This week saw the launch of the final report of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning, led by Frank McLoughlin CBE.
The Commission was set up to enable ‘the sector itself to develop, guided by its own insights and experiences rather than by impersonal instruction from a remote bureaucracy’ and is the culmination of nearly a year’s work by 19 commissioners.
We believe the Commission is right to stress that strong vocational teaching and learning must be characterised by a clear line of sight to work, and through genuine collaboration between colleges, training providers and employers.
We also welcome the Commission’s proposal to set up of a ‘Teach Too’ scheme aimed at encouraging working people to teach their occupation for a few hours a week.
At CentreForum. we have been developing a proposal very similar to this which we will be publishing in the coming weeks.
Our proposal, backed by the Commission, is to encourage current industry professionals, selected through a challenging recruitment process, to take part time secondments from their work to teach in further education (FE) colleges. Positioning current industry practice alongside strong pedagogy is crucial both for engaging with vocational learners and for the future of industry.
With certain industries, such as STEM, moving at a fast pace, even a year or two out can result in a person’s knowledge becoming out of date. We therefore need a model that combines business ‘buy-in’ and sustainable dual professionalism that can respond to these rapid changes.
Although levels of business-FE engagement are not as low as some might think, the nature of those relationships is often not meeting the requirements of either party. A ‘Teach Too’ style programme could help improve these relationships in a number of ways. For instance, it could lead to the creation of a central database containing examples of best practice in employer-college relations. Such in depth information is currently unavailable on a national scale.
Finally, in order for such a scheme or programme to function, it will be vital to have buy-in from three key stakeholders to benefit a fourth: if individual specialists, colleges or business do not buy into the concept, then potential benefits for vocational learners of all ages will not be realised.
A new Guild has been tasked with responsibility for establishing ‘Teach Too’ and we hope that our contribution will prove useful and informative.
CentreForum will be publishing its findings on a ‘Teach Too’ style scheme in the coming weeks. Please contact sam.tomlin@centreforum.org for more information.
Liberal Heroes of the Week #32: Index on Censorship & Jonathan Dimbleby. (The Villains are Cameron, Clegg and Miliband)
Liberal Hero of the Week is chosen by Stephen Tall, Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and Research Associate at CentreForum. The series showcases those who promote any of the four liberal tenets identified in The Orange Book — economic, personal, political and social liberalism — regardless of party affiliation and from beyond Westminster. If they stick up for liberalism in some way then they’re in contention.
Index on Censorship
“The voice of free expression”
Reason: for campaigning against state-backed regulation of the press
Many folk who’d consider themselves free speech liberals have found themselves conflicted by the debate over press regulation and the Leveson Report. It’s not hard to see why given the choice of victims, with the Dowlers / Jeffries / McCanns pitched against the Murdoch / Dacre / Brooks of this world. Instinctively, most have sided with the little guys against the press barons. In itself that’s understandable.
But as this week’s Economist points out the debate over press regulation is essentially a battle between two concepts of freedom: freedom from intrusion and freedom of speech. If you believe the former is more important, state-backed regulation of the press holds no fear. If you believe in the primacy of the latter, then the idea of MPs deciding who should be regulated and how is anathema.
Index on Censorship has been the leading campaign group sticking up for freedom of expression, highlighting the profound flaws in the Leveson Report and now in the latest Royal Charter proposals backed by the three parties:
“In spite of David Cameron’s claims, there can be no doubt that what has been established is statutory underpinning of the press regulator. This introduces a layer of political control that is extremely undesirable. On this sad day, Britain has abandoned a democratic principle.”
Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive
Here’s what Index’s Chair, Jonathan Dimbleby, had to say about it:
“As Chair of Index on Censorship, I have to report that the Index board of trustees – who all occupy senior positions in roles both within and outside of the media — is dismayed at the course of developments that have been taken in establishing a new press regulator. The board has the gravest anxiety at the residual political powers the now expected outcome and system will give to politicians. The two-thirds block on any changes to the royal charter could be abused in the future — not least when today’s emerging consensus shows that the parties can come together in both houses to agree on press regulation.”
