Anthony Giddens en <![CDATA[The rise and fall of New Labour]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The architect of the Third Way argues that although the Blair-Brown years may not have been the new</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><a href="/uk-politics/2010/05/labour-policy-policies-blair"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="" /></a></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <!-- Generated by XStandard version on 2010-05-17T08:23:50 --><p>The era of Labour hegemony is over. How should we assess its legacy? It is conventional these days to disparage Labour's record in government over the past 13 years. Even sympathetic observers argue that little of substance has been achieved. For the more determined critics, Labour in power - Labour as New Labour - has been more than a disappointment; it has been a disaster. The party led an onslaught on civil liberties, betrayed leftist ideals, failed to make any impact on inequality and, worst of all, embarked upon a calamitous war in Iraq. New Labour had promised a "new dawn", and many feel betrayed.</p> <p>I have some sympathy with these criticisms. Yet it is possible, nevertheless, to mount a robust defence of many of Labour's core policies. And a balanced assessment is needed if the party is to chart an effective path in the future. A realistic starting point for doing so is to compare Labour's period in government with those of its sister parties in other countries over roughly the same period - Bill Clinton and the Democrats in the US, Lionel Jospin's Socialists in France and Germany's SPD, led by Gerhard Schröder.</p> <p>Labour managed to stay in power longer than any of these - longer, indeed, than any other left-of-centre party in recent times, including those in Scandinavia. The ideological changes associated with the invention of the term "New Labour" were a large part of the reason for this electoral success. "New Labour" was not an empty soundbite designed to disguise a vacuum where policies should have been.</p> <p>From the outset, the architects of New Labour offered a compelling diagnosis of why innovation in left-of-centre politics was needed, coupled with a clear policy agenda. In outline, this diagnosis ran as follows: the values of the left - solidarity, a commitment to reducing inequality and protecting the vulnerable, and a belief in the role of active government - remained intact, but the policies designed to pursue these ends had to shift radically because of profound changes going on in the wider world. Such changes included intensifying globalisation, the development of a post-industrial or service economy and, in an information age, the emergence of a more voluble and combative citizenry, less deferential to authority figures than in the past (a process that intensified with the advent of the internet).</p> <p>Most of Labour's policy prescriptions followed from this analysis. The era of Keynesian demand management, linked to state direction of economic enterprise, was over. A different relationship of government to business had to be established, recognising the vital role of enterprise in wealth creation and the limits of state power. No country, however large and powerful, could control that marketplace: hence the "prawn cocktail offensive" that Labour launched in the mid-1990s to woo the City of London.</p> <p>The expansion of the service economy went hand in hand with the shrinking of the working class, once the bastion of Labour support. Henceforth, to win elections, a left-of-centre party had to reach a much wider set of voters, including those who had never endorsed it in the past. Labour could no longer represent sectional class interests alone. In Tony Blair - not a Labour tribalist by any description - the party seemed to have found the perfect leader to help it further this aim.</p> <p>Labour's policies evolved during its years in government. However, some core ideas remained the same. Economic prosperity, in a global­ised marketplace, had to take primacy as the precondition of effective social policy. An increasingly prosperous economy would generate the resources to fund public investment, dispensing with the need to raise taxes. Labour sought to break away from its previous predilection for tax-and-spend. "Prudence" was Gordon Brown's watchword as chancellor. Prudent economic management was essential if welfare spending was to rise and social justice to be enhanced.</p> <p>Here, Labour had to struggle with the disastrous legacy of the Thatcher years. Inequality had increased more steeply in the UK during those years than in any industrial country except for New Zealand (which had also followed Thatcher-style policies). The welfare system was run-down, so investment in public services, coupled with reforms designed to make them more flexible and more responsive to the needs of their users, became a guiding principle. Labour was to be the party not of the big state, but of the intelligent state.</p> <p>A further important strand of New Labour policy was its refusal to allow any issues to be "owned" by the right. The task, rather, was to provide left-of-centre solutions to them. This strategy became the focus of attacks by critics worried about its implications for civil liberties, but was vital to Labour's longevity in power. Social democrats fell from power in other countries because of their failure to do the same. In the past, the left had tried to explain away, rather than confront directly, questions having to do with crime, social disorder, migration and cultural identity - as if the concerns citizens had about such issues were misplaced or irrelevant. It was assumed, for example, that most crime resulted from inequality, and that once inequality was reduced, crime would inevitably decline. Without denying the connection, New Labour took a different view. Tony Blair's 1997 manifesto pledge "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime" was not just a slogan; it was adopted as a principle of policy.</p> <p>It might seem a long way from these concerns to New Labour's emphasis on the need for an activist foreign policy. But it is not. Because of globalisation, domestic and foreign policy now overlap each other far more than previously. Britain faces no visible threat of invasion, but must be prepared to assume an active role in the wider world. Interventionism becomes necessary doctrine when national sovereignty has lost much of its meaning and where there are universal humanitarian concerns that override local interests. Transnational terrorism, itself a creature of globalisation, is a threat far greater than the more localised forms of terrorism prevalent in the past.</p> <p>How far did these strategies and policies bear fruit? Labour's record is distinctly patchy, but it would be hard to deny that it has had far more impact than did any of the other centre-left governments mentioned above. The UK enjoyed ten years of unbroken economic growth, not to be dismissed as simply based on a housing and credit bubble. That growth took place alongside the introduction of a national minimum wage. Large-scale investment was made in public services and significant reform was achieved in the areas of health and education.</p> <p>Wage and income inequality was contained, though not significantly reduced. The position of the poor, however, improved substantially. Targets to reduce child poverty were not met, but before the recession 600,000 children were raised out of relative poverty; measured against an absolute standard, the number is about twice that figure.</p> <p>The New Deal, Sure Start and tax credit policies have all had their difficulties, but have mostly proved their worth. Even the much-derided PFI has worked, at least when measured against public procurement. Devolution of power to Scotland and Wales has largely been successful, and what looks like a lasting peace has been achieved in Northern Ireland. Crime rates have come down substantially in the UK as a whole, and Britain has made a more fruitful adaptation to increasing cultural diversity than most other European countries.</p> <p>From a party so often seen as illiberal and authoritarian, there were substantial achievements in the opposite direction. Labour signed up to the EU Social Chapter, together with the European Convention on Human Rights, introduced a Freedom of Information Act and endorsed civil partnerships for same-sex couples. Britain is a more liberal and tolerant society than it was, and Labour's policies played a part in this change. In foreign policy, overseas aid was increased well beyond anything preceding Tory governments had managed.</p> <p>The military interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo - where Blair played a crucial role in persuading the Americans to contemplate deploying ground forces - and Sierra Leone were widely regarded as successes. If only he had stopped there! Nothing corroded Blair's re­putation more than his ill-starred decision to become George Bush's main partner in the invasion of Iraq.</p> <p>Other far-reaching mistakes were made. The experiment with spin and media management during Labour's early years in power backfired and helped to create the impression that New Labour was about presentation rather than policy. Blair did not succeed in integrating Britain more closely into the EU, and some of his closest relationships with other European leaders - notably with the Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi - were puzzling.</p> <p>It was right to argue that Labour should become more business-friendly, and it was also right to recognise the importance of the City to the British economy. But it was a fundamental error to allow the prawn cocktail offensive to evolve into fawning dependence, with the result that the UK was transformed into a kind of gigantic tax haven. The idea that Labour should be "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" not only exacerbated inequalities, but also helped to create a culture of irresponsibility. Bosses protected themselves from the risks they asked their employees to bear.</p> <p>I don't accept the simplistic idea that New Labour was just a continuation of Thatcherism. Labour's policies involved extensive government intervention in economic life, although mainly on the supply side. And there was a genuine preoccupation with increasing social justice - a notion alien to Margaret Thatcher, Keith Joseph and their guru Milton Friedman. Yet Blair and Brown should have made it much clearer than they did that recognising the virtues of markets is quite different from prostrating oneself before them. Market fundamentalism should have been more explicitly criticised and its limitations exposed. As for proportional representation and wider constitutional reform - surely Labour should have endorsed these as a matter of principle, not as a result of political expediency?</p> <p>The other parties have had to respond to the agenda that New Labour set. The Tories now endorse gay rights, accept the necessity of reducing poverty, support the Climate Change and Energy Acts that Labour introduced, and will continue most of the labour-market reforms that were made. In propagating the idea of the "big society", the Conservatives are drawing upon the same communitarian traditions that Tony Blair also endorsed. Naturally, they may retreat from these emphases, but at the moment they look genuine.</p> <p>The global financial crisis, foreseen by very few, seems to have put an end to the world that helped to shape New Labour. Suddenly, everything has gone into juddering reverse: Keynesianism and government economic intervention are back. No one denies that we should seek to regulate the financial markets that once seemed so omni­potent. A tax on world financial transactions, previously dismissed as unrealistic, is now on the cards. It is, after all, possible to elevate the tax rates of the rich.</p> <p>Meanwhile, there is talk among all the main parties of a return to an active industrial policy and of a renaissance of manufacturing. Climate change and other environmental risks, which Labour did little to confront until late on, are now at the heart of mainstream political concerns. Planning, for years in the shadows, is once more on the agenda, as are severe public spending cuts - the very opposite of the bold, expanding social investment on which New Labour policy was built. Fiscal prudence has ceded place to huge borrowing and very large accumulated debt.