New ideas for a fairer Britain
Three perspectives - on remaking Britain, rethinking the work ethic, and putting tackling inequality at the heart of mission-driven government
Last week we ran two events with speakers whose recent books combine deep exploration of philosophy, economics and history with practical suggestions on how we can build a fairer society. We also marked the start of a new project to look at why a future mission-driven government should make tackling inequality a priority, and how to bring this about in practice. This post summarises all three initiatives and provides links to more information.
Also, Sonia Sodha wrote in yesterday’s Observer about the report that we published last week on attitudes to the role of luck in life, Rotten Luck.
This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain
In his new book,?This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain, political economist and Observer columnist Will Hutton analyses how the left and right have gone wrong over the course of the last century. He argues that two great traditions, ethical socialism and progressive liberalism, can be brought together to offer a different way forward and help shape a better Britain.
During this event on 22 April at Bush House, Will discussed the arguments in his book with Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London.
My contention is that to serve the common good, capitalism needs guardrails, proactive management and superintendence, and a constant insistence that it hard-wires social obligation into its DNA. The roots of the crisis through which we're living lie in Mrs. Thatcher and her imitators trying to bring back the laissez-faire, free market fundamentalism which characterised Britain in the first half of the 19th century.
Hijacked: How neoliberalism turned the work ethic against the workers
Political philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that the 17th century concept of the Protestant work ethic has been perverted, and is now used to justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the richest in society, at workers’ expense. In her latest book, Hijacked: How neoliberalism turned the work ethic against the workers,Anderson says we should reclaim the original goals of the work ethic and better ensure that it promotes dignity for workers.
At this webinar on 25 April, Elizabeth discussed the ideas in her book with Sohrab Ahmari, Bethan Staton and Stuart White.
Most of us think of the work ethic in the same terms that Max Weber did... he characterised the puritans who invented the work ethic as the killjoys of the 17th century... and condemned [it] for leading to... "wealth accumulation through the capitalist exploitation of workers' willingness to work hard"... I found a quite different version of the work ethic [when reading the original Puritan sources]...
The Inequality Mission
Labour have pledged to set up a “mission-driven” government if they are elected, and there has been much discussion recently about what this might look like in practice and how to make it work (from Nesta, the Institute for Government and the Future Governance Forum, among others). The IFG have also made recommendations for reforming the centre of government to deliver more effectively on policy priorities.
Recently, we argued in Deep Opportunity that that we need to tackle the underlying barriers to opportunity - wealth inequality, our unfair tax system and aspects of our democracy - as well as focusing on the education and skills sectors, in order to make progress on issues such as poverty, poor housing and insecure work that undermine the educational prospects of disadvantaged children.
Similar arguments have been made for many years by health inequalities experts such as Michael Marmot about the need to focus on the social determinants of health alongside improvements in the delivery of healthcare. And various organisations are starting to think about what changes might be needed to the machinery of government in order to drive coordinated work across government on tackling inequalities. ?
We believe that there is an opportunity and a need, ahead of the general election, for all of the political parties to think in more detail about how action on inequalities (all of forms) is needed in order to achieve a range of political priorities – including all five of Labour’s missions – and how best to measurably reduce inequalities in the face of fiscal and political headwinds and the broader challenges of delivering on cross-government policy areas.
We will be working with the independent adviser Melanie Field on a report, due to be published in June, that will look at the interdependencies between tackling inequalities and achieving cross-government policy objectives, outline some of the policy levers that are available to government to tackle these underlying inequalities, and propose some practical ways in which the machinery of government could be reformed to support this agenda.
In the meantime, Melanie has published a short blog post outlining some of her early thinking on this topic: The equality imperative for the next UK Government.