A column about the importance of ideas in politics ought to start with a quotation from a philosopher: but it is a grey autumn, rain is forecast, and Ed Balls is on the news. This isn't a moment for Hume. We need cheering up.
So let's follow Rodgers and Hammerstein to their musical South Pacific. The sun shines. Waves break on empty beaches. Palm trees rustle. And one character hands out comforting advice. "You've got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you gonna make your dream come true?" she sings.
They should start whistling the tune in Westminster. There's more good sense in the song than a score of thinktank reports. British politics has all but killed itself trying to find out "what works". It has drowned in managerialism and suffocated in analysis. We could do with some South Pacific dreaming.
Watching Balls and Michael Gove battle it out on television today my mind wandered from the facts they threw out to viewers. Twenty per cent of this; a quarter of that; a rise – or was it a fall – in the fifth quintile. Balls in particular was robotically impressive, a man with a mind like an Excel spreadsheet. He knows it all and it amounts to nothing beyond the sterile computations of an Institute for Fiscal Studies assessment.
This is politics by formula: insert X into the equation as the desired numerical outcome and the answer to all the other variables becomes clear. It looks precise, but it is really empty, since all the numbers are baloney. A society reliant on statistical calculation can never be optimistic; all we ever see are the limits and the failures.
Yet this is where much of our politics has ended up. Labour, lacking ideology, surrendered to the cult of measurement. The Conservatives competed in opposition to do the same and at times still are. David Cameron agreed to meet Gordon Brown's arbitrary and theoretical target on child poverty, and even now he is sticking with it. At the final coalition meeting at Chequers before the comprehensive spending review, the Tories decided to bung short-term cash towards the child tax credit even as Liberal Democrats present argued against doing so. The latter wanted an honest reassessment of the sort of society government can create, rather than pretend that something is possible when it isn't.
The coalition understands, hopefully, that it will fail if it continues to sit tests on terms laid out by Labour. Its politics must be recalibrated around a different philosophy. This sounds like – and can be – a way of dodging the consequences of cuts. But there is nothing inalienable about the ideas inherited from Britain's postwar settlement. The welfare state has in some ways led to a better and fairer society but after five decades Britain does not seem notably equal or free or happy. There may be better ways of achieving these ends.
John Maynard Keynes spotted the problem even before it came about. In his new book on the big society, the philosophically inclined Tory MP Jesse Norman quotes an article the economist wrote in 1939: "Why cannot the leaders of the Labour party face the fact that they are not sectaries of an outworn creed, mumbling moss-grown, demi-semi Fabian Marxism, but the heirs of eternal Liberalism?" Heirs, perhaps – but disinherited. There are few liberals in the Labour party these days. The task of thinking liberal thoughts has been left to the coalition.
On Tuesday Nick Clegg will give the Hugo Young Memorial lecture at the Guardian premises, and try to persuade his audience that the government draws its strength from ideology, not opportunism. He will step away from government by measurement and defend the liberal idea of individual human advancement. He has even been reading Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. Hayek next, perhaps.
Much of the left will sneer at this: but if I was inside Labour I would worry that Britain's centre-right parties are making a better job of setting out an optimistic philosophy of government than statist conservatives on the left. They have fallen into a negative sulk: everything, Labour predicts, is about to get worse, which only makes sense as a strategy if you have something better to offer.
Labour doesn't. The party has become uninteresting. The coalition is doing the thinking. Yes, the "big society" is waffly, unmarketable and disliked by many Tories. Norman's book won't persuade sceptics. But it is also a serious attempt to replace two misguided philosophies, one on the left and one on the right. Norman attacks Labour's state centralism. More interestingly, he also questions the liberal market economics which not long ago seemed a prerequisite of Tory thinking. He's trying to offer something original and he is not the only one in his party to do so.
Nick Clegg, meanwhile, has got himself in a nasty mess over fees: he's more than unsettled by it. It's hard for him to make a philosophical case while everyone in the street outside is screaming U-turn. But he's right to try. There's an old joke about a speech by a politician who dreamed dreams. "They said it couldn't be done – and it couldn't. They said it would never happen – and it didn't," he tells his audience. But anyone can be cautious. It's those people brave enough to think new ideas who change the world.
Comments in chronological order (Total 295 comments)
21 November 2010 9:07PM
If a plan to throw a million people out of work for the sake of appeasing their city friends is an "optimistic dream", then I really hope the government don't ever succumb to their nightmares.
21 November 2010 9:10PM
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21 November 2010 9:14PM
That's exactly what scares me. More ideology - haven't we had enough of that already.
21 November 2010 9:16PM
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21 November 2010 9:16PM
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21 November 2010 9:17PM
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21 November 2010 9:17PM
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21 November 2010 9:17PM
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21 November 2010 9:18PM
" It's those people brave enough to think new ideas who change the world."
Well, OK, but nobody in mainstream politics, with a couple of exceptions (see below) seems to have a new idea in their heads. Labour seems to have dropped effortlessly back into automatic opposition - a sort of left-wing Tea Party. Tories seem to have dropped effortlessly back into Thatcherism, with honourable exceptions of Ian Duncan-Smith and Ken Clarke. Lib Dems seem to be struggling to get their policies through the coalition. Perhaps we need a new party?