Far too many people — left, right and liberal — have welcomed Leveson and the Royal Charter as their moment to stick it to the press, to make sure the Dacres/Murdochs/Brooks of this world no what it feels like to have power wielded against them. However understandable the emotion, crackdowns on free speech are no way to right wrongs. Instead of curtailing the press’s power we meed to find ways of boosting individuals’ power, giving them access to low-cost tribunals which allow the challenging and defending of contested speech without being bankrupted.
David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband
Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Leadr of the Opposition
Reason: for their cack-handed approach to the press regulation legislation
Not all liberals will agree with Index or me in opposing state-backed press regulation, I realise. But perhaps we can agree that Sunday night’s shambolic late-night talks are no way to create workable legislation? While David Cameron delegated to a mustard-trouser-wearing Oliver Letwin the negotiations on the Tory side (keeping in touch by text message), Labour and the Lib Dems were holed-up with the Hacked Off campaigners scribbling statute on the back of envelopes, accidentally creating laws which will regulate much of the Internet unless some equally scrabbled-together amendments are accepted next week. All three party leaders were complicit in this farcical display which made The Thick Of It look like a tight, well-ordered ship.
* You can view our list of ‘Liberal Heroes of the Week’ (and occasional ‘Liberal Villains’) here. Nominations are welcome via email or Twitter.
Our analysis of Budget 2013
Adam Corlett and Tom Frostick give CentreForum’s take on headline measures announced in Budget 2013.
Positive
Ending stamp duty on shares in growth markets
In our recent report ‘The path to IPO: funding SME jobs and growth’ we set out a range of measures for increasing equity investment in SMEs. We were therefore extremely pleased to see the adoption of our proposal to end stamp duty on shares in growth markets. Rolling back Britain’s very own financial transaction tax will boost liquidity and lower the cost of borrowing for high growth innovators. This is in addition to the planned consultation on allowing such shares to play a role in ISAs.
Reforming social care
The government’s decision to implement the Dilnot Commission proposals on the reform of social care is to be welcomed. A cap on lifetime social care costs of £72,000 may be higher than Dilnot envisaged, but the extension of the means-tested threshold for people in residential care is also higher at £118,000 (note that this figure is slightly lower than the £123,000 announced a few weeks ago). A small change in inheritance tax is a fair contribution to funding the cap, but better still would be to close the capital gains tax loophole we described in ‘Delivering Dilnot: paying for elderly care’.
Increasing the personal tax allowance
The government has brought forward the increase in the personal tax allowance to £10,000. This will now happen in April 2014 rather than end of the parliament as originally intended, and we can expect an increase beyond £10,000 the following year in line with inflation. The focus now is on what should come next. How can the government better target those on low incomes, and how should any further tax cut be funded? We will be exploring these issues in a forthcoming report.
Cutting the “jobs tax”
It is encouraging that the government has recognised the need to look at national insurance as well as the income tax allowance. But it may be that the cost of the new ‘employment allowance’, which will rise to over £1.7 billion by 2017, could have been spent in a simpler, more effective manner. Rather than singling out small businesses, one option would have been simply to increase the wage level at which all employers pay national insurance (which is far below the minimum wage).
Simplifying corporation tax
Regardless of the level at which it is set, confirmation that the main rate of corporation tax will be merged with the small profits rate is welcome. It joins a long list of tax complications that the Chancellor has ended.
Encouraging greater employee ownership
CentreForum has long been an advocate of giving employees a stake in the firms they work for, and so we support the government’s plan to introduce capital gains tax relief on sales of businesses to employees. More needs to be done to raise awareness of employee ownership, not least the positive impact it can have on productivity.
Ensuring monetary policy helps growth
The change in the monetary policy remit is perhaps less ambitious, or at least more underplayed, than expected. But any forward guidance that lowers the risk of investing in the UK will of course be welcome. This, and bolder alternatives, will be presented in a forthcoming CentreForum report.
