From Economic revolution to social revolution
Oliver
Letwin talks to Alan Finlayson
©
Soundings 2008
Conservatism
has become interesting again. Something serious is happening to it. I want
to begin by asking you what is Conservatism today?
Well,
there is a recognisable Conservative way of thinking about things. Part
of it is a disposition in politics which is not about translating an ideology
into results, but a question of identifying what are the real life problems
facing people and how they are to be addressed.
You're
speaking the language of Michael Oakeshott. A recent history of the Conservative
Party might describe how it has moved away from its Oakeshottian disposition
toward a more rationalist, Hayekian approach.
I don't think that was ever the case. Britain in the 1970s, and cumulatively
up to then, had an overwhelming challenge - we were bust. Our economy was
in bad shape. Not just in the sense it is in bad shape today - we're going
through a downturn. Nor was it just a fiscal problem, which we've also got
at the moment. It was a profound sense that things didn't work. The electorate,
whether they voted Conservative or not, recognised this. The problem that
needed to be addressed was economic, and so the solutions had to be economic.
Today
we have considerable economic problems. They will still be with us for some
years to come and they will need curing over time. Nevertheless I would
say that the situation has changed. The biggest long-term challenge we face
today is a social one. Conservatives adopt the same underlying attitude
- let's find out what the problems are and try to cure them. Different problems
at different times require different solutions. I think that the social
revolution we need now to achieve is as great as the economic revolution
which was required in the 1980s and 1990s. We adopt a different approach
because we are dealing with a different problem. But it's the same underlying
attitude.
With this disposition - I know you won't like me calling it an ideology
- you do come at problems from within a framework …
Oh
yes.
And
Conservatism disposes one to identify certain sorts of things as problems.
No, no. I think that people with many dispositions can all see the same
problems. I think everybody, from all parties, saw that the British economy
in the 1970s was bust. I think everybody would agree today that there are
social problems of a quite severe kind. This is where I disagree with you.
Where I agree with you is that having a Conservative disposition means approaching
problems across time with some abiding intuitions about how things are most
likely to work well. In trying to achieve certain progressive goals, Conservatism
means the encouragement of social responsibility, the opening up of choice
for individuals, the effort to harness the energies of society more widely
and not just of the state, and the belief that certain social institutions
can play an enormously powerful role in addressing certain social problems.
For example, David Cameron's statement that the family is the best welfare
system of all is a very Conservative statement. Nevertheless it leads to
conclusions that might seem counterintuitive - that is, a concern with lifting
people out of multiple deprivation. There is then a set of instincts about
what works - institutions like the family, people and the choices they make,
civil society. And there is a scepticism about the ability of the state
to pull levers and make things happen. These make up an abiding Conservative
disposition.
There
is also a Conservative disposition toward the conduct of politics.
No, I would say that there are many different views about how to conduct
politics.
I'm thinking about your argument that politics is civilisation in the
service of itself.
I do very strongly believe that. I've written a whole book on it.¹ But I
wouldn't claim it's a specifically Conservative approach. Many Conservatives
would disagree with it. The only things that mark off a Conservative disposition
are not having an ideology - a theory that gets imposed - and having that
set of intuitions I was describing, and trying always to address what is
conceived as the present rather than some future millenarian or utopian
goal.
So the present problem is the social problem.
We
are now a rich country again, yet a worrying proportion of the population
have been left behind. They are living in conditions that are not just poor
in monetary terms but also tend to involve worklessness, poor housing and
schooling, indebtedness, addictions of various kinds, and family breakdown.
This is a crisis for the individuals involved.
Is it a crisis for society as a whole?
Yes it is. It is a crisis for the individuals and families concerned, and
a problem for society as a whole. For society it is a very serious problem.
You could get 99 per cent of people in Britain to agree that there is something
morally wrong with the great majority being reasonably or very well off,
and a section of the population living in multiple deprivation. 'No man
is an island'. As well as the moral point, we're all affected in practical
ways. Sometimes we are affected in ways which are sporadic but very intense.
For example when we are subject to crime. Sometimes we are affected in a
much less intense but persistent ways. For example, we live in a society
where there are quite properly safety nets for people. When there is worklessness
and deprivation, these safety nets inevitably become expensive for taxpayers,
who are hard-pressed at the moment because they have to pay for others who
are workless and unable to get into work. In addition, there are all sorts
of spiritual and cultural ricochet effects of poverty and deprivation on
the rest of society.
