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Will Hutton: NuLab or closet Orange Booker?
Excerpt: Nearly ten years ago, as the last dry grey ash dangled precariously from the fag-end of the Major government, I found myself perched on an uncomfortable wooden chair in the Deansgate branch of Waterstones. I had remained in central Manchester after work, accompanied by my then girlfriend (now wife) to attend a speech and book signing by Will Hutton, there to promote The State to Come, the slim accompanying volume to his earlier wannabe New Labour manifesto, The State We're In.
Nearly ten years ago, as the last dry grey ash dangled precariously from the fag-end of the Major government, I found myself perched on an uncomfortable wooden chair in the Deansgate branch of Waterstones. I had remained in central Manchester after work, accompanied by my then girlfriend (now wife) to attend a speech and book signing by Will Hutton, there to promote The State to Come, the slim accompanying volume to his earlier wannabe New Labour manifesto, The State We're In.
A decade ago my unaligned self was enthused by the sense I thought Hutton was talking. Like many others in the audience, I was heartily sick of the Tories and someone, anyone, had to better than that shower. Clutching my signed copy, I headed off nervously wondering if, finally, the Tory dragon would be put to the sword come the election in that May. I poored over both Hutton's works, and his description of the Conservative Party is a classic that has long remained with me:
The Conservative Party is the bedrock of English life and its objective is widely understood as finding Middle England's centre of gravity and ensuring that no other party endangers Middle England's pleasures and priveleges. At least part of the historic point of Conservatism is to occupy office to prevent others from making changes. It is an essentially negative project.
Fast forward to last Sunday, and Hutton is now arguing that whilst Blair is dead, Blairism [sic] must not die with him. So far, so Observer, you might say to yourself. Yet - ten years down the line and with at least some political auto-didactism behind me, much of what Hutton actually writes does not square with the authoritarian, centralising, "my way is best" government of Blair and Brown that we see in action every day around us.
To me, it looks much more like Hutton is arguing for the sort of Liberal approach put forward in The Orange Book.
After Thatcherism had faded, there needed to be an approach that engaged the elctorate, argues Hutton:
To win would mean finding a practical left-of-centre philosophy with voter appeal that could work in our non-statist, individualist times where there is still, none the less, an appetite for public purpose and social justice.The quest was on. My book, The State We're In, a surprise bestseller given its subject matter, was part of the search. A consensus was emerging; the left had to find ways of embedding left-of-centre values and processes in the fabric of society rather than impose them from on top via nationalisation, state direction and planning.
This, to me, is the very heart of what Liberalism is all about - the extension of Liberty and Social Justice without resort to centralised direction. Then look at this point about provision:
Foundation hospitals, trust schools, city academies and greater financial independence for universities were all part of the Blairite programme to build a more plural society with social democratic values embodied nearer the people. The public sector would achieve its ends not by being a monolithic provider and deliverer. Instead, with multiple providers, sometimes voluntary or private, it would become more responsive, faster to adapt and offer more choice to citizens.
and compare it to the Sandalistas' bete noire David Laws' views in the OB:
The Tories' commitment to economic liberalism, but not to social liberalism, manifests itself in a policy of 'opt out' which will help the upper income groups to escape poor quality NHS provision, but without improving services for everyone else. The Labour commitment to 'social justice', without economic liberalism, leaves us reliant only on a second rate, centralised, state-monopoly service - customer-unfriendly, unresponsive and underfunded. The challenge for Liberal Democrats is to show how choice, competition and consumer power can deliver a better deal for all our citizens.
Hutton does get to the nub of New Labour's problems, though:
Brown worried that all this autonomy would lead to loss of Treasury control ... Hence his objections and sometime obstructions. Blair, meanwhile, began to sound as though all that mattered was the means - breaking up monolithic state delivery, creating choice, bringing in the private sector and bashing trade unions - as if he was indifferent to public value and social justice.
So there you have it: Brown is a control freak, and Blair has ceased to be agnotic about the best means of delivery, pursuing his agenda with a fervour and in the face of the best public interest.
Given this recognition, why does Hutton not draw the obvious (to me) conclusion - that he, too, has made the journey down the road to Liberalism?
Let me give him a suggestion for a new work:
The Orange State to Come
Come on in, Will, the water's lovely once you're over the initial shock.
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What absolute crap,don't give up your day job.
Mr Tabman. Being a 'sandalista' (in my soul if not in my dress sense) I am yet to be convinced that '...choice, competition and consumer power...' can be harnessed for the good of all. Private enterprise, as Adam Smith himself pointed out, does not share the goals of society. It seems that the idea seems to be a triumph of hope over reality. Private business has been invited in to every aspect of public society at an unprecedented level for the last quarter of a century.
It seems to me that this is identification of the wrong problem. Hutton's radar is far more on target regarding centralisation. Taxation and democratic control have been steadily ripped from local areas towards the centre, both by the Tories and Labour. This has happened at the same time as private enterprise being invited to take part in the process of providing puclic services.