Less positive
The distributional impact of Budget measures
Apart from the headline policies and projections, it is worth looking at the distributional analysis which is now released alongside the Budget. But the cumulative total of government tax and benefit changes remains – aside from the top ten per cent – distinctly regressive.
Capping welfare spending
One of the biggest surprises in the Budget is the plan to bring in a cap on “a significant proportion” of Annually Managed Expenditure (AME), which includes social security, debt interest and other volatile spending. Whatever the details, this proposal demands serious scrutiny. At present, it seems designed to meet political rather than policy needs. It would be difficult to ensure the cap will not interfere with the “automatic stabilisers” that meet the increased need for social security when the economy slumps. For example, will any increase in the UK’s debt interest bill force premature cuts on to welfare spending?
Demand side housing policy
There is an overwhelming need to see more homes built, both as a short term economic boost and in the long term. But it is difficult to see how today’s demand side measures under the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme will help. These measures could actually increase the cost of housing and may also mean that any significant fall in house prices results in big losses for the taxpayer. Far better would have been a rejuvenated effort to introduce community land auctions – which we proposed in 2007 and which were contained in Budgets 2011 and 2012 – or a scheme to give housing associations the ability to issue government backed bonds for the construction of new homes – which we called for in our submission to the last Autumn Statement.
Insufficient capital investment
The Budget should have been more adventurous in boosting capital investment. Although money will be shifted from other areas to capital spending, the additional £3 billion a year won’t come into play until 2015/16. This is hardly the immediate boost the economy needs, and should be seen in the light of calls for investment of tens of billions. With the government able to borrow at a rate of under two per cent, the Chancellor could have afforded to invest more in the short term growth without compromising his structural deficit target.
Childcare plans
A childcare funding settlement is well overdue and the government should be applauded for taking steps towards reaching one. But the settlement announced this week may not be enough. Childcare support will now come principally in the form of a free allowance for three and four year olds, plus some two year olds; a voucher scheme exclusively for better off, in-work parents; and the childcare element of universal credit. With considerable complexity within each of these, and many falling through the gaps, it would be tempting to bet that this settlement (alongside the government’s changes to child benefit) is not one we can expect to last.
The absence of national insurance reform
Broad national insurance reform was again notable by its absence. Two years ago, the Chancellor said it was time “we take this historic step to simplify our tax system and make it fit for the modern age” and announced a consultation on merging the operation of national insurance and income tax. While merging only their operation is itself less ambitious than some would like, we have yet to see this consultation.
Something-for-something on single tier pension reform
The introduction of the single tier pension is very welcome but makes more pressing the need to tackle the question of national insurance on self employment income. The self employed already pay considerably less national insurance than their different benefit entitlements would suggest. As one of the big winners in the pension reform, this gap is to grow larger still, giving employees a raw deal and passing over an opportunity to raise money in an equitable manner.
The coalition government has made the pursuit of greater social mobility the “principal goal” of its social policy. A set of short term indicators of progress has been established. A new, independent statutory commission has been created, under the chairmanship of Alan Milburn, to evaluate both child poverty and social mobility. Leading the charge, Nick Clegg heads a new cabinet committee devoted to tackling barriers to a more mobile society.
Increasing rates of social mobility between generations – loosening the ties between birth circumstances and life chances – is of course a cross party ambition. But Clegg has made it his own, and tied social mobility to an explicitly liberal idea of social justice.
The strong attacks on the social mobility agenda by the RSA’s Matthew Taylor and Patricia Kaszynska therefore warrant a response.
Let’s start with the problem. Rates of intergenerational social mobility are low by international standards, as previous work by the government’s ‘Social Mobility Strategy’ demonstrates. If you are born into a household in the top quarter of the income distribution, you are more than three times as likely to end up in the top quarter as an adult than someone born into the bottom quarter.