21 November 2010 9:19PM
Is everything that Julian Glover writes just printed to provoke a reaction on CiF?
One has to wonder.
Throw in blind praise of our leaders. A few lame jabs at Labour. Plug some small-government ideology and a quick jab at the welfare state. Mix, bake for 20 minutes and serve.
As far as I can tell, Julian, the only dreamer here is you - that everything is fine in coalition land and that everything that the coalition does is golden.
I find it odd that the theme of the piece (to me) seems to be who cares about reality looks like, what we need is smiling ideology.
You know, the sort of smiling-ideology that gave us Tony Blair and New Labour.
But it seems that only one ideology will do - market-based big-society volunteerism.
Labour do need to find a voice, but having a big idea and praying that it works is called faith. Having a big idea and testing to see if it works is called science.
And given a choice between a society based upon faith in an ideology and the coalition priesthood and a society based upon data (whether that leads us left or rightward), I'd pick a society based on data.
21 November 2010 9:20PM
I'm thinking the author is optimistic for his own kind. But what of the rest of us?
21 November 2010 9:21PM
Yes, please.
21 November 2010 9:22PM
Lord Young seems pretty optimistic at present - surely the author isn't suggesting Labour follows that line. Or is he...
21 November 2010 9:22PM
How ridiculous of Glover to think that the Labour party has to have a whole new philosophy set out within 2 months of election of a new leader. I think the optimism of the government, in as far as it exists, is the optimism of rich gentlemen amateurs dabbling in politics and has little relation to reality.
21 November 2010 9:23PM
Dreams are usually pretty random and unplanned brain trip nonsense? Seems like the coalition are living the dream then.
Less South Pacific, more like Oliver.
Who pays this guy anyway?
21 November 2010 9:25PM
Bollocks - there's nothing new about this lot, they're just reverting to type and doing what they always do in government - call it Big Society or smaller state, whatever you like it means the same thing. The reason Labour is in a fix is because it started a lot of the stuff e.g. welfare reform, that this lot are continuing. It's hard to criticise something you were doing yourself.
21 November 2010 9:25PM
Liberal towards to the rich you mean?
21 November 2010 9:26PM
Lord Young being too optimistic though?
21 November 2010 9:26PM
Julian what planet are you on? The unpopularity of the condems will ensure a short tenure at number 10. Miliband is the only leader with integrity and grit, Cam looks increasingly like a light weight Tony Blair while Clegg is, as Cam has said before, a joke!
21 November 2010 9:30PM
and a self-confessed liar.
21 November 2010 9:30PM
Is this guy for real?
21 November 2010 9:30PM
I have a big idea, too, please spare me your nonsense! The “cult of measurement” was an instrument to prove conservative people like you that benefits Labour introduced are working.
As long as people like you support every measure the coalition announces such instruments are not needed.
21 November 2010 9:31PM
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21 November 2010 9:31PM
What is this man doing writing for the Guardian?
21 November 2010 9:32PM
Huzzah! We are in power, all is right in the world. The post war consensus is a load of old tosh, far far better when we all knew our places.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
And may it ever stay thus.
"Hang it, the family's low enough already, without her. A governess is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal man; but I've proper pride..." (Thackery).
So let's hear it for the tory-liberal coalition. Keeping the meaner sorts in their place since the 18th century. And again, huzzah for Julian Glover!!!
Social mobility through keeping the riff-raff out of Uni, the scroungers in chain gangs and wages as low as the market allows.
21 November 2010 9:32PM
Julian old chap your right wing views are welcome at the Daily Torygraph if a vacancy arises.
21 November 2010 9:35PM
Perhaps more akin to Cleggs case is the story of the man who dreamt that he was addressing the House of Lords and woke up to find that he was.
21 November 2010 9:37PM
Julian Glover & Andrew Rawnsley
The Observer Coalition. Almost as bad as the real thing.
21 November 2010 9:37PM
That wouldn't be the same Institute of Fiscal Studies that skewered your mate George Osborne's claim that his measures were 'progressive' would it.
I'd rather have sterile computations than your rose-tinted defence of the coalition any day.
21 November 2010 9:37PM
While Julian and his pals sip champers and dream of returning us to Victorian workhouses and cheap labour, others have a rather more unpleasant reality.
This was posted by Anne Novis, respected disability campaigner and shortlisted for RADAR's Person of the Year 2010, on the BBC's Ouch Website.
(my bold)
Message 3. Posted by meridi (U13521523) on Sunday, 24th October 2010
"I am facing cuts to my benefits and social care.
I don't know when except I have a review of care needs in few weeks I fully expect the local authority to try and reduce my care package.
The there is the review of the Independent Living Fund which pays for half my social care, this is now frozen, and I do not know what is going to happen.
If I loise my incapcity benefit due to ATOS medical I will lose my DLA HRC which also means I will lose my ILF funding for care all are linked one goes all goes.
So I am scared, really scared, for me and so many others and would like some reassurance but there is none out there.
Some disabled people are thinking of mass suicide as they see no other option for thier life, sveral have already taken this path.