</p> <p>New Labour as such is dead, and it is time to abandon the term. Yet some of the core social and economic trends to which it was a response still obtain, and significant portions of its policy framework remain relevant. In the future, Labour will still need to attract mainstream, affluent voters, against the background of a changing political culture in which the electronic media play a growing role. While it makes eminent sense to aim to reduce the dominance of the financial sector in the economy and encourage a renaissance in manufacturing, the UK will continue to be a post-industrial economy, with service- and knowledge-based occupations dominant.</p> <p>Welfare reform will loom as large as ever, even more so when efficient spending will be a priority. The problem of sustaining progressive policies on immigration and multiculturalism without losing voter appeal will remain, as will that of how to reduce citizens' anxieties about crime. So, too, will that of finding an appropriate balance between civil liberties, on the one hand, and protecting the country against the threat posed by international terrorism on the other. Keynes is back in fashion, but there can be no return to Keynesian demand management as practised between 1945 and 1979. The challenge ahead of us is to preserve and enhance the flexibility and creativity that markets engender, while turning these qualities to long-term, socially desirable goals.</p> <p>Fundamental rethinking is needed and a fresh set of policies has to be created. The key problem for Labour out of power will be to minimise the internal squabbling that afflicts so many parties, especially on the left, following an election defeat. Ideological reconstruction could have a decisive role here. The starting point should be to redefine the role of the public sphere.</p> <p>“Blairites", it could be said, leaned more towards the market than "Brownites", who were keener on the state. However, the public sphere is distinguishable both from markets and from the state, and can be used as a platform for reconstructing each. Labour can be seen to be groping towards such an insight with its attempts, in the wake of the financial crisis, to reintroduce the idea of mutualism to political debate. These rather primitive efforts should be developed further and applied to the task of constructing a form of responsible capitalism, coupled to a sophisticated approach to issues of sustainability.</p> <p><em>Anthony Giddens is a former director of the London School of Economics and a Labour peer.</em></p> </div></div></div> Mon, 17 May 2010 08:29:03 +0000 Anthony Giddens 172389 at <![CDATA[Start the world, we want to get on]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The Copenhagen debacle gave little grounds for hope of concerted action against climate change, but</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><a href="/environment/2010/02/climate-change-copenhagen"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="" /></a></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <!-- Generated by XStandard version on 2010-03-03T23:30:20 --><p>The climate-change meetings in Copenhagen proved something of a fiasco. The global nature of those December talks, with representatives attending from 192 countries - including many heads of state - certainly indicated that the world is taking climate change seriously. Yet the bickering that occurred between nations and groups of nations undermined the idea that humanity is coming together to take a stand against its risks. The Copenhagen Accord, the only tangible result of the 12-day event, is a slim document, put together by a handful of countries, to which states will sign up in a voluntary way.</p> <p>Nations deciding to commit to the accord were supposed to have set out plans for reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions by 31 January. That deadline has since been "softened". A number of countries have submitted their promises for cutting carbon emissions, but these are generally seen as inadequate. At a meeting in New Delhi on 24 January, four of the five originators of the document (China, India, Brazil and South Africa) announced their intention to continue to support it, but only on condition that it will never become a treaty - that is, have binding force in international law. The current position of the United States, the other country that created the accord, is murky, as the proposed US climate change bill has not been endorsed by Congress and perhaps never will be, given the domestic difficulties President Obama faces.</p> <p>So, will the accord lead to real action on a scale commensurate with the huge task involved? Obviously, it could founder. We shall have to wait and see, but I think it is a new beginning of potential importance. I was never much in fav­our of the Kyoto/Copenhagen-style approach, which was too slow-moving and bureaucratic to make the impact needed. If the accord does progress, it will be driven by a smaller group of countries. But that group is likely to include all the big polluters and, just as important, will probably cross-cut the divide between developed and developing countries, the prime source of acrimony at Copenhagen.</p> <p>The accord therefore could provide a linchpin for emissions reductions, but we have to think and act on a broader scale, too. Copenhagen was not a singular event: its failure expresses deep-seated problems of global governance. We live in a far more interdependent world than any previous generation, and climate change is the negative expression of that interdependence. Yet the institutions of transnational governance have not advanced in tandem. The UN is regularly paralysed by the very divisions that sank the hopes entertained at Copenhagen.</p> <h2>I cut, you cut</h2> <p>Here are some of the points and problems that governments and other agencies should be thinking about and acting upon, whatever happens to the accord.</p> <p>First, the various groups of countries should work with each other informally to make pro­gress in cutting emissions. Sixteen countries account for well over 80 per cent of total world emissions and they should be meeting in a regular way. That it was George W Bush who originally made this proposal shouldn't put us off what is a necessary idea post-Copenhagen.</p> <p>Second, a G2 - the US and China working together (see box) - is an essential part of global policy, as these two nations alone contribute such a high proportion of emissions. It isn't likely to be an easy relationship, but the rest of the world has a stake in its effectiveness and should encourage such collaboration. There should also be a climate-change G3, involving the European Union. The EU was sidelined at Copenhagen when the accord was drawn up - a terrible rejection for an organisation that aspires to world leadership in this area. One chief reason was the usual difficulty - that the EU does not speak with one voice. A single person should represent the Union at future climate-change negotiations: either the new high representative for foreign affairs, Cathy Ashton, or someone specifically appointed for the task.</p> <p>Third, close connections need to be drawn between emerging regulation of the world financial system and world climate-change policy. The G20, whose emergence is one of the most positive aspects of recent developments in global governance, is the obvious forum for exploring such overlaps. A transnational tax on financial transactions no longer looks as implausible as it did even a couple of years ago; in the medium term it could supply the means to help the poorer countries cope with climate change. The accord promises a fund for this purpose, building up to £100bn a year. If it is forthcoming, we will need to find ways to monitor how it is spent, because its sole purpose will be to help developing countries either to reduce their emissions or to adapt to the consequences of climate change. The existing conduit for channelling money to poorer countries, the Clean Development Mechanism, has made little impact in either respect.</p> <h2>The UN's role</h2> <p>Federal policy on climate change in the United States will now be weak at best. Yet the US is a diverse society, and other groups can help fill the void. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has proposed that cities, states, provinces and regions work together to meet the challenge. The R20 group he established in 2009 has had considerable success in getting such groups to sign the pledge to reduce emissions by at least 20 per cent below those of 2005 by 2020. Activism at the sub-national level will play a vital role across the world, and some means should be found of giving NGOs a formal position in climate-change bargaining.</p> <p>Finally, we must rethink the role of the United Nations. The UN's core weaknesses were laid bare in Copenhagen. Proceeding by full consensus simply isn't possible with issues where there are abiding differences of interest between countries. Most of the real action will now happen elsewhere. Yet, weak though it is at making decisions, the UN is in some respects irreplaceable. Whatever comes from the accord can't be left to the participating countries to monitor. We need a global regime, for example, to assess states' emissions and to track their progress. The logical home for any agency set up to carry out such work is the UN. Its participation is the best guarantee of impartiality.</p> <p>The Copenhagen debacle could lead to a period of quiescence in which not much is done to pursue climate-change policy. But I don't think this is what will happen. We stand on the verge of profound change. The social and economic system created by the fusion of political and industrial revolution in Europe and North America, now becoming globalised, is starting to subvert itself. The dangers posed by climate change are the most far-reaching expressions of this, but we face much broader issues of sustainability. Whatever happens with formal agreements, we can anticipate a burst of innovation - economic, social, political and technological - over the coming decade and beyond.</p> <p><em>Anthony Giddens is a Labour peer and the author of "The Politics of Climate Change" (Polity Press, £12.99)</em></p> </div></div></div> Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:54:17 +0000 Anthony Giddens 167823 at <![CDATA[Why the rich should now be made to pay]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The architect of Tony Blair&#039;s &#039;third way&#039; outlines 16 steps to a fairer Britain</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Britain remains a society with too many inequalities, too many barriers to opportunity for those at the bottom. "Not enough redistribution!" say some. If only things were so simple. Redistribution there must be, but much more besides.</p> <p>Average income in the UK has grown substantially since 1997 - 2.4 per cent a year to the end of 2005. London has had the highest rises. However, if differences in house prices are taken into account, there is far less variation between London and other areas in spending power. There has actually been considerable redistribution towards pensioners (a term I dislike), single parents and children. The proportion of older people living in poverty is smaller than the average for the population as a whole. In 1997 there were 13.8 million people living in poverty, as measured after housing costs, or 10.2 million before housing costs; these figures have fallen to 11.4 million and 9.2 million. A fifth of the population now lives below the poverty line (60 per cent of median income), compared to almost a quarter in 1997.</p> <p>The government failed to meet its declared target of reducing child poverty by a quarter by the end of the financial year 2005. Although 700,000 children were lifted out of poverty, reducing the overall number to its lowest since the late 1980s, this figure was still 300,000 short of the target set.</p> <p>Ministers pledged in 1998 that child poverty would be halved by 2011. If present polices are maintained, however, the level will not differ much from now on. Like other forms of poverty in Britain, child poverty is a relative measure. The government's target of "eliminating" child poverty by 2020 has not yet been clearly defined. Three countries in Europe have managed to achieve child poverty rates of just 5 per cent - Denmark, Norway and Finland - which is about as close as anyone could ever get. Yet even achieving a rate of less than 10 per cent would represent considerable success for British society. A significant change in policy is required, now, if the 2020 target is to be met.</p> <p>Those on the old left seem to think it easy to reduce inequality: you take money from the rich and give it to the poor. Yet the rich, however defined, are a tiny minority. If they are to be taxed more, it should be for reasons other than just a little more redistribution, otherwise it would do virtually nothing to alleviate the structural problems that make the UK so unequal. Here are 16 policy areas that could make a difference.