Then there are the more personal lines of attack, 'It's democracy, get over it,' 'You only see it like that because you read the insert name of paper,' or 'You voted that way because you're uneducated and don't understand the consequences.' If you mostly read one type of propaganda you can feel quite optimistic. It's all about positioning ourselves globally so we can prosper by capitalising on the AI and robotics revolution. New wealth and jobs will filter into the economy and we are on the brink of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Conversely, you can begin drawing up plans for emigration (or a move to Scotland) if you read other sources. It's the end of the welfare state as we've known it, the economy is doomed, free movement and necessary migration have been halted and the government is secretive and out of control.
What we seem to have lost is a sense that we are all in this together. The country has taken an enormous risk at a time when, globally, the known order of things is shifting in unpredictable ways. We are all responsible for the future we create. I find myself searching rather forlornly for groups, organisations, communities that are engaging in informed ways with the reality of the changes that lie ahead. We seem to have revised many of the previously defining categories that provided our landscape. In political terms 'conservative', 'liberal' and 'labour' appear to have taken on new meanings. It appears that to align yourself with current Conservatism is to be in favour of radical change and to be very right-wing. The liberal project appears to be floundering, partly as a result of the tensions that its own generosity to diversity breeds; there is a new sense that people don't trust Liberals. The Labour movement appears no longer to represent the interests and concerns of the working class and perhaps we are not even sure we can define groups by the kinds of work they have (or don't have) any more. Nationalism and regionalism are increasingly seen as ways out of intractable difficulties over the distribution of resources and power. Other than the fact we all inhabit the same little archipelago of islands, there appear to be few shared values that hold us together and our political landscape is undergoing some kind of revolution.
Without intending to be (she thought she was making a philosophical point), Margaret Thatcher was prophetic when she said 'There is no such thing as society.' What is 'society' the new British way? Some fundamental issues need addressing and a key question to ask is,'What does it mean to be human today on these islands?' It's as fundamental as that. What basic needs do we share? How can we meet them? What does almost every person value?
When we address our future in these terms, we come up with things like
- a symbiotic relationship with the environment that supports our existence
- food, warmth and a roof over our heads in a variable climate
- provision of basic care and treatment in sickness and around giving birth and dying
- a means of earning
- education in the skills that are needed in our society and an appreciation of our common roots
- dignity and respect whatever our origins
- freedom of speech and action tempered by the protection of laws that define and uphold limits for the good of the many
- compassion - both directed toward ourselves, especially when vulnerable and the capacity not to be so self-obsessed that we cannot show care for others
- space for creativity, invention, imagination, uniqueness
- means of engaging in travel and trade
This picture does not accurately reflect my experience of British priorities today. We have a society where increasing numbers of people are excluded from even these basics. Different groups suffer in different ways - some lack food and a home, others lack care in their dying days, others experience their education as anything but conducive to creativity, others have no access to work and others lack basic respect due to difference or characteristics they can do nothing about. This happens in all societies. But today's levels of inequality in Britain are beginning to destroy us. We seem to have set our face to ensure, or perhaps turn a blind eye to, increasingly uneven levels of inclusion and provision. We have collectively said, 'That's OK.' We share no humanity that causes us to ask, 'What risks are acceptable to take with other people's lives and work?' 'Are there levels of cost-at-others'-expense to which we will not stoop?' We have moved to a place where our values are shaped by the overall wealth the country can generate and the conditions for this are set by those who will profit the most at the expense of those who will not profit at all.
There is no nice way to say this, Britain has become a place where greed, actual and aspirational, rampages unchecked while quality of life for many goes mostly unattended to. When teachers tell stories of washing clothes and feeding pupils before they can teach, someone will say, 'Well good for them, teachers have always done this.' When carers say, 'We need more resources,' they are told, 'Soon we'll have robots to do most of your work.' I'll be honest. I don't see leaving the EU as a sensible way to create a better future for Britain. However, there are many issues about our commonality (or lack of it) that urgently supersede the debate about whether we should have done it and the means by which it came about. The fact that we did it is one symptom among others of the very concerning malaise that pervades British life today.
If it is true that the world is entering a Fourth Industrial Revolution at a time of ecological crisis for the planet, Britain needs urgently to make changes in its habitual ways of categorising, thinking and participating. A new humane politics is needed that is a far cry from the political developments we see currently in the Johnson government or among opposition parties.
Last autumn, the Prime (First) Ministers of Iceland, New Zealand and Scotland put forward a proposal for a new way of looking at the performance of governments here. In their Well Being Agenda measurements of GDP take second place to, or at least are considered alongside, indicators of sustainability and equity. GDP is put alongside its cost to the environment and its effect in creating inequality. Factors that take into account well-being and happiness for the whole population have as much weight as the raw creation of financial wealth. The argument is not that GDP does not matter, but that its importance must be balanced by other indicators when it comes to assessing the overall success of a government or the health of a country. This is not dissimilar to the kinds of priority found in the Scandinavian countries and Finland. More detail can be read about this challenge to conventional economics on the Wellbeing Economy website and in Professor Alister McGregor's recent book Well Being, Resilience and Sustainability: A New trinity of Governance.