The fear is huge, the anxiety os every minute of the day, every news article and TV interview makes it worse.
My life is at the edge of a precipice which this government has put me scared to go out cos of being attacked, facing the hostility as so many resent us thinking we are rich and fraudsters.
It matters not that any of us contribute to society in so many ways, our human rights do not exist, we are the scapegotas for a consumer driven society and the countries debt.
The message is loud and clear
We should not exist!"
(sic)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/messageboards/F2322273?thread=7835380
In the light of such realities, such crowing not only looks misplaced, it also looks more than a tad obscene.
21 November 2010 9:38PM
By the way alot of the hard right Tories see Cameron as a social democrat.
See this: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/alexsingleton/100064444/could-right-wing-tory-activists-cost-david-cameron-a-second-term/
21 November 2010 9:40PM
One mans dream, a countries nightmare...........
There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old pilots.
Do not mix the ideology, arrogance and ignorance of the right with any sort of poistive plan for the future of the United Kingdom.
21 November 2010 9:40PM
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21 November 2010 9:41PM
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21 November 2010 9:41PM
Negativity is what the ConDems have inflicted on the rest of we mere mortals, Julian. Negativity arising out of the privatisation of state functions; negativity arising out of the savage cuts to the benefits of the most vulnerable; and negativity at the prospect of compulsory volunteering (a concept which conjures up a mind boggling philosophical debate in its own right).
Your optimistic philosophy of government is an illusion.
21 November 2010 9:42PM
It seems no one so far has been able to say anything good about this article. That seems so unfair. There's plenty in it to praise... There's...um... um... well, there was that bit that said... um.. Oh, okay it's a load of crap - but I did try.
21 November 2010 9:43PM
The sub-title is clever, because if commentators here moan about the state of things the author will be proven correct.
21 November 2010 9:43PM
With all due respect, we all realize that Mr. Glover believes what he says and that he is employed to express his opinion. And that is fine. perfectly fine, in this and all other newspaper.
However, there sems to be in his writingan utter lack of objectivity about the ideas he espouse and almost certainly he has never critiqued them philosophically.
There is also what seems uncomfortably close to de facto gloating that ill becomes a young man, born to privilege, who has lived a life of ongoing privilege in terms of his education and the professional opportunities that have come his way.
21 November 2010 9:44PM
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21 November 2010 9:45PM
Words fail me.
21 November 2010 9:46PM
There might well be. But the way you favour certainly won't be a better way - the 'back to the 19th century' strategy of the welfare slashers and the ideologues of cuts. Anyway, it was made pretty clear in a previous article of yours that you don't think equality is at all important. So why pretend? Consistency is a virtue.
21 November 2010 9:46PM
Much like his coverage of the Comprehensive Spending Review, Glover simultaneously thinks that the opposition is irrelevant while at the same time thinking the political debate is all about what it does rather than what the government is doing. Not for the first time, we get the mixture of facile optimism (regarding both the cuts, the ensuing redundancies, and the overall economic impact - perhaps Glover mjissed the reduced forecasts for economic growth last week), and the idea that this amounts to a coherent - nay, 'optimistic' - ideology. He admits that the Big Society is so much piffle, but presumably he's optimistic it'll work out in the end.
That whirring sound is Hugo Young spinning in his grave at the prospect of Clegg's speech and what happned to the newspaper for which he once wrote both so eloquently and with a less glibly partisan manner. If Glover really is the 'Coalition Correspondent' for the Guardian, the mindset within the Coalition itself must be terrifying.
21 November 2010 9:47PM
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21 November 2010 9:48PM
Forget ideology. Right now we have major problems to overcome. Namely an incompetent and self-serving government that threatens so many aspects of our lives. Labour's raison d'etre right now is to act as an effective opposition and dispose of this government as soon as possible for the 50-plus million of us do not support the Condems.
Only when the Condems are removed from government can Labour begin dreaming up ideology and making policies of their own.
21 November 2010 9:50PM
The Hayek bit is interesting. Every now and again we get a glimpse of just how right wing Julian is.
21 November 2010 9:50PM
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21 November 2010 9:50PM
teeside- that won't last. Pity in that it is all true.
21 November 2010 9:50PM
Glover is a bit like Mary Riddell on the Telegraph, the contrarian commentator ..
Basically if you wanted a social democracy you would not have done it like old or new Labour did it.
21 November 2010 9:51PM
Are you serious?
The policies of the Government will cause distress and fear among the poorest and thus the easiest to attack in society.
I can't believe you are writing for the Guardian. Shouldn't you be writing for the Mail or the Telegraph.
Your lack of understanding or empathy for what the poorest in society are about to have befall them does you a disservice.
Shame on you!
21 November 2010 9:53PM
A society reliant on statistical calculation can never be optimistic; all we ever see are the limits and the failures.
Hang on a minute, Julian, what about the transparency agenda? Haven't the ConDems decreed that we should all be armchair auditors and analyse all their public access to open data - so we can hold all those public authorities to account? Isn't that making us even more reliant on statistical calculation, so less inclined be optimistic?
Has Julian spotted the flaw in his own 'argument'?