</p> <p>1 Make reducing child poverty a driving force, as just mentioned.</p> <p>2 Conventional redistributive mechanisms should stay in place, but they should be adjusted. Congestion charging and parking charges in cities, for instance, can be designed to have a progressive content - many poorer people do not own a car; the proceeds can be channelled into improving public transport; drivers of larger cars can be made to pay more.</p> <p>3 Active labour-market policy (the New Deal and welfare-to-work) is important in reducing the disruptive effects of job loss. But because of rising levels of technological change and international competition, we need to explore policies that will help workers even before jobs start to be lost. The present policies are like throwing people into a pool to see if they can swim and helping them only once it is clear they can't. Far better to prepare them. The possibilities include using vouchers for in-work training for those in vulnerable industries, as part of an agreement to accept lower wages for a period. Such schemes, usually involving employers, unions and the government, are already being pioneered in some European countries. In Austria, work foundations have been set up to provide a network of resources for workers who become redundant. Where a company is forced to lay off large numbers of workers, those who stay in their jobs make a contribution as a gesture of solidarity. The company makes a larger overall donation. Those who lose their jobs contribute half their redundancy payments. The state also provides support for retraining and job search.</p> <p><strong>Helping hand</strong></p> <p>4 We should start to think of employment or wage insurance. Two-thirds of workers who lose their jobs earn lower wages when they find new work. Wage insurance would replace a substantial proportion of lost earnings for up to two years. A pilot version exists in the US. Under the programme, workers have to show that they lost their jobs as a result of trade competition, be over the age of 50, make less than $50,000 in a new job, and be re-employed within six months of being made redundant.</p> <p>5 On average, older people in Britain have become better-off since 1997, but 17 per cent still live below the poverty line. We should aim to get to 60:60 - 60 per cent or more of those over the age of 60 in work, in full-time or part-time jobs.</p> <p>6 People who live in embedded poverty may have few skills, have problems with drugs, fall into a life of crime and find it hard to sustain lasting relationships. The experience since 1997 shows that policies based on benefits or tax credits have little impact, partly because of low levels of take-up. An important approach is intervention targeted at the very young. Research shows that, at the age of two or three, children can establish behaviour patterns that are very difficult to break. Another factor is housing. About 50,000 people nationally, who might otherwise be on the streets, live in hostels or temporary accommodation, but these people cannot find more permanent homes. There are also large numbers of "hidden homeless", who are sleeping on the floors of friends or family members. The government has invested millions in repairing existing council houses, but more social housing is the only feasible solution for those at the bottom.</p> <p>7 Research shows that even owning a small amount of capital can make an important difference in life. People who own assets at the age of 23 generally earn more ten years later than those without them, even when income, class and gender are taken out of the equation. The government's Child Trust Fund pays £250 to every child at birth. Children from poorer backgrounds get double that sum. The fund is topped up when the child is seven; again, there is more money for poorer children. The child cannot touch the money - nor can the parents - before he or she reaches 18. Surveys show that poorer parents appreciate this scheme.</p> <p>8 Poverty is an endemic condition for some, but there is also far more movement in and out of poverty than we used to think. We should recognise that much poverty is biographical. People fall into poverty through specific life events and episodes, such as divorce or the break-up of a relationship, leaving the parental home, illness or, of course, losing a job. It follows that we should not concentrate policy solely on those who are poor at any one time, but upon those just above the poverty line.</p> <p>9 The relationship between work and non-work has grown more complex. We should think of policy more in terms of the lifespan, rather than the here and now. This means seeing employment differently from the way we did in the past - as a temporary state or an expression of long-term employability. A guiding ideal, for both sexes, might be a 30-hour working week over the entire career of the in dividual, with various interruptions or career breaks and allowance for part-time work.</p> <p>10 The Women and Work Commission found that the gap between the pay of men and women working full-time in 2005 was 17 per cent in hourly pay rates. Although this has closed somewhat, there are several reasons why women still tend to lose out, all of which could be eased by policy intervention.</p> <p>11 Two-thirds of those claiming Pension Credit are women. At the moment, 85 per cent of men are entitled on retirement to a full basic state pension, compared to 30 per cent of women; only 24 per cent of women have that entitlement on the basis of their own contributions. The government has introduced a new contributory principle, but it will not do much to help in the immediate future. The pension system, moreover, remains extraordinarily complex.</p> <p>12 Lifestyle changes are starting to influence inequalities a great deal - not just reflect them - especially in health. The remedies here will have to be behavioural rather than simply economic. It has been found, for example, that improving the diet of children with special needs, and combining this with exercise, significantly improves their attitudes and attainment.</p> <p>13 Giving an effective choice of school to parents from poorer backgrounds must be backed by further policy strategies. One indicator of underprivilege is entitlement to free school meals. Just 3 per cent of pupils at the best-performing state schools fall into this category - showing the extent of "middle-class capture", but also that the pre-existing system was not fair. The average nationally is 17 per cent. The government has made some innovations to try to reverse this. The new school code suggests introducing a lottery-type admission system, to stop parents gaining admission for their children by buying houses nearby. Some city academies already operate random allocation policies, ensuring that certain children from poor backgrounds get a place. The new code is mandatory and will cover anyone applying to state schools in 2008, but other policies must be explored.</p> <p>14 Labour has largely left private schools alone. Gordon Brown says he wants to increase spending on state schools to the level of private ones. That is a laudable intention, but it can't be realised overnight. Some effort has been made to oblige private schools to show social responsibility. In the UK, the private system is explicitly geared to providing advantages for the sons and daughters of those already advantaged. And it works: 48 per cent of students at Cambridge attended a private school, and 45 per cent of those at Oxford, although only 7 per cent of the population as a whole is educated at such schools. The government has been reluctant to support the scheme pioneered by the philanthropist Peter Lampl, but it should show more interest. The Belvedere School in Liverpool is private. Lampl has given funds to help it operate blind-needs admission. Anyone who qualifies for entry is guaranteed a place, regardless of financial circumstances. The scheme has been a remarkable success, with children from a wide range of backgrounds represented at the Belvedere.</p> <p>15 Universities could look at a scheme originally introduced, somewhat surprisingly, in Texas, and now taken up in France. In 1997 the state of Texas introduced a policy whereby all students graduating in the top 10 per cent of their class in high school are guaranteed university entrance. As a result, the proportion of students from poorer backgrounds and minorities has grown steadily. Evidence so far shows that students admitted in this way perform as well academically as those accepted in the usual fashion. It is easier to apply the idea in France than in the UK, because of the centralised nature of French higher education. Yet either the government, or universities themselves, could agree to pilot a similar scheme in a city or region.</p> <p>16 Finally, what about the rich? What about the way corporate leaders' salaries have been pulling away from those of their employees? What about the City high-flyers making millions in salaries and bonuses? Should Labour, as Peter Mandelson once remarked, be "relaxed about people getting filthy rich"? No!</p> <p><strong>Assets for a few</strong></p> <p>Labour can no longer be against entrepreneurs, the driving forces of economic success. But becoming wealthy should carry with it social obligations, such as to give something back to society, to pay tax in full, and to encourage social and environmental responsibility within companies. For several decades after the Second World War, the ratio of top executives' earnings to average income was stable. In the 1980s, it began to accelerate away and has not stopped since.</p> <p>There is no official richness line in the same way as there is a poverty line. Let's say arbitrarily that "the rich" are the top 0.05 per cent. Labour should consider introducing a wealth tax of the kind found in some other countries. Wealth is more unequally distributed than income, with a high concentration in the hands of a few. The economist Edward Wolff has suggested for the United States a system based on the Swiss model. Assets would be taxed annually, according to a steeply progressive scale. Those with assets under a specific threshold would not pay, with steeper rates cutting in at, say, £1m in assets. This system would generate about 1 per cent of total revenue - more than would be achieved in the UK if income tax were raised to 50 per cent for people earning more than £100,000. It would be easy to administer, Wolff says, because it could be fully integrated with personal income tax.</p> <p>The proceeds of such a tax, if implemented here, should not go into the Treasury coffers, but be devoted to a specific purpose - for example, helping children from underprivileged backgrounds get into higher education. Those contributing substantial sums to charity could be absolved from the tax.</p> <p>Reducing tax evasion and getting rid of the loopholes that make widespread tax avoidance possible should be priorities - as far as possible on an international as well as a national level. The Conservatives have talked about abolishing inheritance tax, but the strategy should be to make it more progressive. At present only 6 per cent of inherited wealth is taken in tax. A steeper rate at the top (in addition, again, to keeping control of loopholes) would be fairer and would generate more revenue (the Budget made some changes in this direction).</p> <p>Philanthropy is clearly one of the main responsibilities of high earners, because they should give back to the society that has helped them realise their opportunities. In the US, top earners in effect pay a voluntary tax on their earnings, and large numbers accept the obligation. Some prominent figures have given away virtually their whole fortune, especially towards the end of their lives. There is not the same culture of philanthropy in this country, and despite the introduction of tax incentives, there is not yet the same level of tax breaks.</p> <p>In October, top managers at Siemens in Germany were awarded a pay rise of 30 per cent. The company was in the middle of restructuring, and many workers stood to lose their jobs. Most of the workforce had already accepted pay cuts through agreements that reduced their hours of work. Faced with an uproar, the executives announced that they would donate their pay rises to help workers in a subsidiary whose jobs were threatened. In Britain, the management might have been praised for keeping the company on an even keel in the face of overseas competition. Our business culture needs to change.