If you want to reform capitalism, it’s best if you know precisely what you’re talking about. Labour needs its own version of my “Philip Blond test”.
One of the hardest things to do imaginatively is to see yourself as others see you. This is for two reasons.
First, we know ourselves much better than those other idiots do. They hardly ever get to see us, while we know our every waking and sleeping thought. Who can know what we’re really like better than ourselves? Only we know how truly deep, kind and brilliant we are, so it follows that other people’s criticisms are based on false perceptions, and so are deluded and mistaken.
The other reason is that it’s actively unpleasant to contemplate how little other people think of us at all.
To make a personal example. I know I am an eminence-increasingly-gris, proffering free and gratis, insightful, witty and rather stylishly written advice on the course of British politics. This is clearly the real me.
If others, fools and ingrates that they are, think I’m an obscure unkempt scruffpot who, though achieving little of note in his own career, presumes to tell people who are successful in theirs what they should do in the form of tedious late night missives littered with painful grammatical and typographical errors – well, that is not only wrong, but downright offensive.
How very dare these imaginary people think such things? How could they even consider them? Why, such a gross error of judgement is inconceivable. It cannot be happening.
I like to manage these moments of existential doubt by applying what I call the “Philip Blond” test. It is a simple, always available test. I simply ask myself whether, to an outside observer, I might appear as ludicrous and nonsensical a political figure as “Red Tory” Philip Blond. All too often, I score quite high. It is my cross to carry. We both have ludicrously oversized bonces, and no discernible dress sense, you see.
Now, you may wonder what on earth this has to do with the travails of politics. “Yes, Hopi” my remarkably compliant internal reader replies. “We know you could do with a better tailor and more regular haircuts, and also a decent editor to stop you launching into pointless rambles into lengthy discursions like this one, but what has any of this got to do with the price of fish?”
Ah-ha. I have you now. It’s this. When it comes to changing capitalism, Politics has a self perception problem too.
Does Capitalism need reform? Why certainly. I think Joanna Voter would agree, too. “It’s a bloody mess. All the wrong people benefit, and bad people sit upon mounds of Gold, while I scape together a living making Craft cards” quoth my fictional everywoman.
A disgrace, we all agree. Now, Joanna, here’s who we’ve got lined up for you in the British All Comers Reform Capitalism sweepstakes: A Former special adviser and PR for a TV company that went bust, a former special adviser and Banker who made his money doing something he never quite explains involving Europe, and a former special adviser and cabinet minister. Place your bets.
What? Not satisfied with their credentials for making your life better? Well, cop a load of this. They don’t come alone. They’ve got friends to help them make your dreams of a better world come true. These intellectual advisers include a chap who doesn’t wear shoes and socks, a university lecturer who says reciprocity a lot, that woman from the telly who shouts at shopkeepers and Kirsty Allsop. Oh, and a enormo-headed fellow in crumpled tweed who talks about the importance of the Medival Tawney, or something. Also, a leader writer for the Times/Guardian/Independent (delete according to Party)
And what do they want to do, these people? Well, It is exceedingly visionary, and incredibly ambitious. So it can only be discussed in the vaguest and most general terms.
Does that worry you? Well here’s a specific idea, though it is not entirely clear what impact it would have, or how it would change anything much.
But don’t you worry about that. We’re experts, and we know it’s all vital, and will really make a difference.
What’s that? Why can’t we do something simple like sort out party funding if we think reforming capitalism is so easy?
What ungrateful swines you imaginary voters are. Don’t you understand that Party financing is a complex and difficult issue fraught with technicalities and insanely complex competing interests, while changing Capitalism requires only a couple of press releases, a press conference, and a pamphlet from a friendly think tank?
You think we haven’t thought this through? You think we’ve just read some polls saying people are unhappy with high pay, or the banks, or the strange emptiness of the financial services sector and cobbled together a few proposals that sound like they might address those concerns without doing too much damage?
We’d never do that. We’re politicians!
Naturally, neither politicians, nor advisers think like this. They are generally far more serious, and passionate and less cynical than I imply. I know this because I spend every waking moment with them, and so I know that the cruel distortions I make above are unfair and wrong.