Of course, genetics matter. But it is unlikely that genes have more influence in the UK and US than in other nations with higher levels of mobility. A wide range of transmission mechanisms – from parenting to school choice to economics – ensure that advantages and disadvantages are passed on, parent to child.
There are clearly limits to how far public policy can or should act to alter these patterns. But it is equally clear that we are very far from those limits. The UK is almost unique in having a school system that actually results in wider gaps in attainment at the end than at the beginning. (We share that dubious honour with the US.) Bad parenting is not fixed: a range of interventions have been shown to improve the quality of parenting. And early years provision can help to offset the disadvantages of birth. Universities that take into account social and education background in admissions find that they end up with smarter students.
Taylor and Kaszynska’s view is that “there is something unhealthy about the prominent consensus on social mobility in current political discourse in the UK.” One criticism they make is that the current government’s measures to promote social mobility are too modest. Which is fair enough, but since they mainly seem to be arguing against promoting social mobility, I think this criticism can be left to one side.
The “unhealthiness” of social mobility as a policy or political goal seems, in their analysis, to consist of four main elements:
1) The idea of meritocracy is used to legitimize – rather than challenge – existing inequalities
2) Social mobility is positioned as an alternative to the greater redistribution needed to equalize incomes
3) Removing talented individuals from poor communities weakens those communities
4) Social mobility rests on an “individualistic” notion of the self that risks undermining support for collective action
Let’s take each in turn.
1) The idea of meritocracy is used to legitimize – rather than challenge – existing inequalities
Taylor and Kaszynska usefully remind us that Michael Young’s ‘meritocracy’ was a dystopia in which inequalities are justified on the grounds of merit. They (correctly) summarise Young’s fears:
Meritocratically ‘selected’ rulers don’t owe anything to anybody; with no sense of debt, they feel no obligation to represent the interests of those lower down. The meritocratic Leviathan does not identify with its subjects. The verdict is passed: the lowly members of the underclass have only themselves to blame for not being talented and diligent enough to succeed.
[T]his form of meritocracy…provides cover for the existing elite who are able to conflate the society they advocate (in which the best get to the top) with the one we have (where most at the top, and their offspring, are there as much because of privilege as merit).
There is indeed a danger that a self-satisfied elite will preside over an unequal society, complacently blaming the poor for their plight and congratulating themselves on their innate talent.
But this is not what is happening. Nick Clegg in particular has constantly lambasted the low levels of mobility in the UK, describing it variously as a “national scandal” and a “moral crime”. He has attacked what he described as an “educational apartheid” between private and state schools. And he has assaulted the distribution of internships on the middle class grapevine. And while there are deep differences of approach, Michael Gove and Ed Miliband have voiced similar thoughts.
Clegg has also ensured that for the first time ever, the government will be held to account for the attainment gap between state and private schools. He has rewritten the advice to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) to push elite universities harder to open their doors, and ensured the appointment of a strong pro-mobility OFFA director, Les Ebdon.
To say that in these have been controversial would be an understatement. Clegg has been accused of being a “communist” by the head of Magdalen College School; of being a hypocrite by the press for addressing the sore subject of internships; of engaging in “class war” through OFFA; and by insisting on Milburn as chair of the new commission, he has infuriated right wing Tories and papers.
This is not to claim that Clegg is some kind of hero. It is to show that even the fairly modest moves he has made in government – more, it should be said, that Labour ever did on most of these fronts – have exacted a political price. Of course those with a vested interest in the status quo don’t like it. But it is false to claim, as Taylor and Kaszynska do, that the politicians leading the charge on social mobility are using it as a figleaf to maintain the status quo. The opposite is the case.
2) Social mobility is positioned as an alternative to the greater redistribution needed to equalize incomes
It is true that Clegg and co reject a “narrow egalitarianism” that sees fairness as lying in a lower Gini coefficient alongside low levels of mobility. The coalition has consistently attacked Labour for an approach to fairness that relied on redistribution, often via tax credits, rather than an approach based on life chances.
The first point to make is that there is neither an automatic link nor a necessary antagonism between income equality and intergenerational mobility.