</p> <p>"We must show that . . . we will be a party that is for working people, not rich and powerful vested interests." Who said this? Not Tony Blair, not Gordon Brown, but David Cameron. Labour should take note. </p> <p><em>Anthony Giddens's new book, "Over to You, Mr Brown: how Labour can win again", is published by Polity (£9.99, paperback)</em></p> </div></div></div> Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 156153 at <![CDATA[Europe: teaching us a lesson]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>As the candidates pledge to use Labour&#039;s leadership battles to debate new ideas, where should they l</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>Made in America!</em> The phrase applies to most of new Labour's policies - made there well over ten years ago, under the influence of the policy-makers surrounding Bill Clinton. It is time to move on, to look more towards Europe, instead of the US, where there is much hostility to "big government" and where large inequalities are tolerated.</p> <p>New Labour has been deficient in two ideological areas: it has failed to develop a robust definition of the public sphere and of the essential importance of citizenship. Labour has not found a persuasive enough vocabulary to express the difference between citizen and consumer. Consequently, it has been too vulnerable to the charge that it is only a slightly more human version of Thatcherism, fond of markets and privatisation.</p> <p>It has also failed to find a vocabulary in which to make clear its egalitarian concerns. Why has Labour lost so much support among its core constituency, the poor and the deprived? In part, this is because its achievements have stayed invisible. Research shows that many people whose lives have improved thanks to tax credits do not attribute a change in their fortunes to the government. Labour was so anxious to avoid being seen as a tax-and-spend party that it created a smokescreen to conceal its levelling impulses.</p> <p>In saying this, I am not suggesting a return to old Labour. The most successful countries in Europe are the Nordic ones - Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. What distinguishes them is a willingness to reform and modernise. They have learned how to become competitive in the global market place. Finland, for instance, has several times been ranked as the world's top country in which to do business. The Finns have reformed their labour markets, introducing greater flexibility; decentralised their education and health systems; and introduced greater choice into core public services. But they have shown how such an orientation can coincide with a strong idea of the public realm and social justice. High taxes, as such, do not have much to do with these successes. They come mainly from social policy, and from acceptance of the role of active government.</p> <p>Labour can also gain much from tracking specific policy developments in various EU countries. In economic terms, the EU on average has not been doing well in recent years. Perhaps this is why the Labour leadership tends to act as though the UK has far more to teach the rest of Europe than they do us. This attitude is unwarranted. There is not a single social or economic indicator where the UK leads in Europe. Compare healthcare, for instance, and you find that the NHS comes well behind the French and German systems. The workforces of those countries are far more productive than ours. And so on . . .</p> <p>So no more British hubris. Consider one of Labour's key policy areas, "welfare to work" - or "flexicurity", as it is known on the Continent. These strategies have been very effective in the UK. Old-fashioned passive unemployment benefits, which these policies have replaced, tend to lock people out of work when they could be in good jobs. Yet we should be thinking beyond simply helping people to move on or retrain once out of work. As is already happening in the Neth erlands and Belgium, there should be schemes to help workers <em>before</em> they lose their jobs, especially in industries known to be contracting.</p> <p><strong>True solidarity</strong></p> <p>There could also be ways of sharing the burden. The Dutch have a not-for-profit agency called Start, which temporarily employs people unable to get into the labour market, by loaning them to private employers to gain work experience or offering them training if employers will not take them. In Austria, work foundations have been set up, aided by unions and the government, where by employees who don't lose their jobs when there has been restructuring help fund retraining and job searches for those who do. Workers who keep their jobs pay 0.25 per cent of their wages for a period to the foundation in solidarity with their former workmates. The objective is to provide a network of resources for redundant workers, so that they do not have to deal with the transition to a new job in isolation.</p> <p>Ageing is a major issue everywhere. Labour is finally getting round to pensions reform. But it is just as important to root out ageism and persuade older people either to stay in work or come back to work. Here, little progress has been made and other countries are much further ahead. In Finland, tax incentives have been introduced to encourage the over-65s to keep on working. There the proportion of older people in regular paid work is twice as high as in Britain.</p> <p>Next we come to devolution and decentralisation. Labour has made a pig's ear of this, refusing to let go. Look at the great efforts that were made to stop Ken Livingstone becoming Mayor of London, while the proposed regional chambers were given so little power that few thought there was any point in having them. Compare this to Spain, with its successful system of regional autonomy, where policies were much more radical.</p> <p>Politics now looks very different from in the early 1990s. It is being driven by factors as various as energy price hikes, climate change, health problems and work/life issues - all of which revolve around a presumption of lifestyle change. This is not about the old questions of scarcity or poverty. Again, there is much for us to learn. On green issues, Sweden has set itself the target of becoming the world's first carbon-free economy by 2020. The ambition is not unrealistic. The Swedes reacted to the oil crisis of the 1970s in an innovative way, and have sustained that impetus. A programme, for example, is being set up to convert all cars to ethanol.</p> <p>Britain has the highest level of obesity in the EU, a level approaching that of the US. Other states have shown how positive changes can be produced in lifestyle habits. A generation ago, Fin land had the highest levels of type 2 diabetes and heart disease in Europe. Using a mixture of incentives, sanctions and counselling, the Finns achieved a dramatic reduction in these diseases.</p> <p>It hardly needs saying, but we should also look more towards Europe in the area of foreign policy. Tony Blair's tracking of George W Bush has been his poll tax. Christopher Meyer, the former UK ambassador in Washington, claims Jonathan Powell, the PM's chief of staff, instructed him to "get up the arse of the White House and stay there". It was an even coarser metaphor than either man might have realised, because we all know what you find in that part of the body.</p> </div></div></div> Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 154368 at <![CDATA[Democracy on hold]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Observations on Russia</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Physically Vladimir Putin has little charisma. He is on the short side and balding, although he carries himself with the demeanour of the devoted sportsman, which in fact he is. A group of 30 of us met him on Saturday last to discuss the political future of Russia, concentrating mainly on oil, gas and geopolitics.</p> <p>The event took place at the Russian equivalent of Chequers, a lovely country house called Novo-Ogaryovo, about an hour by car from Moscow, which the Romanovs once used as a weekend retreat. We got three hours with the president, during which he responded to a wide range of questions without notes and without any advisers present.</p> <p>"We" were a number of western academics and journalists, mostly experts on Russian foreign policy, who had spent the previous week in debate with each other and with Russian ministers.</p> <p>Many in the group (including myself) had distinct reservations about Putin and his style of government. Under him, Russia has recovered much of the swagger in international relations that it lost in the 1990s, when its economic performance was poor and capital was drained away by the "oligarchs" - people who became super-rich by exploiting loopholes in privatisation laws. Putin has hugely curbed the influence of the oligarchs, but he has also turned back the advance of democracy in Russia, concentrating power in the hands of the state.</p> <p>The media in Russia today are mostly controlled by the state and Putin rarely has to face the public interrogations from the press that are an intrinsic part of western politics, so it was an exceptional opportunity to ask him whatever questions we chose. Someone who knew Putin well during his time at the KGB told me that in those days he could hardly string two words together in a public setting. That certainly isn't true now. He is assured, knowledgeable and fond of humorous asides - even if, like most politicians, he skirts questions he doesn't like and his answers can be ambiguous.</p> <p>Russia is at a crucial stage of its development. For the past few years it has had growth rates of between 6 and 7 per cent a year, but it owes this success almost entirely to vast reserves of oil and gas, now mostly back in state hands. Many questions put to Putin centred on how far this can be sustained. Oil is a curse, isn't it? Moreover the Russian state is bureaucratic, slow-moving, and not exactly a stranger to corruption.</p> <p>Putin's macroeconomic policies have been good. The rouble is now a convertible currency; inflation is coming down. The government has sensibly spent a good deal of the oil and gas revenue on eliminating Russia's external debt. A large fund has been salted away, to be drawn upon should the price of oil dip. But many difficulties remain. To my knowledge, no petro-state has managed to diversify its economy. Why should Russia be any different? Efforts are being made to tackle corruption, but it remains endemic.</p> <p>Putin's programme of "authoritarian modernisation" is modelled upon success stories elsewhere, such as China, South Korea and Singapore. People want prosperity and stability, the idea runs, more than they value democratic political involvement.</p> <p>Yet I left the meeting thinking that it is going to be a long haul for Russia, and in the meantime the brief flowering of democratic freedoms that the country experienced after 1991 might become just a distant memory.</p> </div></div></div> Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 154279 at <![CDATA[From edge to centre]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Observations on Siberia</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>I am sitting in the sunshine beneath a sky of perfect blue. The temperature is well into the twenties Celsius and I am surrounded by greenery. Behind me are attractive university buildings where, it being the first day of the new term, students come and go.</p> <p>I am not in California, but Siberia. Siberia is quite unlike the image most people in the west have of it: a land of permanent ice and snow fit only for exiles. The far north may come close, but Siberia stretches a long way south and I am in the campus town of Novosibirsk, set away from the main city, which is home to about a million people.</p> <p>The climate is similar to that of Wisconsin in the US - occasionally very cold in winter, but mostly sunny and dry - and Novosibirsk itself also resembles Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin. It is an elite university, established in the 1950s as a centre of scientific research.</p> <p>I have come to give a series of lectures on globalisation. They are well-attended and the discussions afterwards are lively. Merely being here drives home what globalisation means, for the place is acquiring a global significance. It borders China and India, whose political and economic importance is growing apace, so Siberia is no longer on the edge, but right in the centre. It also has 90 per cent of Russia's vast oil and natural-gas resources.</p> <p>After Russia's setbacks in the 1990s, President Vladimir Putin is pursuing a path of authoritarian modernisation back to great-power status, and oil and gas are central to that ambition. The country is becoming a petro-state and, for the moment, it is working: the annual growth rate is above 7 per cent.