I am struck by a very sharp contrast between the contribution women make to the governments employing this new approach and the overwhelmingly male composition of the British government and parliament. The recent furore over the hiring of a government minister with statistically-driven views on eugenics highlighted the extent to which government policy is now formed by an elite, largely male group who act on highly rational approaches to statistically based data without drilling down into things like motivation, empirical evidence of consequence or emotional engagement. Their thinking, research and prediction-power is predicated on a startlingly truncated and one sided understanding of life embracing limited fields of experience. In short, our political life manifests a desperate loss of balance - female/male, right brain/left brain, affective/intellectual, symbiotic/autonomous - in terms of ideology, education and experience.
One of the new political groupings that ought to be emerging in this climate is surely a constituency around sharing and balance, with values drawn from recognition of the emotional bonds that tie us to our planet and bring people together. The dangerous loss of such perspective in Westminster politics accounts for many of the imbalances we see in the way politicians and the media conduct themselves and for many of the features of society that have caused the disillusionment leading to the Brexit vote. We urgently need a feminising and a greening of our political system. The Women's Movement marches that followed the election of Donald Trump have, as yet, failed to live up to their promise in terms of delivering a realistic challenge to mainstream politics. The ecological movement appears to be having a little more impact. One thing that these groupings have achieved is the bringing to light of alternative ways of assessing data and even deciding what data is relevant. As movements they meet with much opposition by dismissal and ridicule (think of Trump's criticisms of Thunberg) but slowly and surely some inadequacies and blinkered attitudes are starting to be be confronted.
The problem with both the climate crisis and British politics is that we do not have much time. The pace of change is measured in years not decades or centuries. There is little point in putting energy into trying to return to a glorified past (of whatever variety). It's equally pointless to expend disproportionate amounts of effort trying to hold to account those who have shown themselves oblivious to laws, rules and codes of ethics. What Britain needs now is people who will grasp the new ways of trading and generating wealth with a firm and vocal commitment to ensuring they deliver sustainability and rising levels of national and international equality. Or to put it more radically, people who demonstrate a commitment to making sure the sustainability of the planet and decreasing inequality between people shape what it is possible to produce and sell.
Last autumn, the Prime (First) Ministers of Iceland, New Zealand and Scotland put forward a proposal for a new way of looking at the performance of governments here. In their Well Being Agenda measurements of GDP take second place to, or at least are considered alongside, indicators of sustainability and equity. GDP is put alongside its cost to the environment and its effect in creating inequality. Factors that take into account well-being and happiness for the whole population have as much weight as the raw creation of financial wealth. The argument is not that GDP does not matter, but that its importance must be balanced by other indicators when it comes to assessing the overall success of a government or the health of a country. This is not dissimilar to the kinds of priority found in the Scandinavian countries and Finland. More detail can be read about this challenge to conventional economics on the Wellbeing Economy website and in Professor Alister McGregor's recent book Well Being, Resilience and Sustainability: A New trinity of Governance.
I am struck by a very sharp contrast between the contribution women make to the governments employing this new approach and the overwhelmingly male composition of the British government and parliament. The recent furore over the hiring of a government minister with statistically-driven views on eugenics highlighted the extent to which government policy is now formed by an elite, largely male group who act on highly rational approaches to statistically based data without drilling down into things like motivation, empirical evidence of consequence or emotional engagement. Their thinking, research and prediction-power is predicated on a startlingly truncated and one sided understanding of life embracing limited fields of experience. In short, our political life manifests a desperate loss of balance - female/male, right brain/left brain, affective/intellectual, symbiotic/autonomous - in terms of ideology, education and experience.
One of the new political groupings that ought to be emerging in this climate is surely a constituency around sharing and balance, with values drawn from recognition of the emotional bonds that tie us to our planet and bring people together. The dangerous loss of such perspective in Westminster politics accounts for many of the imbalances we see in the way politicians and the media conduct themselves and for many of the features of society that have caused the disillusionment leading to the Brexit vote. We urgently need a feminising and a greening of our political system. The Women's Movement marches that followed the election of Donald Trump have, as yet, failed to live up to their promise in terms of delivering a realistic challenge to mainstream politics. The ecological movement appears to be having a little more impact. One thing that these groupings have achieved is the bringing to light of alternative ways of assessing data and even deciding what data is relevant. As movements they meet with much opposition by dismissal and ridicule (think of Trump's criticisms of Thunberg) but slowly and surely some inadequacies and blinkered attitudes are starting to be be confronted.
The problem with both the climate crisis and British politics is that we do not have much time. The pace of change is measured in years not decades or centuries. There is little point in putting energy into trying to return to a glorified past (of whatever variety). It's equally pointless to expend disproportionate amounts of effort trying to hold to account those who have shown themselves oblivious to laws, rules and codes of ethics. What Britain needs now is people who will grasp the new ways of trading and generating wealth with a firm and vocal commitment to ensuring they deliver sustainability and rising levels of national and international equality. Or to put it more radically, people who demonstrate a commitment to making sure the sustainability of the planet and decreasing inequality between people shape what it is possible to produce and sell.