If we truly want meritocracy the best route is greater equality as this reduces the gaps between the rungs of the ladder going up and makes it less terrifying for some people to come down (necessary to achieve greater relative social mobility).
This makes intuitive sense. The trouble is, it’s not true. As my colleague at Brookings Scott Winship shows the link between income inequality and mobility is simply unproven. Nations with similar levels of income inequality have very different rates of mobility: consider Australia and Canada alongside the UK and US.
This is not just a theoretical point. Especially when money is tight, governments will face hard choices between raising the incomes of poorer families and investing in services that will reduce their children’s chances of being poor. Instead of investing in early years education for 2-4 year olds, the government could have put the money into tax credits, lowering income inequality and child poverty. But there is no evidence that this would have done very much to improve the life chances of the children, and quite a bit of evidence that early years education does.
This, then, is an honest difference of opinion about the relative importance of cross-sectional income inequality and cross-generational opportunity inequality. If Taylor and Kaszynska had £3 billion to spend, they’d presumably put it into the pockets of lower income households. I’d put it into early years, the pupil premium or university scholarships.
3) Removing talented individuals from poor communities weakens those communities
Taylor and Kaszynska are really worried about the fact that greater social mobility will take talented people out of disadvantaged communities. They mention this danger repeatedly:
For advocates of social mobility, people being able to move up the social ladder and, if they so choose, to “leave their communities” behind is precisely the point. Here, then, is a sharp conflict between a communitarian world view and a liberal one.
The implication of the Taylor and Kaszynska communitarian approach is that talented people should be encouraged to remain in their communities, rather than, say, taking up a scholarship to go to a good university and on to a good job somewhere else, or following a successful career to another city or borough. So, Milburn should have stayed in Stokesley, rather than getting above his station and coming to London; John Prescott in Prestatyn; Hazel Blears in Salford; Alan Sugar in Hackney, and so on.
It is almost certain that if these talented people had “stayed put”, their home communities would have been better for it. But is that really what we should be advocating? Do we think community trumps the individual in such a strong way? (I don’t. That’s why I don’t live in Peterborough.)
The Taylor/Kaszynska version of communitarianism – that says poor talented people should stay put for the sake of their communities – is in fact deeply conservative and wildly anti-egalitarian. It would worsen the social divides that exist in our society. If I understand the point correctly, people like Milburn and Blears are supposed to stay put, while those born to affluent professional families in London and expensively educated, are “unencumbered” and therefore free to take the jobs that the upwardly mobile northerners would otherwise have come and stolen off them. Surely you don’t mean that? But if not, what do you mean?
Nor do I think it’s true that people who move on and up in the world feel their backgrounds to be have been “unworthy”. Most seem to me to have pride in their roots, not “disdain” for them.
4) Social mobility rests on an “individualistic” notion of the self that risks undermining support for collective action
A related concern, especially of Kaszynska, is that social mobility, by promoting an individualistic model of success, will undermine support for collective action:
While there is a sense that this line of thought has become ideologically appropriated to legitimise the principles of free markets and the trickle-down effect, the allure of the view comes from the fact that, deep inside, we fall for the Romantic conception of Prometheus “unbound” – we want to think of ourselves as sovereign individuals.
At some level, this is again simply a difference of world view. Liberals tend to think that individual sovereignty is the main achievement of the enlightenment: that we can each chart our own course rather than having it charted for us by priests, peers or presidents.
This is not the place to re-run the old liberal v communitarian arguments. So just three quick points…
First, social mobility does indeed rest on and reinforce individual agency, often at the expense of institutional and community stability – and so in the end a judgement has to be made on which is more important.
Second, there is no linear relationship between a desire for individual agency and support for collective endeavour: after all, the 60s were an era of both greater individualism and consistent support for welfare and employment policies.
Third, the individualist genie is out of the bottle, and politics and policy simply have to adjust to that fact rather than lamenting it.
Richard Reeves is associate director at CentreForum and former director of strategy to the deputy prime minister. You can read the prequel to this article here.