</p> <p>Yet the history of petro-states is not encouraging, and Siberians are trying to diversify. In Novosibirsk I stay at the home of managers of the local currency exchange, now very successful. The locals are deeply into information technology, and Intel and other foreign firms have arrived to take advantage. A science park is planned.</p> <p>There are big problems here, as in Russia as a whole. Nothing much can be done without the say-so of officials in Moscow, never a straightforward matter. Many people lament the pervasiveness of corruption: it is impossible for honest people to survive, they say, because they have no option but to cultivate the Moscow officials.</p> <p>The town is in transition: academic salaries are low and good scholars have moved abroad. More links with universities in other countries are needed, and more foreign students. Russia is also going through an identity crisis, reflected here in a tension between the attractions of the wider world and a suspicion of outside influences. But sitting in the sunshine in such pleasant surroundings, it is hard not to feel optimistic.</p> </div></div></div> Mon, 11 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 154213 at <![CDATA[The colonel and his third way]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p> Muammar al-Gaddafi has rejected terrorism and brought Libya back into the international fold. Now he</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> It isn't so much a tent as an awning, open to the desert at the edges. Inside, there are some white plastic chairs, a plastic table and two easy chairs. I am sitting in one of them, waiting for Colonel Gaddafi. To get here, I flew to Tripoli and then took another plane up the coast, followed by an hour and a half's car ride into the desert scrubland. Gaddafi moves around a lot, like the nomadic groups he comes from, and no doubt also for security reasons. This evening he is camped at a small oasis, replete with camels and some tired-looking palm trees. It's only a few minutes' wait before he arrives.</p> <p> Dressed in a brown-gold robe, he cuts an impressive figure. There are no guards or minders in view, and the occasion is a completely informal one. He is instantly recognisable and would be so to a great many people across the world, whatever their feelings about him might be. In a way, it is an extraordinary phenomenon. Libya is a tiny country in terms of population, with only 5.8 million people. Gaddafi's global prominence is altogether out of proportion to the size of the nation he leads. He is now 64, in power since 1969. Rumours abound that he is in failing health, but he looks robust.</p> <p> You usually get about half an hour when meeting a political leader. My conversation with Gaddafi lasts for more than three. Gaddafi is relaxed and he clearly enjoys intellectual conversa tion. We sit close together and occasionally sip mint tea. He has a tiny notebook in front of him, into which he sometimes makes short scribbled entries. He is not a fidgety person but has a calm, articulate manner, and cracks the odd joke or two as we go along. The only other direct participant is a man who has just flown in from New York, apparently especially to do the translation.</p> <p> Gaddafi speaks some English, and occasionally during the encounter makes comments to me directly. But, for most of the time, we converse through the translator. Gaddafi is interested in the debates and policies involved in social democracy in Europe, which is the reason he has invited me. He likes the term "third way", because his own political philosophy, developed in the late 1960s, was a version of this idea. It has been written up in the form of <em>The Green Book</em>, authored by Gaddafi, on display almost everywhere in Libya.</p> <p> <strong>Another kind of green politics</strong></p> <p> <em>The Green Book</em> is based upon a theory of direct democracy. Representative democracy, Gaddafi argues, is an inadequate form of government, given that it means rule by a minority and in which the majority have little direct say. Soviet communism, on the other hand, led to government by an even smaller elite. His "third alternative" favours self-rule, in which everyone can, in principle, be involved. At one point in the conversation he points to the symbol with which the awning is covered. It is a series of concentric circles, with points of connection between them marked. The outer circle is formed by the basic people's congresses, which anyone can attend and contribute to. They communicate decisions to inner groups, which pass them on finally to the General People's Committee - which is supposed to register and act on them, with further consultations if necessary. In theory, Libya has self-government without a state.</p> <p> Gaddafi's economic theory holds that everyone should receive the fruits of their labour. In a capitalist economy, so his account runs, workers get only a proportion of the wealth they create, the rest being appropriated by the employer. Freedom can be built only on individual econ o m ic autonomy. The material needs of life - clot h ing, food, a home and means of transportation - must be owned by the individual family. Hence in Libya, at least until recently, no one was allowed to rent property.</p> <p> Our conversation is wide-ranging and "The Leader", as he is universally known in Libya, makes many intelligent and perceptive points. He continually reverts to the ideas of <em>The Green Book</em>, but makes it clear that he wants to adapt and update them. Over the past three or four years, Gaddafi has come in from the cold internationally. He has renounced his support for terrorism and Libya has paid compensation to the families of those killed in the Lockerbie attack. Libya has terminated its nuclear and chemical weapons programmes. In conjunction with Gaddafi's son Saif, a PhD student at the London School of Economics, the British Foreign Office played a large part in producing Libya's re-engagement with the wider world. UN sanctions, which had severely affected the economy, have been lifted, and Libya has been taken off the US list of states that support terrorism.</p> <p> Gaddafi's "conversion" may have been driven partly by the wish to escape sanctions, but I get the strong sense that it is authentic and that there is a lot of motive power behind it. Saif Gaddafi is a driving force behind the rehabilitation and potential modernisation of Libya. Gaddafi Sr, however, is authorising these processes and retains a strong grip upon the country.</p> <p> <strong>Stage-managed debate</strong></p> <p> During our talk, we discuss the fact that there is a major revival of thinking in modern political philosophy about participatory and discursive democracy. I say that, contrary to his thinking, a democratic system must have mechanisms of representation, choice between parties and a regular system of voting. Yet these could be complemented by direct forms of citizen involvement, making use of information technology, such as citizens' juries, and national "discussion days", as pioneered in Scandinavia, in which important initiatives are debated. Much will depend upon the creation of a healthy civil society.</p> <p> Discussing these matters with others later, I find out that the modernisers working with Saif are taking such ideas seriously. A committee has been meeting for the past two years to draw up a new constitution. I sit in on one of their discussions and am impressed by the sophistication of their ideas. The group has made much progress and has recognised the need for far-reaching trans formation of the political system, while seek ing to sustain the genuine elements of egalitarianism that Gaddafi's rule has sustained.</p> <p> Gaddafi does not demur when I point out that his economic approach has to be rethought. Egalitarianism is a core social-democratic value, but it cannot be built upon denying basic principles of capital accumulation and investment. Competition and profit are the conditions of economic success, not intrinsic barriers to it. To control inequality, the country needs other measures, especially in relation to taxation, welfare and corporate governance.</p> <p> I leave Gaddafi's tent to make the trip back to Tripoli enlivened and encouraged. Libya may be small, but it is a front-line nation in global terms because of its leader's decision to open up to the wider world after years of international isolation, and because of the abolition of its WMD programmes. The country is going in the opposite direction from Iran and North Korea and it is in virtually everyone's interest that this process be sustained. On the way back from the desert to Tripoli, I talk to some of the modernisers working to implement specific policy programmes. I am impressed both by their sophistication and their determination to reform.</p> <p> The next day is more sobering. I give a lecture at al-Fateh University and the reactions to it give me a sense of how challenging it might be for them actually to push their reforms through. My speech is about globalisation and its relation to social welfare. I point out that Libya, as a small country with a great deal of oil wealth, might look to Norway as something of a model to aim for in the future. Norway has a high degree of equality, good growth rates and a strong welfare system, and has used its oil wealth sensibly in long-term planning. It has adjusted very effectively to the new global environment.</p> <p> When I finish my lecture, the chairman, who originally introduced me, begins a vigorous and impassioned denunciation of more or less everything I said. About a quarter of an hour into his diatribe, I feel I must stop him and go back to the podium to react to his critique. At this point, about a third of the audience gets up and files out of the auditorium. After I have responded, and tried to show how empty and rhetorical my opponent/chairman's views are, those who remain in the audience ask a variety of sensible and penetrating questions.</p> <p> It is only following the event that I learn what was actually going on. A moderniser was supposed to have chaired the lecture, but before I got there he had virtually been manhandled off the stage and a hardline traditionalist put in. The graduate students had been instructed to leave before I began to respond to my critic, as he had said the final word (<em>sic</em>) on the issues.</p> <p> In a way, I was glad that I had been attacked in such a fashion, because it certainly livened up the discussion, and, lurking in the rhetoric, there were some serious questions that could be brought out into the open.</p> <p> When my denouncer was some way into his performance, I sat listening to him thinking that what I had come to do - help open up debate in the country about social and economic development - had completely rebounded. I had simply ruffled too many feathers. However, people I spoke to afterwards said that he is one of a dwindling minority. They felt it was a very good thing that I had managed to skewer his arguments so effectively, and in such a public setting, too.</p> <p> Change will be difficult in Libya, as it always is in a system where one man has held power for a long time. I came away confident that, for the moment, the modernisers have the upper hand over the traditionalists; but, as my experience at the university shows, those who want to block reform are making their voices heard in no uncertain manner.</p> <p> <strong>Modern persuasion</strong></p> <p> Libya thus far has squandered its oil wealth, but it could be used to help diversify the economy, and encourage an entrepreneurial spirit, highly visible in Libya, in spite of its being constrained by a welter of restrictions. It could also be spent on a state-of-the-art welfare system to protect the poor and vulnerable. Libya needs foreign direct investment, and the expertise that comes along with it. Such investment will emerge if it is clear that social and economic reform are for real. The country has some clear advantages over others in the region. Literacy, for example, is above 80 per cent. Women fare better than in most Muslim countries. According to the latest report of the Economist Intelligence Unit, economic growth in Libya in 2006-2007 is expected to exceed 9 per cent. There are clear strengths to build on and it is in the interests of the global community to support those people in the country who are pushing for change.</p> <p> Much will depend upon Gaddafi himself, as he sits ruminating upon the relevance of his political thinking to current times. He could play a crucial role in easing transition if he decides to support the modernisers. He does seem set on this course, but must use his influence to persuade the doubters - yet perhaps, first of all, he must fully persuade himself.