You
start with the moral issue?
I
think that's the biggest. Even if no crime was ever committed by someone
who was on drugs or because their life was unsatisfactory. Even if we had
a magical way whereby people did not have to pay any extra tax to support
those in multiple deprivation. It would still be the case that something
is wrong with a large number getting along and another group who really
aren't. I would think this is common ground across left and right. The issue
is what you do about it.
Some
people might be surprised that you're placing this moral obligation to others
at the forefront of your politics. Many people think the Conservative Party
is about individuals getting on and doing well for themselves.
I
think this represents the biggest problem about our political discourse.
There is a huge tendency - and I'm not being partisan here - to parody the
other side and then get to the point where the parody is believed. Politicians
are neither better nor worse than everyone else. We are all sinners to varying
degrees. The motives of most people in politics are roughly the same and
roughly benign. Of course there are always exceptions.
Conservatives have always been extraordinarily concerned with the moral
issues of politics. Keith Joseph, who was a man of unyielding honesty -
sometimes to his own great disadvantage - always began his speeches in the
late 1970s with the absolutely true statement that he'd come into politics
to overcome poverty. This does not fit the stereotype invented for him,
but it is what he believed.
Looking
further back in history it was the Tory Lord Shaftesbury who passed the
laws to rescue children from servitude. And who was it who tried to liberate
the slaves? It was Wilberforce, also a Tory. The fact is that the concept,
which is fostered by some parodic elements of the less-thinking left, that
Conservatism equals Genghis Khan, is an absurdity. Just as the parody of
'lefties' as either mad or trying to create Stalinism is also ludicrous.
I think there is more of a tension in Conservatism than you're accepting.
On the one hand there was the dominant aim of the Conservatism of the 1980s
to push back certain social institutions and change economic institutions
and promote an economic, rationalist individualism. And on the other hand
there is that other part of Conservatism, which has always been there, which
is about a care for the organic whole of society. I know how they can be
theoretically reconciled, but …
It's not a question of theory. It's fundamentally practical. A large part
of the problem of being nationally close to bust in the late 1970s was that
we could not support public services and transfers of income. I don't buy
the argument that the purpose of economic reform then was merely to enrich
the rich. It was to create the basis for dealing with the problems we faced.
What we've discovered since is that economics is not enough. It's the necessary
precondition that there be a vibrant market economy if you're to provide
for those least advantaged; but it's not a sufficient condition.
The
last ten years have proved this. I think the government has genuinely intended
to improve the lot of the disadvantaged. But it's a complicated proposition
and the government have proved that just having the money to do it is not
enough. Just having a large bureaucratic effort to do it is not enough.
They've made relatively little progress despite these quantities of money
and bureaucracy. I'm certain from personal experience, because I was involved
in them, that the purpose of the reforms of the 1980s was not only to create
a vibrant economy and thereby elevate the condition of those relatively
well off. It was also crucially about elevating the condition of those who
were least well off.
The means were economic, the purpose was to change the soul, was one
of Margaret Thatcher's remarks. I'm going to press you on this point again.
One could make a Conservative case that says that the over-concentration
of the reform of the economy led to a lack of care for institutions. I come
from Swansea, and the South Wales valleys have suffered immensely from the
destruction of social institutions in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now I do see what you're saying and I do accept there is always a tension.
There are things that have social or environmental value but not economic
value, but which nevertheless are entirely consistent with the efficient
functioning of the economy and the generation of prosperity. There are also
things that have environmental, cultural or social value that are, to varying
degrees, in tension with what would be economically efficient. Often I think
that these tensions are less acute that they are represented as being. This
is true of the climate change debate that is going on. It's my view that
there is not the tension that the extremes of Greenery or the extremes of
anti-Greenery are portraying. Both economics and concern for the environment
point in the same direction - towards weaning our economy, and the global
economy, off hydrocarbons.
Nevertheless
I accept that at times there are sometimes real tensions between the social
and the economic. These tensions involve a very difficult balancing act
because each also underpins the other. This is a point that David Willetts
has frequently made. The underpinnings of the market economy are a set of
social institutions. For example, it's because we're able to rely on one
another's word that the market economy works. So society comes first. But
the existence of widespread prosperity is also crucial to the functioning
of a liberal democracy and hence to the preservation of social institutions
and the achievement of environmental, social and cultural goals. Between
the social, the cultural and the economic, there are tensions and mutual
supports. It is a contradictory affair that we are always going to wrestle
with. There is no single answer.
