Time for a new politics in Britain

Britain's general election was a disappointment.

The Conservatives won on a track record of better economic management and a better grip on how entrepreneurs support the economy. Labour lost because they spoke the language of the blightened industrial economy in post-industrial times, they held a manifesto for the past not the future. Yes the Conservatives bring with them a dogma of state control and a mean streak that can leave a bad taste in your mouth (and a horrible reputation for special interest capture).

Since these two parties (together with the third formerly major party, the Lib Dems) were established more than 75 yeas ago, times have changed. What matters has changed. Social issues are genuinely different. Global issues need addressing. Our society is healthier, wealthier and wiser. And technology and innovation is an engine which is producing many winners and solving many problems, with an undercurrent of exclusion. 

We need a new politics in Britain.

It should be based on four major principles

• Economics: markets work, clearing prices, and transmitting information generally effectively. Entrepreneurs solve problems. Industries die. Trade helps almost everything. Talent must travel.
• Social: People are equal but different. Prejudice against women needs to end, pdq. We need to the freedom to pursue our lives. Gays can marry. Your pleasure is my perversion (and vice versa). People deserve opportunity. We’re a better species for protecting the least well-off. We’re probably getting most of this wrong, so let’s behave like we are. Science works.
• Justice and fairness: For our society to work, and not turn into a Neill Blomkamp movie, we need to protect the worst off and the disadvantaged; and the only people who can pay for that are the better off. On justice and fairness, we can do worse than look to Confucius and John Rawls.
• Global: There are huge global problems (climate change, poverty) and significant global opportunities (solving the above, creating an integrated society based on trust, respect and trade). Any politics needs to be global and outward looking. 

Here are six policy approaches that might make sense for Britain today.

• A universal basic income for all: We are rich enough to afford it so simply provide a universal basic income for everyone. This will help us ride through the coming wave of necessary industrial change.
• Simplify: When Steve Jobs took over Apple he simplified the company to 4 products (on a 2-by-2) and even shut down profitable product lines because they made the company to complex. Simplify. A universal basic income eliminates they need for a complex benefits system. A tax system can also be simpler and more straight forward, eliminating friction-arbitrageurs (tax lawyers) & reducing collection costs.
• Protect innovation: Protect innovation because that is what solves problems. Incumbents don’t innovate, they encumber. And incumbents nature is to protect their position and they will do so in the face of clear thinking, science or the common good. Governments are crucially for fostering innovation.
• Embracing change by continuously educating: the time compression driven by technology and networked communications is ineluctable. People need to continually be learning?—?new skills and the meta-skill of adapting to change. Governments have generally done well in helping the provision of education as a universal good.
• Understand the fractal dimensions of the new networked society:Government needs to co-exist and support the company, platform and self-organising movement.
• Intervene: The politics that occupies the empty quarter is not non-interventionist. It isn’t some weird strict libertarianism where all intervention is bad. A sense of the collective is important in heterogenous, networked societies.

The notions of liberal thought, the scientific method, an understanding of progress, the willingness for entrepeneurs to take risks, the availability of capital, the access to global financial, payment and distribution networks around the world, Moore's Law, and our fantastic strides in bio-tech and materials-science, create an opportunity to take meaningful strides as a species. 

Old parties won't cut it. A new one might.

A longer, modified version of this essay appeared here.

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