</p> </div></div></div> Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 154090 at <![CDATA[NS Essay - 'Accumulation of wealth is unjust where it arises not from hard work and risk-taking enterprise, but from ''brute luck'' factors such as returns from property. Inheritance is a form of brute-luck inequality']]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The gap between rich and poor is far too wide and there are things the government can do about it wi</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>This Labour government has devoted enormous amounts of energy to tackling inequality through helping the poor. Addressing the needs of the most disadvantaged people has been given priority over tackling overall levels of income inequality. The rich are largely left alone. It is far more important to concentrate on raising the floor: improving the economic and social position of the poor both in absolute terms and relative to median income.</p> <p>But what about those at the top? What are the responsibilities of the rich and powerful in contemporary Britain? A mass of information is available in the social sciences concerning the poor and underprivileged but we have surprisingly little reliable data about high-earning professionals, and even less about the tiny minority of the rich. Yet these people are a part of the whole: the strategies used by the affluent in gaining concentrated access to the best housing, health and education plainly have their effect upon the life chances of poorer groups.</p> <p>New Labour sought to break away from the traditional theme of the left: that the rich must have become so by exploiting others. Those who are economically successful often bring benefits to wider society as a condition of their drive, initiative or creativity. A prosperous economy requires these qualities; an aspirational society cannot be one in which success is heavily penalised.</p> <p>Controversially, at least on the left, Labour did not raise income tax rates for top income earners, leaving them at a maximum rate of 40 per cent, and it significantly lowered capital gains tax rates for entrepreneurs.</p> <p>Yet a fairer society cannot be built from the bottom up alone. This consideration raises the crucial issue of how community itself can be sustained in the face of market-driven economic inequalities. The centre left has long been concerned with the social fragmentation that arises as a consequence of Thatcherite economics and the concentration of wealth. New Labour, for its part, is understandably wary of antagonising those sectors of society where it has attracted supporters it had not had before, but others have argued the case for raising income tax rates to 50 per cent for those earning more than £100,000 a year.</p> <p>What is required is a concerted strategy that addresses "social exclusion at the top", reconnecting the rich with the rest, and a more effective way of doing this than raising tax rates would be to concentrate on citizenship obligations and the reinvig- oration of the public good, using a mixture of regulation and positive incentives. Legal tax-avoidance schemes for the rich, for example, cost the exchequer far more than would come from raising top-level rates of income tax.</p> <p>The top 1 per cent of earners, and even more so the top 0.5 per cent, have pulled away more sharply from the rest in the UK than in other European societies. This fact is almost certainly related to the aggressive nature of Anglo-American corporate practices, given that similar trends have occurred in the United States since the late 1970s. Further encouragement of shareholder activism, and other measures to promote corporate responsibility and corporate citizenship, might begin to redress this imbalance. The Treasury has re-cently begun to clamp down far more forcefully than before on tax avoidance and tax evasion, with some measure of success. This process should continue. We should also pursue fiscal incentives in a more thoroughgoing way to encourage philanthropy, charitable giving and responsible corporate behaviour. But there is also a case for taxing capital transfers.</p> <p>The steady rise of inequalities in the distribution of wealth must be tackled. This requires asset redistribution, the democratisation of market capitalism, and the containment of excessive accumulation of wealth by a few individuals. Just as Edwardian social policy drew a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, these categories might be applied to the concentration of wealth. The accumulation of wealth is excessive and unjust where it arises not from hard work and risk-taking enterprise, but from "brute luck" factors such as rising returns on property and land. Inheritance itself is a form of brute-luck inequality, enabling citizens to share in the social product while violating the principle of reciprocity: if one citizen enjoys the fruits of another's labour, a good or service should be provided in return.</p> <p>The case for liberty does not, therefore, defeat the case for taxation of wealth transfers. The present inheritance tax regime still offers loopholes for the affluent and is inequitable in its impact on the modestly well-off. The government should look again at a capital transfer tax extending beyond simply inheritance, and including all lifetime gifts.</p> <p>If we tax wealth transfers more broadly, there is a strong case for hypothecating - earmarking - the funds raised to support something new: an imaginative universal capital grant scheme. This scheme would provide a time-limited, flat-rate benefit to low-income adults who are "participating" in the community in certain defined ways. They might be making their contributions through education or training, or by setting up a business, or they might be taking parental leave. The idea of the grants would be to reward and support a wider range of activities than paid work alone, and they embody the principle of reciprocity: the right to an income in return for the responsibility of contributing to society in recognised ways. Explicitly diverting the revenue to a scheme on these lines would greatly strengthen the perceived legitimacy of taxing concentrations of wealth.</p> <p>While Labour can do more, it would be wrong to imagine that its policies to date have neglected or overlooked the problem of inequality. The 1997 government consciously adopted a strategy distinct from what had gone before, including its approach to poverty and inequality. Economic stability and stable economic growth, new Labour argued, are the keys to social policy. Moreover, programmes concerned with social justice must be related to issues of economic dynamism and employment creation, an outlook reflected in the extensive use of tax credits that marks Labour's reform model.</p> <p>Previous Labour governments had foundered in economic crises of one sort or another. Some on the traditional left had fondly imagined there was a postwar age when radical measures were adopted to realise the goal of equality. But like most golden ages, such a time never existed. Until the current one, Labour governments had been in power for relatively brief periods. Brave talk about social justice was never much more than that, as fiscal instability repeatedly derailed Labour's efforts to create a more equal society.</p> <p>This government's policies have met with considerable success. Indeed, it could plausibly be argued that this is the first Labour government to achieve a significant and sustained measure of redistribution in favour of the poorest. According to 2003 statistics, one and a half million people have been lifted out of poverty since 1997, where "poverty" is defined as living at a level under 60 per cent of median income. The social-democratic goal of improving the relative position of the worst-off in relation to the average remains a crucial objective. The government is on track to reach its target of reducing child poverty by a quarter by the end of the financial year 2005.</p> <p>Since 1997 absolute poverty has fallen steadily. Levels of employment stand at a historic high of 75 per cent, and rates of unemployment, including long-term unemployment, are low. The number living in poor households has fallen from 13.9 million in 1996-97 to 12.4 million in 2002-2003. Median incomes have grown by 2.6 per cent per annum since 1997, compared with 0.7 per cent under John Major and 2.1 per cent under the Thatcher governments.</p> <p>Poorer pensioners have also done far better than under previous governments, although the new provision - including new universal payments, the minimum income guarantee, a new tax credit and the new "second state" pension, all on top of the basic state pension - might usefully be simplified.</p> <p>However, several core weaknesses remain. The evidence shows, for example, that Britain is a long way from conquering inequality of opportunity: the life chances of individuals today are still significantly influenced by the economic and social position of their parents.</p> <p>One further area of concern is the strains that have emerged at the local community level in the UK. Even in the most deprived areas, more families have at least one member in work than was the case in 1997, and support for children, and the performance of children at school, is improving dramatically. But too often the community space that these families inhabit remains blighted. Official statistics suggest, for example, that 42 per cent of all burglaries happen to 1 per cent of all homes, principally those belonging to the poor and to single parents. For all the action-zone policies and strategic partnerships, too many of the worst estates and most deprived communities in Britain remain largely unchanged - bleak ghettos depressing the spirit of those who live in them, dominated by fear of crime and by racial tension. We need a new egalitarianism for several reasons.</p> <p>First, Labour has made no commitment to the pursuit of egalitarian goals remotely comparable to its emphasis on the revitalisation of public services. It is time that it did so. Increasing economic equality is as necessary for rebuilding solidarity as are effective public services. Second, it is true that Labour's policies since 1997 have not only had a significant impact on poverty, they have also brought to an end the persistent rise in income inequality that has occurred since the early 1980s. The incomes of the bottom 10 per cent of earners grew by an average of 2.8 per cent each year in real terms between 1996-97 and 2002-2003. This compares to 2.6 per cent growth among the top 10 per cent. But, as mentioned earlier, there are still serious reservations about how far the existing policies will reduce inequalities further.</p> <p>Finally, excessive attention has also been given to the contrast between "old" egalitarianism, focused on outcomes, and a conception of equality focused on opportunities. Outcomes and opportunities are, of course, closely connected, and inequalities of income and wealth undermine serious efforts to equalise opportunities. A more mobile, dynamic society, where individuals have greater respect for each other, is unlikely to come into being while the income gap between rich and poor steadily widens. There are still important distinctions between these egalitarian commitments, however.</p> <p>"Old" egalitarianism treated economic dynamism as incidental to its basic concern with economic security and redistribution. New egalitarianism holds that expanding the productive efficiency of the economy is necessary for governments to have a long-term impact on the distribution of income and wealth. Social democrats such as Anthony Crosland in <em>The Future of Socialism</em> recognised this, but his writings lacked a coherent economic theory of the mixed economy, as growth was largely taken for granted in Britain during the late 1950s.</p> <p>The Thatcherites quite rightly placed competitiveness and the generation of wealth at the forefront of their philosophy. This is ground that the left should never have surrendered. The new egalitarianism takes enhanced economic efficiency created by a flexible and dynamic economy as the necessary precondition for future redistribution. Economic dynamism and fairness, in other words, must go hand in hand.</p> <p>The new egalitarianism focuses primarily on widening opportunities rather than conventional income redistribution - equality of outcome - per se. Yet to a large extent, as we have argued, the one reinforces the other. The left's usual distributive goals should be pursued not only through income distribution or solidaristic wage policies, but through more concerted action to change the initial distribution of assets and productive endowments.