This
area of contradiction is the crucial one for the current Conservative Party.
It has to find some way through it. The shift toward a concern for social
responsibility and repair of a 'broken society' must mean the need for some
measure of regulation of certain kinds of private economic activity.
But
let's move away from the parody. There is, rightly, regulation of many sorts
of activity. This existed in the 1970s, it still exists today and will go
on existing. No functioning economy can exist without it - there would be
anarchy. There isn't now suddenly a need for more regulation. One can argue
of course about the exact balance of regulatory intervention and its advantages
versus deregulation and its advantages. It's a delicate balancing act.
Our encouragement of new ways of lifting people out of the multiple social
deprivation which I regard as the biggest social ill is not in tension with
the desire for prosperity. If the four million people currently workless
were in work, they would be much better off. This would be even more so
if the things in their lives that were holding them back could be cured.
It's also a huge boon to the economy to have a higher proportion of people
in work.
We
talk a lot about the people at the bottom and how they should take responsibility
for themselves. But is there not also a need to get others to take responsibility
and not do things that keep people in poverty?
Yes.
For
example the promotion of sub prime loans.
Completely. Our policy reviews and our Green Papers provide ample evidence
that the responsibility of the state is to encourage corporations, individuals
and communities to do things that are pro-social to help solve the problem
of multiple deprivation. It's a delicate question how you actually achieve
this. But the kind of society we seek is not going to be possible just by
engaging civil society in the effort to lift people out of deprivation.
It's going to require making frameworks that do persuade corporations to
behave in a socially responsible way.
What
sort of frameworks would they be? I'm thinking in particular of Iain Duncan
Smith's work on indebtedness.2
It's a very powerful analysis. It asked the question how can we try to reduce
the extent to which, once people get into poverty, they are forced into
worse poverty by spirals of indebtedness. Some of its recommendations are
for changes in the regulation of lenders. George Osborne has made it clear
that there are parts of that agenda that he buys into. I agree with you,
that we do need to engage the corporate citizen as much as the individual
citizen.
It
puts the Conservative Party in an interesting place in the political landscape.
Labour has maintained what could be called the procurement state. But it
has been reluctant to regulate economic activity in areas which people concerned
about poverty and deprivation want them to. For example around banking,
credit practices, the consumption of alcohol. It has lost a moral compass
and its capacity for a moral language. It fears talking about corporate
social responsibility beyond just saying it would be a good thing. The Conservatives
are not moving into Labour's territory, but emerging from within a Conservative
philosophical position.
My guess is that the origins of New Labour and their determination to distance
themselves from Old Labour have made them very reluctant to take certain
positions that their intuitions would have led them to. Because everyone
knows we are attached to the market, nobody thinks that the Conservative
Party is going to opt for Clause 4. It's not part of our historical problem.
We don't have to prove we're on the side of wealth generation and enterprise.
We can afford to think about what is the best thing to do, without having
to worry that we'll be accused of being anti-free market.
I thought the debate on super casinos was very bizarre. I don't think that
there is any doubt that if you put a super casino right next to a large
group of people suffering multiple deprivation it will induce some of them
to try and escape their situation by making the grotesque but understandable
error of getting into gambling. What was interesting was the language of
the debate. People who one would have thought were 'on the left' were reluctant
to talk about these sort of issues, as if to do so would suggest they were
anti-free enterprise. I don't think Conservatives have any inhibitions about
this.
You have spoken about the moral problem of multiple deprivation. But
would you talk about the moral problem of the wealthy who can evade certain
kinds of social responsibility?
I'd like to distinguish between two possible meanings in your question.
You might be asking if there is something immoral about people being very
rich. The answer is no, I don't think there is. But I do think there is
something immoral about people being left behind. The second possible meaning
is that you are asking if the very rich have an obligation to participate
in society as a whole, to which the answer is yes.
George Osborne proposed imposing a tax on non-domicile residents. This was
quite in tune with Conservatism. People who live in this country have an
obligation to participate by making a contribution. Greg Clark has done
work around this in the voluntary sector.3 He's looked at how government
can make the most out of the voluntary sector without moulding it into its
own image. He wants to ensure it keeps its flexibility and innate humanity.
Alongside this he's looked at how to encourage the social norms of giving.