Before looking at bringing in companies we should be looking at how we really can strengthen local democracy back to its post-war levels and beyond and make sure that local democratic structures have access to real money to provide local public services that meet the needs of all people in the community.
Aha - Mr Lloyd; I laid out my (millenium) elephant trap, and you fell straight in :o)
You automatically equate choice, competition and consumer power with private provision, when this is not automatically the case. Nor does Laws' statement actually say this; you have chosen to put that gloss on it.
I think we are on the same page. Choice, competition and consumer power can be exercised as easily through the ballot box is it can in the supermarket (assuming the elctoral system permit ist).
I had a strange feeling that you would say that Mr Tabman. I fear though that Mr Laws would not. If Mr Laws thinks that subsidiarity, local democracy and funding through local taxation of strong localised public services is the way forward, then why doesn't he say so?
I am not a consumer, I am a free man ;-)
Paul, choice and markets most certainly do not equal privatisation and business involvement. That they normally do is lack of Govt initiative but, well, what do we expect?
A market is a system of distribution and exchange. Capitalism is a system of ownership, the two are neither mutually reliant nor synonyms. Local competition can, and should, be a good thing. Although I'm still not at all sold on it for schools, I am for hospitals and the NHS generally, the state should act as an insurer that provides incentives, the rest leave to the initiative of the providers.
Market Socialism, it's the future for the party. And it's directly from the tradition of JS Mill...
I'll follow Paul's "gloss", and defend it as compatible with liberal and Lib Dem goals.
Private companies are not bad. The trick in operating a market is to regulate it such that desirable social goals pop out of the other end. Ask the "could-we-be-anymore-Social-Democratic?" Swedes about their (nationally available) school vouchers that can be used to at "public" and "private" schools. The schools are all tax financed, so why should we care which organisation runs them when we can prescribe the rules that they should follow?
That's not to say that private companies are better than public bureaucracies, it's just a position that doesn't seek to privelege one above the other if there is no need to.
Private != bad, public != good and vice versa.
Liberalism is largely about choice and freedom.
The NHS and the comprehensive education have shown that monolithic state provision doesn't work, but that doesn't prove that a competative state funded system won't.
When it comes to state funding, I'd prefer to give the individual maximum choice, so school vouchers which can be used at any school meeting the minimum standards and some sort of individual health care fund backed by insurance (for those major events).
These should enable individual choice and competition for services but with state funding to ensure all have access.
I disagree that state socialism is /the/ way to go, but if companies wish to operate like that there should be no impediment to it, its about freedom ;)
I'm a free man and a cosumer ;) (I'm free to consume and to produce)
Some interesting thoughts here. One aspect of subsidiarity or regionalism that has always interested me is that it means that the concept of 'choice' is no longer just about private vs. public, but about the geographic choices that people make about where they live and the local political choices they make once they get there.
We live in one of the most centralised states in the world, with the result that whatever is decided at Westminster to say, health and education, is applied everywhere and the only elections perceived as really worth participating in are General Elections. It was not always so, and the demise of local government and the once proudly independent city councils in the large cities of the UK is a project that both Labour and the Tories have connived at.
Whether public or private is a better solution to dealing with various social issues is not an issue that I'm especially dogmatic about, since the answer is probably a mix of the two. From my viewpoint, the question is who, how and where these decisions are taken, and the answer ought to be at a level most responsive the needs of the communities that these facilities are serving.
Most of the failures of both public and private schemes initiated by governments are not due to their being inherently 'public' or 'private' but because they have been inappropriate to solving the social problem as it exists on the ground - think sink public housing estates of the 60's or privatised mental health care according to your preference.
These public/private solutions have been inappropriate largely because they are the product of London based civil servants and ministers taking broad brush decisions. Instead, as many decisions as possible need to be devolved to lowest possible level - and this means including the powers necessary to raise funds, or those authorities will act irresponsibly. Bring back Birmingham and Manchester city councils and the spirit of 'Radical Joe' Chamberlain!
The last comment makes a great deal of sense; whether the supplier of a given service is private or state owned is largely irrelevant. What matters is the distance, both literally (kilometres) and symbolically (layers of hierarchy), from the problem to the solution. Local Answers for Local People...
I don't entirely agree Bernie. Although I agree with the sentiment that in most cases that services run and controlled nearer the places they are needed and used tend to be more responsive etc. there are other aspects to private company involvement that do alter aspects of service delivery - namely profit motive.
Free marketeers like to pretend that profit is rational in that it sifts out what services are needed and which are not. But this is not actually the case. Many of the largest profits are in add on services, and many of the smallest are in those that are core or essential. Indeed in education and health, many of the services would not exist if they were run privately. What often happens then is that rump public bodies, underfunded and overwhelmed get left picking up the expensive tabs on those kind of services, whilst their colleagues who have been privatised spend a great deal of time working from home.