</p> <p>The new egalitarianism is also sceptical about the virtues of pure meritocracy. Not only is the notion impractical, it is also incoherent. Impractical because most social mobility is, and is likely to remain, structural - brought about by shifts in the occupational structure. A high level of "exchange mobility", where many individuals exchanged positions over time, would in all probability be socially destructive. No society could cope easily with the large degrees of downward mobility that are implied in this; it would promote widespread feelings of disaffection and despair.</p> <p>Such scepticism about meritocracy draws on the lengthy tradition of British egalitarian social democracy, stretching back to writers such as R H Tawney and G D H Cole, and to the radical liberalism of Leonard Hobhouse and John Hobson. As they argued, economic production has to be seen as a co-operative process, reflecting the inputs of many individuals as well as society as a whole, and not as something achieved by individuals working on their own.</p> <p>Pure meritocracy is incoherent because, without redistri-bution, one generation's suc-cessful individuals would become the next generation's embedded caste, hoarding the wealth they had accumulated. Social justice demands that high incomes and large concentrations of wealth be spread more widely, in order to recognise the contribution made by all sections of the community to building the nation's wealth.</p> <p><em>Patrick Diamond is a senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, and a former special adviser to the Prime Minister. Anthony Giddens is emeritus professor of sociology at the LSE. This essay is based on an extract from their latest book, </em>The New Egalitarianism<em> (Polity Press)</em></p> </div></div></div> Mon, 27 Jun 2005 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 150950 at <![CDATA[NS Essay - Scaring people may be the only way to avoid the risks of new-style terrorism]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Claims that our leaders are playing the &quot;politics of fear&quot; are misconceived. Society could easily we</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>The current debate about terrorism, including its implications for civil liberties (which were recently highlighted by the law lords' denunciation of British ministers for imprisoning foreign nationals without trial), is vitiated by a failure to distinguish between two types of threat. One type I shall call old-style terrorism - with which we have been familiar for decades. It was practised by groups such as the Red Brigades in Italy or Baader-Meinhof in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, but it is more commonly associated with nationalist struggles, usually involving "nations without states". It is the sort of conflict associated with Northern Ireland, the Basque country, Quebec or Kashmir.</p> <p>Such terrorist activity is linked to specific, local objectives. The level of violence is often relatively low - more civilians died on the roads in Northern Ireland during the Troubles than from terrorist violence. Old-style terrorism can become more violent and destructive where it shades into something closer to civil war, as in Israel/Palestine or Sri Lanka.</p> <p>Old-style terrorism dates back at least as far as the rise of the modern nation state in the 18th century. Globalisation has changed its nature. It can now have far-flung networks of support and finance: the IRA got funding from sympathisers in the US, Libya and other countries, and established links with terrorist groups and guerrillas in central and southern America.</p> <p>New-style terrorism, however, is directly a child of the global age. Globalisation - meaning the growing interdependence of world society - is not just about the spread of markets and the increasing influence of cross-border financial institutions. It is driven primarily by the development of instantaneous electronic communications and mass transportation; and it is political and cultural, as well as economic.</p> <p>Al-Qaeda and its activities form a prototypical example of new-style terrorism, but al-Qaeda is by no means the only group of its kind. Mary Kaldor, of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, has described al-Qaeda as being run in some ways as if it were a non-governmental organisation such as Oxfam or Friends of the Earth. The analogy cannot be stretched too far because NGOs are open and legitimate, while new-style terrorist groups are covert and illegal. Yet the similarities are striking. Both al-Qaeda-type organisations and NGOs are highly decentralised. They are loose networks, driven by a sense of mission that holds together disparate groups or cells across the world, which quite often act semi-autonomously. Both deploy up-to-date communications technologies to co-ordinate their actions and to promote their messages. They have home bases, but these are in principle mutable and diverse. The home bases of new-style terrorist groups are in failing states, but they may also get covert support from governments elsewhere.</p> <p>The goals of the new-style terrorists are not local, but more far-reaching. Al-Qaeda's aims, as expressed in Osama Bin Laden's proclamations, are truly geopolitical. Bin Laden wants to see the "Crusader-Jewish alliance" driven out of Arabia, and ultimately proposes the re-creation of a caliphate running from Pakistan through to North Africa and southern Spain.</p> <p>This is the first difference between new and old terrorists. The aims of the former are wider, but also vaguer, than those of the latter. That is why negotiation, much less settlement, is generally impossible. The second important difference concerns organisational capacity. New systems of communication, allied to rapid travel, allow groups to organise at a distance and to co-ordinate terrorist actions. The third difference is ruthlessness. New-style terrorists are prepared to kill thousands, even millions.</p> <p>The fourth difference is weaponry. The internet allows anyone with the requisite technical knowledge and resources to develop weapons of high destructive potential. And following the collapse of the Soviet Union, large amounts of weaponry are circulating through the illegal global arms trade. Thousands of nuclear weapons and stocks of weapons-usable materials are held in insecure silos in Russia, vulnerable to theft by those who might sell them to terrorists. Enough nuclear material to build 20 medium-sized nuclear weapons is known to have gone missing in Russia.</p> <p>The combination of organisational capacity and ruthlessness made 9/11 a landmark in the history of terrorism: it was the first successful large-scale attack on the US mainland since the British invasion from Canada in 1814; and it could have been even more destructive than it was. The hijacked planes were aimed at the three centres of US power: financial, military and political. If the twin towers had collapsed straight away, 50,000 people, instead of 3,000, could have been killed. Flight 77 would have done more damage if it had hit the Pentagon more centrally. And the fourth plane - aimed at either the Capitol or the White House - fell short of its target thanks to the bravery of passengers on board.</p> <p>It is now commonly argued, especially on the left, that governments overhype the risks from terrorism, and that al-Qaeda is something of a paper tiger. This view was put forward last year, for instance, in two programmes in the BBC series <em>The Power of Nightmares</em>, directed by Adam Curtis. Al-Qaeda, Curtis argued, does not really exist: western intelligence agencies and politicians have turned a few, widely scattered terrorist incidents into a sinister global conspiracy. Two US experts on terrorism, Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud, similarly claim that it is time we "defused the widespread image of al-Qaeda as a ubiquitous, super-organised terror network and call it as it is: a loose collection of groups and individuals that doesn't even call itself al-Qaeda". According to them, Osama Bin Laden never spoke of "al-Qaeda" before 9/11; it had only cropped up, in a marginal way, in the pronouncements of those around him. US intelligence agencies first used "al-Qaeda" in a generic fashion after the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Only later was the title appropriated by the terrorist groups themselves.</p> <p>It is indeed mistaken to suppose that al-Qaeda is a highly organised global machine capable of wreaking havoc wherever its leaders decide; rather, it is a network of various types of group, some more effective and menacing than others. Yet it is equally mistaken to underplay the threat from these. After all, 9/11 did happen - and it involved careful planning and sophisticated logistics.</p> <p>Bin Laden and his immediate associates are almost certainly less of a danger than they were - because of the military intervention in Afghanistan, not because their capacities at the time were exaggerated. Their warriors were forced to leave their bases and many were killed in the fighting. At least one top commander, Muhammad Atef, died in the air strikes. Three other senior leaders were captured in Pakistan, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was allegedly the prime figure behind the 9/11 attacks.</p> <p>Al-Qaeda probably retains "sleepers" in western countries, over and above the cells broken up by police in the US, UK, France, Spain, Germany and elsewhere. There are other terrorist organisations that share the same fundamentalist outlook as al-Qaeda and have connections with it, such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Army of Aden (which originates in the Yemen) or the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.</p> <p>The recent report on homeland security in the United States, produced by a task force guided by Richard A Clarke, distinguishes three "concentric circles" of international jihadist terrorism. Al-Qaeda is the "inner circle", with an estimated membership today of between 400 and 2,000 activists. In the second circle are numerous further terror groups, with between 50,000 and 200,000 members. The outer circle comprises jihadist sympathisers in the global Islamic community, numbering upwards of 200 million.</p> <p>Those who play down the importance of terrorist threats, or who speak of a gratuitous "politics of fear", are apt to say: "There hasn't been another 9/11; we were told that a terrorist attack on London was almost inevitable, but nothing has happened. Why were you scaring everybody without good reason?" This view is specious, for two reasons. The first concerns the phenomenology of risk. In order to get people to take a risk seriously and respond in the right way, they have to be told how potentially dangerous it is. If the threat does not materialise, those who spoke of it are likely to be accused of scaremongering. But scaring people - getting them to see that the risk is real - may be the very condition of minimising or avoiding danger. One weekend in 2003, the Prime Minister, after receiving intelligence information, decided to surround Heathrow with troops. He was criticised for scaremongering. Yet his actions may have stopped a terrorist attack.</p> <p>The second reason why it is wrong to talk of the "politics of fear" is specific to new-style terrorism. It is simply the magnitude of the dangers involved. The chances of a terrorist attack on London that kills thousands may be slight, especially considering the precautions in place. It is now difficult to implement attacks using planes. It is hard to deploy chemical and biological weapons on a large-scale basis against civilians. A "dirty bomb" - almost certain to be set off some time, somewhere - would cause widespread panic, but its lethal range is limited. There is no evidence so far of nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of new-style terrorists, although no one really knows.</p> <p>However, the truth is that a highly destructive strike is no longer just a hypothetical possibility. The consequences of old-style terrorism may be horrific, but can be weathered. The same is not true of a large-scale terrorist attack: just one episode could be devastating, and one involving a nuclear device cataclysmic. The IRA's warning, after the bombing of the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984, that "we only have to be lucky once; you will have to be lucky always" has a new and more acute meaning in the age of new-style terrorism. We have to avoid even a single successful attack; but the longer we do so, the more, perversely, critics will proclaim that we are all being scared unnecessarily.