This is the final piece in a series of posts on the main Liberal Democrat challenges for 2011. You can find all the posts in the series here.
Having started this series with the economy and then moving on to more internal issue in latter posts, it seems fitting to return to economic issues for the final post in this series.
Getting the substance on economic fairness right is and should continue to be a top priority for the party. In addition, getting the messaging right will help differentiate not only the Liberal Democrat contribution to the coalition from that of the Conservatives but also the overall government’s record from that of past Conservative governments.
Though “fair” is a word that many Lib Dem activists love to hate in party slogans, saying that it isn’t clear or distinct, in fact it regularly comes out in market research as being one of the few concepts that people strongly associate with the Liberal Democrats – and one that voters desire in a party.
For Nick Clegg, “social mobility” has been the phrase of choice in recent months. It certainly is a phrase that many in policy making and government circles use but, rather like “street furniture”, despite being popular in such circles it is almost never used by people outside such circles. That in itself should be a strong warning against using it as a regular public description of what the party is about.
It also has the problem that mobility means not just people moving up, it means people moving down too – not an obviously desirable end to showcase in your main slogan. It also leave unsaid how important the party feels the overall levels of inequality are: is a highly mobile but also highly unequal society an outcome we would be happy with? Is the party of a similar view to that of The Spirit Level?
There is therefore something the party can learn from Paddy Ashdown’s approach to this issue. Like Nick Clegg, he greatly emphasised the importance of children’s early years in shaping their later opportunities. Though in typical Paddy fashion he enthusiastically adopted and then discarded a whole set of phrases, slogans such as “Unlocking Britain’s potential” had some mileage in them and the emphasis on giving people the chance to be who they wanted to be also encompassed people who wanted to be different rather than simply looking at who was moving up or down.
Paddy’s phrases were not doorstep vernacular either but got close to a pithy explanation of how the Liberal Democrats want everyone to have a fair start in life and a chance to achieve based on their own work and ability rather than on their inherited condition. Social mobility is one of the means to that end, but Paddy’s vision was a bigger one for which social mobility in itself was not sufficient.
The challenge for the party in 2011 is deciding what the vision is (and is it just social mobility?) and how to communicate it.
As Jonathan Calder’s critique of Richard Grayson showed, the party is largely locked into referring to thinkers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Add that to the paucity of think tanks producing work that tests and fills out Liberal Democrat approaches and there is a need not only to get the language right but also to encourage a more vibrant culture of policy thinking and debate.
There will be many opportunities to demonstrate economic fairness through policies – choices made in the next budget and decisions made over the banking industry in particular – but the lack of public credit for measures taken so far such as the increase in capital gains tax or the big cuts in pension tax breaks for the very richest are a reminder how politics is not just about substance; it is also about getting the message right.
Talking about “social mobility” on its own is unlikely to achieve that.
Thanks to Alex Wilcock for helping me refresh some of my memories of Paddy Ashdown’s policies and adding to them
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6 Comments
The problem with relying on “Social Mobility” is that it disregards those who,, for a multitude of reasons cannot travel in the positive direction. For example we live in an increasingly knowledge based society. Some are simply not suited to academic education. There is a decline in traditional practical based, non academic industries such as toolmaking / general engineering with jobs “globalising” to areas with cheaper workforces. Many jobs are deskilled, such as mechanics becoming fitters. And there are those who are unable to progress beyond certain levels of work due to the extent of their disabilities.
All of these can be mitigated, but not for all people. Good occupational health can help disabled people access work, but not all. There are well paid rewarding jobs in the trades, but not a great excess, there are successful British engineering companies, but these are increasingly high tech.
This leaves the problem that fairness as currently portrayed by Clegg does not help all. Society should be judged by how it treats those at the lower end of wages, housing etc, not just those with the ability to claw their way upwards.
People also see the difference between talking fair and being fair. Taking 10% of the housing benefit of someone who has done everything possible to identify a job is just not fair….
An interesting article Mark. I agree that overuse of ‘social mobility’ will not play well. It has echoes of the 80s when many sections of society were sacrificed to increase the mobility of others. Empowering people to have the opportunity to improve their lot is certainly an aim that should be pursued but not as the only guiding principle otherwise the ‘winners’ will leave behind the ‘losers’.
Politcos can argue the ins and outs of policy and definitions of ‘fariness’ or ‘progressive’ but to the public perception is reality. The Independents report today is sober reading for Lib Dems who want to convince people of the fairness of colation action…
“The proportion of people who believe the cuts will be felt by the poor more than the wealthy has risen in the past month, to 58 per cent, according to the ComRes/IoS survey. Only a quarter now believe the coalition government ensures the most vulnerable sections of society are protected. ”
… and this is the perception before the VAT rise and public sector pay freezes kick in. Seems to me that it is going to be an extremely hard sell indeed.
Hi Mark,
Your paragraph on Jonathan Calder was exactly why I wrote a recent LDV piece on Fleischacker https://www.libdemvoice.org/redefining-fairness-22275.html
LIberalism does not, and should not, stand still.
Nick is right to elevate social mobility as a cherished aim and if he succeeds in measures beginning with, such as, the pupil premium and reducing tax on the low paid – it will be government truly making a difference for the better – akin to the Pension and the NHS. I haven’t really seen any government tackle this issue in my lifetime.
I think we’re missing the big one though: Intergenerational Fairness. It’s an agenda which we can supplant Cameron’s Big Society and stretch out beyond 2015 and rise above the compromises of the coalition. A more holistic view of peoples lives incorporating social mobility, and not forgetting national debt. It takes the debate aside from the here and now to define longer term objectives to which we must justify current policy. That’s not necessarily easy with Tuition Fees, because our aim is still free education as a harbinger for social mobility but at least we can say that we are in coalition and it remains, I believe, our aim.
http://tiny.cc/intergen
Liberal Democrat challenge for 2011 translated: ‘Watch our policies needlessly hurt the weakest in society and figure out a way to redefine the word “fair” so that it fits whatever we’ve done’.
I’d say the real challenge is in getting as good a deal as you can when it comes to the merger with the Tories- ‘We’ll take the “Conservative” bit from our party’s name and the “party” bit from your party’s name. That’s fair isn’t it, going by your new definition?’
An intersting article but I hope the Party is not of a similar view to The Spirit Level. This is nothing more than an example though of how you can ‘ prove ‘ anything with statistics. See my piece in Liberator
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36175223/spirtlevel