There is another aspect that ties in with James' point and that is that using private companies for service delivery is just as likely to see a bureaucracy centred many kilometres away from the place of delivery. Many of the specialist companies who win contracts to run schools or hospitals in private / public models are national or international companies who have the economic power to leverage such deals. Would it really be a victory for subsidiarity to break free from the shackles of Westminster only to sign over a great deal of control to Paris, New York or Beijing? The independent state school business running its own affairs and business for the good of the local community that many seem to dream about seems unlikely to happen in this global economy we now live in.
I don't regard the profit motive as necessarily a bad thing.
It provides the incentive to get the job done on time and to an acceptable standard to the potential customer. Look at the massive expansion in telecommunications after British Telecom was seperated from the Post Office and more recently the plethora of mobile phone companies. No one can seriously argue that telcomunications would be better off run as a state monopoly. But it can't be denied though that it does not provide so called 'public' goods such as schools and hospitals very widely or very efficiently, and that it is probably inapplicable to natural monopolies such as water or gas supply.
I would argue that these ought either to be openly in public ownership, or heavily regulated - and that is essentially the present status quo.
For everything outside of public goods, it does seem to be that the regulated market does come up with better solutions than the state. The wrangle is really over the extent of that regulation, and this where I believe that local government is often in a better place to make such decisions. For example, more latitiude should be allowed in deciding planning regulations or council and business tax rates.
In addition to increased powers in varying the regulation of markets, I would also like to see many of the Westminster state monopolies like education and health 'broken up' and devolved to city councils, elected mayors and large county councils. But I certainly don't support any more regional assemblies; we must make existing tiers of government work more effectively rather than gumming up the process of decision making with yet more MPs, MEPs, Assembly Members and Councillors all trying to do each other's jobs and in practice achieving very little.
Finally there is the issue of global market forces. In my view, a much abused concept used by environmentalists and lefties to frighten us into rash policies, the government when it wants to avoid responsibility for hard decisions and big business when it wants to pay less and charge more. There is nothing new about 'globalisation'.
Look at the Labour government's failed attempts to build 'socialism in one country' in the 1960s and 70s undone by the 'Gnomes of Zurich' - according to Harold Wilson.
What always seems to be underestimated though is the versatility of local communities to play to their strengths in the face if adversity when granted the powers to do so. It's extraordinary how people still see 'globalisation' as a zero sum game where there are only a finite number of jobs in the world which countries are desperately chasing around after. Markets are dynamic, they destroy and build. The best response is be able to react to those changes and drive the best bargain you can. I suspect that national governments are actually a poor mechanism in this respect, because they are too slow to act and don't account of local factors which may considerably alter their comparative advantage. There are many half truths peddled about this issue - especially the idea that companies will just 'immediately' relocate the places offering the lowest wages. This demonstrably false. For example, Germany remains the largest world exporter of manufactured products by a clear margin. This can only mean that despite high wage costs, German goods are still more competitive than the Chinese, Czech or Indian goods on the market. Cast iron proof that wages are not the only factor in retaining jobs. The market is a far more complex mechanism than either it's most ardent disciples or detractors claim it to be.
I believe that local communities actually have less to fear from global market forces and market imperfections if they are genuinely allowed to make their own decisions and formulate varied responses to whatever challenge comes their way.
James wrote
From my viewpoint, the question is who, how and where these decisions are taken, and the answer ought to be at a level most responsive the needs of the communities that these facilities are serving.
I agree with this, but feel that I may draw different conclusions to James. It is not clear to me that local democratic control is terribly empowering or conducive to successful service provision. There was an interesting programme on Radio 4 last night, The Idea of a University. They had an interview with a Labour party player who had worked with/for Anthony Crosland when he setup the locally controlled polytechnics, and then went on to be involved in the running of Leeds poly. He said he was delighted to be released from the deadening hand of local government so that his institution could grow and flourish in previous impossible ways.
My preferred prescription, then, could be seen as ultimately centralist and ultimately decentralist. The rules and regulations, to the extent that they have (re)distributive consequences, should be made at the very centre, while the operational decisions probably should not be encumbered by meddling politicians - local or otherwise. "The level most responsive" is very often that of individual consumer choice, not collective/democratic action.
Paul Lloyd wrote:
Indeed in education and health, many of the services would not exist if they were run privately.
To my mind, this misses something important. Within a (quasi-)market, it is possible to distinguish 'funding', 'regulation', and 'provision'. In the valid areas of public policy, so long as the state controls the first two, I am very comfortable with just about anybody acting as provider. Thus, the state can choose almost any services and have them 'run privately'.
I don't understand your point Tim to be quite honest. Surely the point of the original article and those who are arguing in favour of this kind of thinking are talking about the 'funding' and 'regulation' - particularly the funding. The idea that is surely being discussed is the freeing up of funds from the 'constriction of the state', allowing say a school to operate independently in a market.
As for providers. Surely a school, for example, are both a 'provider' and a 'customer'. Many of the services provided to schools (school dinners, IT, music, etc etc) have already been privatised or semi-privatised, some haven't. Those that haven't are usually provided by the LEA, and as such are subject to different pressures.
Should a school as a provider and a customer be a fundholder under your model? I am confused.