</p> <p>The left has to adjust its attitudes towards terrorism, just as it had to adjust them towards crime. It won't do to say that there are no serious threats. It won't do to blame the troubles of the world on George W Bush or the Iraq war. It is no good pretending that there aren't problems in reconciling civil liberties with adequate protection and security. It is not wrong to say that we have to deal with the social conditions that have helped to produce new-style terrorism - poverty and unemployment, schisms between the Islamic world and the west, the situation in Israel/Palestine. And it is certainly right to say that we need urgent measures to halt further nuclear proliferation.</p> <p>But as with crime, we cannot think only of the underlying conditions. New-style terrorists are by no means always drawn from the ranks of the dispossessed; and their aims, as in the case of al-Qaeda, may be primarily religious and strategic. We have to respond to the dangers they pose in the here and now.</p> <p><em>Anthony Giddens is a former director of the London School of Economics</em></p> </div></div></div> Mon, 10 Jan 2005 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 149677 at <![CDATA[NS Essay - The left must open up more clear water between itself and its opponents]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Why are social-democrat parties in such trouble in so many European countries? Have they been too qu</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>The European left is not in good shape. At the turn of the millennium, left or leftish governments were in power in 13 of the 15 states of the European Union, while Bill Clinton held office in Washington. All these were revisionist, Third Way governments; the Jospin coalition in France was no different, even if Lionel Jospin had a distaste for the term Third Way itself.</p> <p>Now, out of the 25 EU countries today, the centre left holds power in just nine. Gerhard Schroder's Social Democratic/Green coalition in Germany has suffered unprecedented reversals in local and regional polls. The three states in eastern Europe - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - are all suffering from "post-enlargement blues" and look shaky. Goran Persson is enjoying his third term as prime minister in Sweden, but the Social Democrats do not have a majority in the Riksdag. Though the Socialists took power in Spain this year, they did so only after the Madrid bombings changed public opinion. Before that, they had looked likely to lose the election. In the UK, even Tony Blair, though still odds-on to win the next election, is in difficulties over the Iraq war.</p> <p>Where the left is out of power, the situation seems even more discouraging. The Italian left appears rudderless: though Romano Prodi's return as leader of a new centre-left alliance prompts hopes for a revival, the parties and groups involved do not yet have a common programme. The French left has still not recovered from the shock of Lionel Jospin's elimination in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections. The Socialists are divided between modernisers and traditionalists, and the "plural left" that Jospin held together while in government has fallen apart.</p> <p>Yet when I talked to a senior British government adviser - just before the latest Progressive Governance conference, held in Budapest from 13-14 October and organised by the international think-tank Policy Network - he was remarkably laid-back about it all. He did not think it mattered much, he said: after all, the "right-wing" parties or coalitions in some European countries are actually quite leftish in British terms.</p> <p>The CDU in Germany, for example, is essentially a one-nation Tory party, far removed from current British Conservatism. Christian-democratic parties on the Continent, the adviser pointed out, have played a significant part in building and sustaining Europe's welfare institutions.</p> <p>It is true that the centre of political gravity differs from country to country. It is as difficult for a government significantly to reduce taxes in Sweden, for example, as it is for a government to raise them in the UK. Moreover, as I wrote a book with the title <em>Beyond Left and Right</em>, you would expect me to agree that some issues no longer fall under the usual left-right divisions.</p> <p>But the political composition of Europe certainly does matter. Many rightist parties or coalitions in power in Europe today are, to some degree, in hock to the far right, and most have embraced anti-immigration policies. Some - such as those in Italy and Austria - have brought far-right groups directly into government. The left absolutely needs to fight such trends.</p> <p>So what explains the centre left's diminishing fortunes? The point should first be made that the decline has not been quite as marked as some suggest. There never really was a firm centre-left hegemony in 2000. Some left-of-centre parties came to power at that time largely because of the political cycle: the Social Democrats in Germany, for example, had been out of government for almost as long as Labour in the UK. Though the electorate responded positively to these parties' ideological innovations, many people simply voted for change. Moreover, in 2000, the left had a parliamentary majority in only four of the 13 countries concerned: Britain, Germany, France and Greece.</p> <p>Contingent events are often more important in politics than ideology. But for a few thousand dimpled chads (or Ralph Nader's decision to stand), Al Gore, not George Bush, would have become US president in 2000. The occupant of the White House almost always has an influence on Europe's political complexion and, if Gore had been elected, a different approach to Iraq might well have prevented the splits on the Iraq war that have so damaged much of the European left.</p> <p>Tactical failures also help to explain the left's declining fortunes. Left and right are everywhere internally divided, but the left is usually more prone to sectarian division. If the left had stuck behind Jospin in the first round of the French presidential election, he would at least have been able to put up a good fight against Jacques Chirac. If the Olive Tree centre-left coalition had managed to stay intact in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi might not be in power today. The principle "United we win, divided we lose" is a powerful one in politics. When Labour put its sectarian past behind it, it was accused of "control-freakery". Yet Labour's continuing electoral strength owes much to the containment of its internal schisms.</p> <p>However, the weaknesses of the European left are undeniably ideological in some part. Do they flow from too much revisionism, or too little? I believe strongly that the problem is the latter. Social-democratic governments have often been either unwilling or unable to push through the programmes to which they are committed in principle.</p> <p>Take Schroder in Germany. A Third Way disciple, surely? Yes, but more in spirit than in reality, I would say, at least until quite recently. He signed up to the "Blair-Schroder manifesto" in June 1999, supporting the kind of economic restructuring that new Labour has followed in the UK, but it was almost immediately disowned by many fellow Social Democrats circles in Germany. Schroder made little immediate progress in reforming a benefit system that prices German workers out of jobs. Only more recently, in his second term, has he started to make such reforms. By deferring them, he has arguably made the backlash much greater.</p> <p>Labour's version of the Third Way was less original than some of its proponents believed. Active labour-market policy, for example, in the shape of the New Deal, was pioneered in the Scandinavian countries. In one key respect, however, Labour was ahead of the game: it believed that no area should be treated as "belonging to the right". Labour should generate left-of-centre solutions to "rightist" problems - such as those to do with crime or immigration.</p> <p>Other social-democratic parties in Europe came round to such a standpoint too late. The Jospin government, for example, started to talk about crime reduction only late in its electoral campaign, and failed to convince the French electorate of its sincerity.</p> <p>The Danish Social Democrats fell from power after they failed to anticipate and respond to a wave of right-wing populism, led by the anti-immigration Danish People's Party. Similarly, in the Netherlands, the ruling "purple coalition" was shocked to find itself ejected from government as a result of the rise of the anti-immigration campaigner Pim Fortuyn.</p> <p>How can the left revive its fortunes? Despite what many have written on the subject, the populist parties as such are not a major problem for social-democratic parties. They tend to be intrinsically unstable, depending as they do on the appeal of "anti-political politicians".</p> <p>Much more consequential for social democracy are the conditions that lead to right-wing populism. The stresses and strains of globalisation have created a new schism in our society. On one side are those who are at ease (or relatively so) with technological advance and the cosmopolitan interchange of cultures, and who possess the qualifications to do well in the new economy. On the other side - much further down the socio-economic scale - are those, often lacking in skills or qualifications, who feel that their jobs or even their way of life are threatened. These groups blame the "establishment" or "outsiders" or both for what is going on, and are easily attracted by racist or xeno- phobic sentiments. Many are erstwhile social-democratic voters who feel let down or disenfranchised by the mainstream parties.</p> <p>Some commentators argue that populism flourishes because we no longer have the great ideological confrontations of the past. Politics, they argue, has become too mundane for voters to take much interest. The large majority, therefore, feel that "all politicians are the same" and that they are not being offered a real choice. The political vacuum is then filled with protest votes and direct action - outsiders against the establishment. If social-democrat parties are to get back on track, so this analysis goes, they must open up more clear water between themselves and their opponents on the right.</p> <p>I have some sympathy with this view, which was the subject of much debate in Budapest. But we must not be naive. The third way turn in social-democratic politics is inevitable and inescapable. Left-of-centre parties will not enjoy electoral success unless they respond to change.</p> <p>They have to win battles of tactics, strategy and ideology: tactics in the sense of sustaining a united front and organising election campaigns professionally; strategy in the sense of continuing to innovate in policy; ideology in the sense of giving revisionism emotional appeal. Pragmatism without passion will not command enduring political support. Social democrats must respond to populism without succumbing to it.</p> <p>At the height of the social-democratic "boom", Blair talked of the aspiration to make the 21st century a "social-democratic century". So far, there is little sign of it, but the aspiration can still be realised. Outside Scandinavia, the left has never held power for long. This could change if social democrats could learn to speak for the majority, not just for sectoral interests. It could change if the left can rise to one of the biggest challenges - to promote a renewed egalitarianism, but one compatible with a dynamic and competitive economy.</p> <p>The political right in Europe does not have an especially coherent political agenda. Right-wing parties dominate because they have responded more rapidly than the left to voter concerns about security and identity; and because of the left's tactical and organisational mistakes. With enough determination and intellectual effort, however - allied to a more lively and continuous exchange of ideas following on from the work of bodies such as the Policy Network - there is no intrinsic reason why the political map of Europe should not change yet again over the next few years.</p> <p>But what happens in America has a big influence on Europe. The prospects for a social-democratic revival will be all the greater if, within a week, John Kerry wins the US presidency.</p> <p><em>Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics and now a member of the House of Lords, is the author of </em>The Third Way<em> (Polity Press, 1998)</em></p> </div></div></div> Mon, 01 Nov 2004 12:00:00 +0000 Anthony Giddens 149222 at