Over at the RSA, Matthew Taylor continues to think out loud about questions of inequality – and in particular the “unthinking” advocacy of social mobility, rather than a simpler call for income redistribution.
Today I will tackle Taylor’s views on income inequality: tomorrow I will defend the promotion of social mobility from the attacks that Taylor has made in tandem with Patricia Kaszynska.
Here is Taylor on income inequality:
[W]e are encouraged to be angry when it is shown that a rich person doesn’t deserve their reward. What much less often gets discussed is whether anyone at all should be paid a salary beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary folk.
I am well paid; probably in the top 1 or 2% of earners…I am not in a position to be pious. Not do I see myself as a class warrior. But I find it hard to understand why anyone thinks they are worth more than, say, £500,000 a year. Even this figure means the person’s remuneration is equivalent to five inner city GPs, twenty class room teachers or thirty care assistants.
That…it still falls to those critical of inflated top wages to prove they are not deserved rather than falling to the rich to show they are worth it…shows how very little assumptions in our country have changed in the last five years.
There are three principal problems with this:
First, the obsession with the rich v super-rich gap misses the point. I have lost count of the number of arguments I have had with rich people about the injustices of inequality – but not over the gap between their own position and that of the less fortunate 99%. No, what makes them really angry is the gap between themselves and those making more money than them within the top 1%. So Taylor is, in fact, a class warrior. He just waging war on behalf of the upper-upper middle class against the upper-upper-upper middle class. (I assume upper class is reserved for aristocrats.)
He is right to say that the very top is where the action is, in terms of income gaps. Income inequality within the bottom 99% has been remarkably steady for the last couple of decades. And the gap between the bottom and the middle (ie. the 10th and 50th percentile) has narrowed somewhat. But it is not clear that the real problem in society is the gap between the person on the 99th percentile of the income distribution, and the person on 99.6.
The real problem is not the ‘super-rich’, much as they might excite our envy and annoyance. It is the “super-poor”, the relatively small proportion of families and individuals stuck, year after year, generation after generation, in poverty of all kinds. By constantly acting as if the main income challenge facing us is the 99 v 99.6 gap, Taylor and others distract attention from the deeper, structural inequalities much lower down the scale.
Second, the choice of an acceptable income level is arbitrary. Taylor can’t understand why anyone “thinks they are worth” more than £500,000 a year. Why that number? There’s no rationale for it. Some people might say £1 million is the ‘worth it’ benchmark. Others might select £200,000 – which is also “beyond the wildest dreams of most folk”. After all, surely nobody can be “worth’ more than twelve care assistants or two inner city GPs? Somewhere in the wellbeing literature there’s a finding that most people say they’d be happy with an income around twice their current one. So when people start arbitrarily defining an acceptable maximum income, I suspect they take their own income or reasonable income expectation, and double it.
The point is that there is no externally available benchmark for what constitutes a reasonable/fair/just/acceptable income. This problem bedevils all attempts to execute anything as clumsy as a maximum wage.
Third, the demand for a ‘desert’ test of all incomes above a certain line undermines the notion of a free labour market. Rather than campaigners having to prove that high incomes (presumably those over £500,000) are not deserved, Taylor wants the burden of proof reversed. The recipient should have to show that they are deserved: so, guilty of greed crime unless able to prove themselves innocent.
Leave aside any practical difficulties: I think Taylor is making a moral argument here, rather than a policy proposal. The problem is that “making the rich show they are worth it” is only possible given a number of implausible assumptions. First, that we can agree who “the rich” are. Second, that we can find any reasonable yardstick for “worth” among the wide range of possible options: individual effort, jobs created, taxes paid, contribution to economic growth, innate talent, labour productivity. Third, that we can agree what quantity of whichever good is selected justifies what financial reward. As I say, implausible.
