ community. However, most striking of all is the underrepresentation of young people in Parliament, despite the fact that the vast majority of legislation made in the two chambers directly affects young people’s present and future lives.

Following the 2010 election, just 14 MPs were elected to the Commons under the age of 30. This represents a mere 2% of the membership of the lower House, in a country where young people aged 16-34 make up 25% of the population.

In the upper chamber, the age bias is even more pronounced. Not a single Peer is under the age of 30, while an astonishing 373 of them are over the age of 70. This despite the fact that a Peer need only be older than 21 to qualify for a seat.

A number of arguments have been made to justify the effective barring of young people from Parliament. Unsurprisingly, many of them revolve around the suggestion that young people are incapable of performing the work of an MP or Peer, and lack the real-world experience necessary to navigate the hallowed halls of Westminster. Some would also no doubt claim that young people are politically incompetent, and pose an electoral liability to their parent party. David Cameron must have thought this after Chole Smith’s disastrous Newsnight interview (she was former ‘Baby of the House’, at 27, after her election in 2009).

However, similar arguments were made in decades past to justify excluding women from the franchise. Liberal PM Herbert Asquith claimed that there was no place for women in “the dust and turmoil” of the political world, and even as late as 1920- after they had been granted the vote- argued that they were “a dim, impenetrable lot, for the most part hopelessly ignorant of politics, credulous to the last degree, and flickering with gusts of sentiment like a candle in the wind.”

Compare this to some of the comments made in response to eighteen-year-old Kate Taylor’s challenge for a seat on Plymouth City Council this May. One stated that “she should be a tea-maker whilst learning the ropes. I’ll be amazed if anyone takes her seriously.” Such snipes are characteristic of the attitudes the wider electorate holds towards young politicians.  Seemingly anyone under the age of 30 who puts themselves up for election is denounced as a self-serving “career politician” by the media, held in contempt by the electors, and sneered at by everyone for their supposed pretentiousness.

Yet at the same time political scientists, MPs, and the more astute commentators in the media bemoan the lack of youth engagement in politics and agonise over the fact that our democracy is in danger of stagnating under the control of an ever-growing rump of “grey voters” over 60 years of age.

I believe that in order to inspire young people to vote, we need to offer them candidates who can truly represent them. An influx of young politicians at all levels of governance will provide a pantheon of role models who young people will want to connect with, and who will be capable of motivating them to get engaged in the political process.

Labour should lead the way by piloting under-30 shortlists in council wards where there is a high density of young people, and then expanding the scheme to encompass parliamentary selections in specially identified seats.

The party will have to take a leap of faith that other sections of the electorate will not be put off voting by the youthfulness of these candidates. Labour will need to make the case for their inclusion- perhaps starting by flagging up that current and past MPs well into their forties and fifties fiddled expenses, accepted bribes from lobbyists, and generally acted in an immature fashion when entrusted with the public good.

Women-only shortlists proved contentious in their time, and still do today. Under-30 shortlists will no doubt prove the same. However, it is up to Labour to bite the bullet and embrace them wholeheartedly if they truly want to become the party that bests represents the whole of Britain.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

Parties and the Youth Vote

A recent poll of voting intention by YouGov produced some interesting figures, and raised questions about the importance of young voters in Britain’s electoral system.

The headline figure was provided by UKIP, who polled a dismal 0% of 18-24yr olds in the survey published on Sunday. Yes, only 74 young people were polled in this instance, but the political literati predictably spun the story to read that Britain’s fourth largest party could not count on a single voter under 25.

While the new poll is undoubtedly a public relations disaster for UKIP, voter demographics show that the political impact may be far less severe. In the 2005 election, voter turnout for 18-24yr olds was 37%, way below the national average of 61%, and The Guardian reported that 22% of students were not even registered to vote in the weeks leading up to the 2010 contest. An investigation by the centre-left think-tank IPPR revealed that two over-65s voted for every young person who bothered to cast their ballot.