Still. We might accept that perhaps others do see us like this, or some fraction thereof, and that they might not be utterly deluded in not trusting us entirely with their little all.
So if we want to reform Capitalism for the better, let us prove we know what we are talking about first. More discussion of balance sheets and tax structures. More debate of R&D investment barriers and FDI flows, more precision about reform consequences and risks. More discussion of results, and less of measures. Less celebrity, whether Guru, Businesswoman, or TV presenter. Less sociology. More accountancy.
If I’m right, people don’t need to be convinced that politicians want a better Capitalism. They do need to be convinced we have a good idea about how to achieve it.
But then, with every passing blog post and invite to appear on Radio 4 to pontificate, I increasingly resemble Philip Blond, so please, test my theory out with some real voters before attempting to apply it.
I mean, there’s no real evidence I know what I’m doing.
Tee hee.
Am I alone in thinking the notion that a political party on a smallish island off the coast of the world's tiniest continent might, all by itself, come up with a better form of capitalism is about as daft as that of a CLP coming up with a piece of policy that might usefully be included in a party manifesto? Especially so, some might think, if the party of the first part is likely to be in opposition for at least eight years.
How very odd that the younger Mr Milliband seems to find neither of these notions at all crazy…
What I find even more amazing is that we have a governing party that still appears to think that capitalism works best when markets are free and deregulated despite all the evidence to contrary over recent years. This view appears to be confined to the UK Government and a few US right wing nuts – and has already been rejected by those continental Europeans with a right wing bent and more sucessful economies than our own.
If Ed wants to look he will find that there is a whole current of social democratic economic thought that has plenty of ideas as to how the State should be involved in managing and regulatiing markets, despite what the Tory TINA tendency may say.
While I agree with Hopi that the Left needs a better understanding of accountancy, I would caution against swallowing whole what a lot of accountants say – as most tend either explictly or otherwise to load their own values into their pronouncements. But we do need to understand how the business sector works if we are to push/nudge it in the right directions – and for that a basic understanding of accounting/financial management really is a necessity, togther with an understanding of how business organisations work and function, so the sociology and psychology is also of use.
Less sociology. More accountancy.
That's why I read Richard Murphy's blog.
He seems to understand how capitalism works, what's wrong with it, and how to fix it. And he's working hard at it, writing books which you should have reviewed by now. Mind, he may have given up on Labour and he'll be taking many traditional Labour voters (& leaflet deliverers) like myself with him.
Bring anti capitalism is a bit like being anti modern medicine because your new hip aches a bit . People get it out of proportion and I am not sure that trying to apply the idea of fairness in some global way does any good or makes any sense My beef about poltical opining on the subject of business is that it bears so little resemblance to it . Making mioney is to do with particulars and minute areas of extreme expertise so I quite like this post.Not sure what you have against Phillip Blond especially though
I see Milliband is gearing up to say something about accepting the deficit Hopi but he will maintain this line about borrowing more now. He occupies precisely the same ground as you then and he was the Union left candidate as you said yourself.You are not right of anything that matters, accepting that one and onme makes two does not, a credible government ,make.
It makes you wonder just how left wing the Labour Party is . Lets see if he bites the hadns that fed him. Not a nibble thus far .
Very good, though n.b. this is just one facet of the Philip Blond test, which can also be applied to policies – http://don-paskini.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-big-society-failedand-what-labour.html
My favourite example of voter perceptions vs conventional wisdom was Ashcroft's recent research about the economy. It found that only about half of people knew who Ed Balls was, and a major concern amongst those who had heard of him was that they were worried that he didn't know anything about economics because they remembered him as the education minister. When prompted with the Tory attack line that he was a key adviser to Gordon Brown, floating voters thought that was a point in his favour as it showed that he had experience of economic policy.
I had a question about your proposed solution, though. If someone appears on the telly talking about balance sheets, tax structures, R&D and FDI, I suspect that the majority response will not be "how interesting and credible" but "this is boring, when is the weather on"?
Indeed they will, but I'm nnot convinced boring is bad at the moment. We've all had quite enough excitement.
After watching Odd Ed's re-launch today, I could not help but feel somewhat sorry for myopics like Hopi. Miliband is a weak leader – and a weak man – but his apologists are weaker still.