We've been interested in 'nudge economics' because it opens up new possibilities
in this area.4 It's about giving a gentle push to society to move in a direction
of greater responsibility, or greater coherence, or more stability, or neighbourliness,
or better health. Greg argues that by doing this we can establish a social
norm which isn't a law - you don't get put in prison if you don't do it
- but which is a widely accepted attitude and behaviour. It's a recognition
that trying to build the kind of society we want is about encouraging a
culture in which people do feel they are part of one society.
If
we want to encourage this kind of culture and we don't want to pass laws,
it's going to be limited in its effect. There are forces - like media culture
for example - that foster a self-regarding individual orientation toward
life. This is surely part of the broader problem of 'social breakdown' and
it is being actively encouraged by various agencies. What can we do about
it? We can't simply exhort newspapers to be nicer. Or is that all we can
do?
Your question is one of the central questions of our time. We recognise
that while regulation has a place it also has its limits. While incentives
have their place they also have limits. We therefore seek some wider set
of cues to encourage people to change their behaviour. This is why we've
taken such an interest in the 'nudge' idea, because it is beginning to explore
this area. There are some historical examples which give one hope that with
sufficient imagination this kind of social change can happen. One example
is drink driving. In my parents' generation drink driving was a social norm.
Today people who consider themselves to be respectable would think it not
just illegal but wrong.
Another example was a Home Office Minister who years ago was trying to tackle
heroin addiction. He experimented with advertisements that didn't preach
about the ghastly fate of those who took heroin. It was simply a series
of photographs of young people, particularly young women, with appalling
acne. It said, this is what heroin leads to. I don't know what effect it
had but it was an interesting example of thinking more laterally. Trying
to understand something about citizen reaction rather than just government
action. The aim was to imagine being in the position of the young person.
By beginning slowly and gathering social momentum one may be able to achieve
great change that is lasting and more significant that what could be achieved
just with the law. You need a judicious mixture of interventions to achieve
cultural change and your social goals.
Those
are interesting examples. But how would you get across a more nebulous message
like, 'don't be so harsh to people' or, 'be kinder to people'?
Even if a politician was a saint standing in a pulpit in church (and politicians
are by no means saints), making a statement that people should be nice to
each other would be totally useless, even counter productive and laughable.
But let's not despair because we know a lot about each other and ourselves.
And we know that if people get together and do things together, the relationships
they build up affect how they deal with one another thereafter. They treat
one another as they are, and not as 'the other'.
If we give local communities vastly more power over their own evolution,
people will tend to engage in projects together. The knock-on effect, which
is just as important, is that they come to see one another differently.
Can government do something which isn't preaching at them to be nice, but
is facilitating forms of human intercourse which will lead to a similar
end? I think government can.
This
is the thought behind our National Citizens Service idea. Young people emerging
into adulthood should have the opportunity to work together and so help
them to give support to one another and civil society. There won't be billboards
instructing them to think differently. It's just by doing things together
you'll come to think differently about other human beings. I think there
are all sorts of ways we can encourage pro-social attitudes, not by preaching,
nor by law-giving, but by being imaginative and creating frameworks in which
these things naturally come to evolve
It's interesting that you come round to the localism agenda. It's a fundamental
part of Conservative thinking.
It is.
But there is a more cynical view that all politicians will say that until
they get into power.
I know there is. But just as in the 1980s it was urgently necessary to allow
British industry to run its own affairs and for it to become more efficient,
so today it is urgently necessary to let people run their own lives to a
much greater degree. And I don't think we will achieve the kind of society
we want unless we do this. We have to let people make more choices for themselves,
and one extremely important manifestation of this is letting people gather
together to make choices about their own communities. I think there is a
tide of history here which is created by an open network society and fostered
by the technological revolution. I think one of the great things about the
Conservative Party in the last couple of years is that we are beginning
to recognise and grapple with this fact. I think all the parties will have
to do this, we're just leading the way. It leads you in the direction of
more choice and more localism, more local accountability and less centralised
bureaucracy.
Notes
1.
Oliver Letwin, The Purpose of Politics, Social Market Foundation 1999.
2. Iain Duncan Smith, Breakdown Britain, Centre for Social Justice 2006;
www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk.
3. See Conservative Green Paper, A Stronger Society - Voluntary Action in
the 21st Century, 2008, www.conservatives.com; www.gregclark.org.
4. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health,
Wealth, And Happiness, Yale University Press 2008.