A lot of noise is made about engaging young people in politics, boosting the turnout of the under 25s, and encouraging parties to better represent the ‘next generation.’ Unfortunately, many initiatives turn out to be only so much hot air. The youth wings of the major parties are seen by outsiders as being dominated by small, well-connected cliques and those who aspire to be ‘career politicians.’ This image does little to endear politics to young people not traditionally interested in politics.

Witness Labour’s own recent NPF elections. In the race for Youth Representative, only 3 regions out of 11 fielded more than one candidate to contest the position. Hardly the image of a thriving youth movement.

The best way to encourage youth engagement in mainstream politics is not to segregate those under-25 to a ‘party within a party’- like Young Labour or Liberal Youth. Children and teenagers interested in politics need to be better integrated with the senior parties in order to feel part of the movement as a whole.

Why doesn’t this happen already? The answer is twofold:

Firstly, young, politically-motivated individuals are usually more radical than their older peers within the party. Giving them a louder voice within the party movement means a louder debate on the ideological direction of the group as a whole. Good for internal party democracy, perhaps, but bad for the party image. The public dislikes the spectacle of factionalism and disunity within a party.

Secondly, it’s an unfortunate truth that the youth vote just isn’t important enough for parties to justify funnelling more resources into improving engagement. A report for Age Concern revealed that 18-24yr olds accounted for only 7.1% of the total turnout at the 2005 General Election. Compare this to the massive 42.6% share of the turnout recorded by the over 55s. No wonder politicians fret so much about wooing grey voters.

So there is a vicious circle preventing young people from engaging in mainstream politics. Parties need to do more to entice under-25s to take part, but will not do so unless the proportion of the votes cast by them is critical to electoral success. But young people will not vote in larger numbers unless they are engaged by parties in the first place.

It will take a real change in attitudes to break this circle once and for all.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

Young People and National Identity

As Britain nursed a collective hangover incurred by the pomp and ceremony of the Jubilee weekend, Ed Miliband chose his moment to argue that Labour should re-connect with ‘Englishness’, and launch a debate on national identity in modern Britain.

He argued that Labour needs to “embrace a positive, outward looking version of English identity” and convince the public that ‘British’ and ‘English’- and for that matter, ‘Scottish’ and ‘Welsh’- identities, need not be mutually exclusive.

This may be Miliband’s first foray into the hazardous territory of national identity, but it comes at an important time. With the Scottish referendum on independence a mere two years away, and the number of those describing themselves as English more than double the amount who describe themselves as British, it is understandable that Labour feels the need to construct a coherent narrative on identity politics.

However, Miliband’s motives for pushing this agenda seem suspicious. Undoubtedly, Labour’s top table have been pressed to address the strange phenomena of ‘Englishness’ in response to evidence that devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland has made English citizens feel short-changed. According to IPPR, those who identify strongly as English are likely to be critical of the devolution settlement and in favour of the development of “an English dimension” to the governance of England. This poses a challenge to political parties that wish to preserve the union while keeping English voters onside.

Yet the rise of a strictly English national identity has been uneven across age cohorts and the ideological divide. A YouGov survey conducted in October 2011 revealed that while 63% of those questioned in total described themselves as English, only 53% of 18-24 year olds did. The discrepancies between Labour and Conservative voters are even more striking. 76% of Tories described themselves as English, while only 56% of Labour supporters said likewise.

It is fair to assume, therefore, that young, Labour-supporting people feel less attached to the ‘English’ national identity than their older, Conservative peers. Perhaps this is because young people have less awareness of the cultural and political distinctions between England and the rest of the UK; perhaps it’s because they do not pay taxes that are spent across the borders; perhaps because the curriculum teaches British history, rather than ‘English’ history. Maybe those familiar with ‘Old Labour’ rhetoric share the socialist view that borders are meaningless, and that it is class- rather than nationality- that divides us.