If Taylor is simply saying that lots of very well-paid people are not worth the money, I’m sure he is right. But here’s the thing: lots people who are just well-paid are not worth the money, either. There are academics and journalists and authors and teachers and doctors who are not “worth” their incomes either. Not most, but some. The labour market does not perfectly match income to productivity. But there is no reason to suspect that its imperfections start at £500,000 a year, and no reason to start second-guessing the workings of the market at that arbitrary income point.
None of this is to say that there are grounds for complacency about inequality. Nor to say that there should be anything other than a military determination to extract taxes from everyone, especially those with the means to avoid them.
But a continued obsession with income, and with the gaps in income at the top of the distribution – where most commentators sit – distracts from the inequalities that really count: in wealth, in education, and in opportunity. More on all that tomorrow.
Richard Reeves is associate director at CentreForum and former director of strategy to the deputy prime minister. You can read the sequel to this article here.
Liberal Hero of the Week is chosen by Stephen Tall, Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and Research Associate at CentreForum. The series showcases those who promote any of the four liberal tenets identified in The Orange Book — economic, personal, political and social liberalism — regardless of party affiliation and from beyond Westminster. If they stick up for liberalism in some way then they’re in contention.
Hilary Mantel
Author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies
Reason: for exposing the hypocrisy of tabloid attitudes to the Royal Family
A week ago I read a couple of very good articles in the London Review of Books (LRB).
The first was by David Runciman, Take a bullet for the team, which explores the Profumo Affair and is rich in delicious details I’d never heard of — for example, that in 1945 Profumo became the youngest brigadier in the British army, dislodging Enoch Powell from that position; or that when Mandy Rice-Davies infamously remarked of Lord Astor’s denial he ever had sex with her, ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’, “all the evidence suggests Astor was telling the truth, and Rice-Davies was lying”.
The second was by Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies (the latter of which I’m currently making very slow progress through). As I innocently tweeted:
Hilary Mantel on great form > “We don’t cut off the heads of royal ladies these days, but we do sacrifice them” buff.ly/15mkJRb
— Stephen Tall (@stephentall) February 17, 2013
I hadn’t realised as I was reading Ms Mantel’s attack on the public’s and media’s gawp-and-stare treatment of the Royal Family that I was supposed to be offended on behalf of Kate Middleton (HRH The Duchess of Cambridge). Thankfully, the Daily Mail, that art-exponent of the press’s hypocritical ability simultaneously to laud and leer, was on hand to put me right. Their 23-word portmantaeu headline actually looks like it might have been spewed out by the brilliant spoof Daily Mail-o-matic website:
After crafting that, I’m sure the Mail’s sub-editor called out ‘Bingo!’
However, being on the sharp end of the Mail’s synthetic outrage isn’t (quite) enough to make you a Liberal Hero. What elevates Hilary Mantel’s — and specifically her LRB article — is her subtle appreciation of how trapped the royals are by the trappings of royalty:
I used to think that the interesting issue was whether we should have a monarchy or not. But now I think that question is rather like, should we have pandas or not? Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment. But aren’t they interesting? Aren’t they nice to look at? Some people find them endearing; some pity them for their precarious situation; everybody stares at them, and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it’s still a cage.
And in particular her appeal to all of us — those who write for the newspapers and those who devour them — to allow the Duchess the space to be herself, rather than expecting her to fit the moulded figure we want her to represent:
Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty. It can easily become fatal. We don’t cut off the heads of royal ladies these days, but we do sacrifice them, and we did memorably drive one to destruction a scant generation ago. History makes fools of us, makes puppets of us, often enough. But it doesn’t have to repeat itself. In the current case, much lies within our control. I’m not asking for censorship. I’m not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.
For her humanity, and her request to all of us to observe more of it, Hilary Mantel is this week’s Liberal Hero.
George Galloway
Respect MP for Bradford
Reason: for refusing to debate with an Israeli student… because he was Israeli
I think I will leave it to Mr Galloway to explain in his own words why I’ve nominated him:
Galloway interrupted the third-year philosophy, politics and economics student at Brasenose college when Aslan-Levy used the word “we” in reference to Israel.
“You said ‘we’,” said Galloway. “Are you an Israeli?”
“I am, yes,” Aslan-Levy replied.
“I don’t debate with Israelis. I have been misled, sorry,” Galloway said, standing and putting on his coat, then reiterating as he walked out: “I don’t recognise Israel and I don’t debate with Israelis.”
And here’s Mr Aslan-Levy in his own words, speaking afterwards:
To refuse to talk to someone just because of their nationality is pure racism, and totally unacceptable for a member of parliament.
Quite.
* You can view our list of ‘Liberal Heroes of the Week’ (and occasional ‘Liberal Villains’) here. Nominations are welcome via email or Twitter.
Liberal Hero of the Week #30: Vince Cable. Our Liberal Villains of the Month: 175 MPs
Liberal Hero of the Week is chosen by Stephen Tall, Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and Research Associate at CentreForum. The series showcases those who promote any of the four liberal tenets identified in The Orange Book — economic, personal, political and social liberalism — regardless of party affiliation and from beyond Westminster. If they stick up for liberalism in some way then they’re in contention.
Vince Cable
Lib Dem business secretary
Reason: for promoting bank reform and urging a share giveaway of RBS
The London Evening Standard’s Anthony Hilton sets the scene:
At the end of a thoughtful speech on the future of banking, given in the City [on Wednesday], Business Secretary Vince Cable delivered the throwaway line that, rather than trying to sell its stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds on the stock market, perhaps Government should consider instead simply giving the shares directly to the public.
The proposal is quite straightforward. The taxpayer in the shape of the Government took stakes of 84% of RBS and 43% of Lloyds when it recapitalised them during the depths of the banking crisis. As none of the three main political parties believe the government should actually be trying to run a bank, the question arises: what to do with the shares?
They could of course be sold off, just as the nationalised industries were privatised by the Conservatives in the 1980s. However, few believe the taxpayer/government would re-coup the original money — currently, you and I as taxpayers are sitting on a paper loss of £14.5bn — so the only winners would be those in the City able to bargain a sharp deal from a government desperate to rid itself of its stake. That’s no way to regain trust in the banking system.
The alternative Vince re-visited is a neat one. Give the shares direct to every single household in the UK which applies for an allocation. If 80% of the 40-45 million people in the UK with a National Insurance number applied, each would probably get about £1,000 worth of shares. Set a floor price of, say, 100p a share. Any rise in the share price above 100p will be pocketed by the householder, with the original 100p returned to the Treasury. Individual taxpayers will benefit assuming RBS’s shares perform well; and the government/taxpayers benefits by re-couping the original re-capitalisation costs.
I say ‘re-visited’ by the way because the proposal has been put forward before. It was originally devised by Portman Capital and put forward by Lib Dem MP for Bristol West Stephen Williams in this CentreForum pamphlet — Getting your share of the banks: giving the banks back to the People — almost two years ago. It’s terrific to hear the idea is finding favour at the highest echelons of government.
175 MPs
127 Conservative MPs, 22 Labour MPs and 4 Lib Dem MPs
Reason: for voting against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
It’s two months since I saluted David Cameron as a Liberal Hero for bravely speaking in favour of equal marriage in spite of the frenzied opposition of half his party. This week’s historic vote is a cause for celebration, paving the way for greater equality in the years to come, allowing individuals to express their love as they choose not as the state defines, and extending the liberty to religious organisations to recognise relationships as they see fit.
But the debate was also a reminder that there are significant numbers — in the population at large, as well as represented within parliament — who do not see this as a cause for celebration; who want to shut down the opportunity for those who’re different to they to see their choice of relationship marked; who do not, ultimately, believe in equality of all citizens in the eyes of the state. I don’t doubt their sincerity. But they are without doubt Liberal Villains for seeking to impose their own belief system on others.
* You can view our list of ‘Liberal Heroes of the Week’ (and occasional ‘Liberal Villains’) here. Nominations are welcome via email or Twitter.