However, I believe the age cohort data points to the fact that national identity is acquired, not inherent. What is most likely is that as young people grow up, they conform to the identity impressed upon them by their education, peers, and local community. If you look back to the Young People’s Social Attitudes Survey conducted in 2003, nearly two-thirds of 12-19 year olds described themselves as British. ‘Britishness’ may be the identity first learnt by the majority of young people, absorbed through those symbols like the Union Flag, the Royal Family, and the map of the British Isles themselves, as well as through interactions with parents and other relations. Different identities are acquired later on. Sometimes these are other national identities, sometimes class or regional ones. It is strange that the Labour leader is selecting to emphasise this one English identity now, rather than focusing on others more readily grasped by the young and adults alike- especially class identity.

By pushing the ‘Englishness’ agenda now, Miliband may actually help perpetuate those narrow national identities that threaten the integrity of the Union. In fact, a glance at the data above suggests that those most likely to resonate with Ed’s new message are older, non-Labour voters. Perhaps his recent speech was a ploy to woo the same Middle Englanders that won New Labour its last three majorities. If so, it may come at the expense of truly connecting with Labour’s next generation whose concerns are far removed from squabbles about nationality.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

The Ethics of Personal Protest

The limits of peaceful protest are defined by the media and popular perceptions rather than the scale of the real threat to society.

On Saturday, the ethics of direct action were called into question following UK Uncut’s street party outside Nick Clegg’s London home. During the early afternoon, upwards of 300 activists- many of whom had brought along their families- followed UK Uncut stewards to Putney to protest against austerity measures sanctioned by the Deputy Prime Minister.

Almost inevitably, internet forums soon began humming with debate over whether it was right for the activists to engage in this form of “personal protest” against an individual. Tory MP Louise Mensch suggested that targeting Clegg’s home was “intolerable bullying”  and re-tweeted opinions that the protest was likely to frighten his children (if, that is, they were there at the time). Jamie Reed, a Labour shadow health minister, similarly argued that it was “inexcusable to target Clegg’s family.” 

The protestors hit back with picture evidence testifying to the peaceful nature of the protest, and made it clear that they never intended to threaten Clegg’s household. The police revealed that no arrests were made at the street party, and no attempts to harass the Cleggs were reported.

What is interesting about this exchange is that it suggests the public do not have the right to directly protest against individual politicians or target their families- something the national media do every day.

As the reach and power of the British media has grown, so the personalisation of politics has increased. Today, the personal is political, and the majority of politicians are fully aware that public office comes at the cost of their private lives.

MPs and journalists cannot rage against the public’s targeting of the individual when they do the same themselves. Sir Stuart Bell was the victim of a defamation campaign in 2011 when a local paper claimed he was a candidate for the dubious honour of the country’s laziest MP- a story that quickly did the rounds in the national media. Regardless of whether the accusation was true or not, certainly this was direct barracking of an individual. Why did the papers focus on Sir Stuart, rather than turning their fire on the Labour party or the parliamentary system as a whole? Because that would not have made as interesting a story.

The national media does not spare politician’s families, either. Think back to Tony Blair’s days as PM, when his son Euan was detained for being drunk and disorderly. The incident caused a brief media storm and brought into question Blair’s wisdom in suggesting on-the-spot fines for larger louts, not to mention bringing untold humiliation and unwelcome attention to the 16-year old Euan.

Those who complained about UK Uncut’s actions on Saturday see the ‘private’ individual as out-of-bounds to public protest, while daily reading stories about the personal shortcomings of their MPs and the scandalous indiscretions of celebrities.

Why shouldn’t protest become personal, when government policies attack the ability of the vulnerable to live private lives at all? When cuts to benefits prevent the sick and disabled from living autonomous lives, when parents are forced to work two jobs to make ends meet, and when students are obliged to use those hours put aside for studying in order to pay their way through university, private lives are taken away.

In such a time, isn’t “personal” protest justified?

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog