Andrew Curry writes:

“I can accept chaos”, said the young Bob Dylan, in one of his typically cryptic sleevenotes. “I’m not sure whether it accepts me”.  For some reason, the line crept into my head while staying up too late last night to watch the election coverage, as seasoned media professionals struggled to make sense of the results unfolding in front of them.

Some of the unpredictability was down to the number of redrawn seats, perhaps with unreliable estimates of how the 2005 vote might have gone; some was an echo of the expenses scandal, influenced by the high number of incumbents stepping down; some down to tactical voting; some was down to the fact that the ‘swingometer’ – designed for two-party contests – is less useful as a measure of change in three- or four-party contests.

But the strong sense of the map was that the further one went from the south-east, the weaker the Cameron effect was, vanishing almost completely as it crossed the border into Scotland. Indeed, one of the most memorable pieces of pre-election commentary, by Ian Jack, described the Conservatives as the party of the ‘Southern Metaphor’, in which Britain is “romantic, illogical, muddled, divinely lucky, Anglican, aristocratic, traditional, frivolous”. Even in a relatively small and affluent country such as Britain, differences of history and geography make its electoral world bumpy, not flat.

As if to further confuse spectators, voting problems in some constituencies seemed symbolic of an electoral system which is no longer fit for purpose. Before the election, research by nef calculated that voters in the most marginal seats have one hundred times more influence on the outcome than those in the safest seats. Prior to the election, one of the striking features was the number of competing campaigns promoting electoral fairness. Taking a long view, these are each a symptom of the decline of two-party politics since the 1970s. During the campaign, Election 10 published a compelling graph using twenty-five years of Guardian polling data showing the decline in overall support for the two main parties; it fluctuates, certainly, but trends only in one direction.

This in turn reflects a change in the sources of political identity, as Simon Szreter argued in History and Policy:

Whilst a generation ago, individual voters would identify their allegiance with a party’s ideology before enquiring about its policies, this has now been turned on its head. Voters think first about what policies they support and then seek to match this with a political party, often using web-based tools. Yet the electorate is unable to give proper expression to such sophisticated political judgements.

Or, as another historian, Simon Schama, put it on the BBC’s election programme this morning, “the country has not just spoken, it’s holding it’s nose”.

Is this a conservative moment? Judging from some of the models we use in our long-term futures work, looking at 30-year scenarios and beyond, we’d say not. Generational analysis suggests that a ‘crisis’ phase represents a transition from predominantly individualist worldviews to more communitarian ones. Likewise, Carlota Perez’ work on technology change argues that the years after a financial crisis tend to increase the emphasis on social and public wellbeing. In all, this speaks to an underlying political crisis which is unlikely to be resolved quickly.

The photo at the top of this post, of a cake shop window in York, is © Kate Stuart, and is used with thanks. There are more of her pictures on her Flickr photostream.

Alex Oliver writes:

I was lucky enough to present some of our current insight about trust and decision-making, especially at a local level, to a group of local government leaders earlier this month.  In short, it suggests that there’s a growing public appetite for more engagement and involvement, as well as greater confidence in decision making at the local level, compared to central government.

But there are also still significant barriers to engagement faced by certain groups, including younger people. These include knowing how to get involved, which often is not obvious. (Other work we’ve done for government about this also identified that if people did get involved, they needed to believe that their actions would make a difference and their opinions would be listened to; councils still forget to tell people about the impact their involvement has had on the outcomes.)

I also looked at the area of digital service delivery. Work done by the IIPS – the Institute for Insight into Public Services, the think tank we jointly run with TNS-BMRB – shows that concerns still exist around the potential inequalities inherent in internet service delivery for older and less affluent groups, along with the need to consider the role of other digital channels including i-TV and mobile.  People continue to prefer personal channels (phone and face to face) where personal information is concerned, and still expect to be offered choice. The mail is still preferred by a significant proportion of the population (around a third) for forms and payments. People who use services continue to expect multi-channel delivery, rather than being funnelled into one channel. And from a service provider’s perspective, getting the mix of user and channel right can represent a big cost saving.

And the research findings on choice and quality of service continue to be worth emphasising; all social groups, and ages, put quality above choice. And those who value choice more – typically in poorer social groups who don’t have as much choice generally – are also most worried about their ability to make the right choices.

Emily Pitts writes:

King’s Place in London held an elegant discussion last week on the art of rhetoric, led by Tony Benn, Simon Schama, Polly Toynbee, Geoffrey Robertson and curated by English PEN. The panel examined whether a speech is made great by careful use of rhetorical techniques, or whether the art in fact lies in choosing the right point in time for the speech to occur.

Three of the four panellists argued against the power of rhetoric, stating instead that dramatic speeches occur at dramatic points in history. The moment, they said, defines the language, rather than the other way around.

Simon Schama dissented. He argued that Obama is the best modern-day example we have of an artful rhetorician, citing the use of iambic pentameter in his inaugural speech; “I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors”, and his skilful use of the plural personal pronoun; “We can do it, Yes we can”. There has of course, been much written on Obama’s exemplary use of rhetoric – take a look at Max Atkinson’s blog for in-depth analysis.

During the course of the discussion, various other politicians came under scrutiny. It was suggested that the restraint of Gordon Brown’s language contributes to the perception of him as an inaccessible personality. Similarly, the “everyday Joe” language of Nick Griffin and his active oratory in local communities could be a significant factor in his success. Tony Blair was touted as the inventor of the ‘verbless sentence’ – a rather brazen grammatical omission – which allowed him to offer a promise without ever, in fact, making an actual commitment. “Our education system – a beacon to the world” is one example.

It is clear that artfully constructed language can be hugely powerful, especially when the point in history is hungry for words that can lead and provide strength. But more recently, blogging and instant communications seems to have had a ‘content over form’ effect on language – just getting the message “out there” has often become good enough.

However, with high-profile figures such as Obama leading the way, I suspect we may see a reversal of that trend over the next few years. We could see a return to more traditional values of well constructed and stylistically sophisticated language, both spoken and published. In the UK, the possible introduction of US-style televised political debates might raise the game for politicians and the language they use. It may not be Cicero, but the art of the spoken word could be about to resume an important place in public life.

The image is from Allan McDougall’s blog, and is used with thanks.

Emily Pitts writes:

As the lights begin to fade on 2009, thought turns to the New Year and what hope we might have for progress on climate change in 2010. And sound the bells; it looks like hopes should be pretty high. Global commitments to climate change (that were due to take place at the Copenhagen talks in December) are now taking place early next year in Mexico, and the UK’s much-publicised 10:10 campaign that invites individuals and organisations to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% over the course of the year, officially kicks off in January. (The Futures Company has signed up).

However, there’s still a fair way to go before we can be confident of 2010’s ability to announce the dawn of a new era. Look at where the most influential global powers are on the issue, for example with Obama’s well-publicised absence from the Copenhagen talks next month. [Update 26/11: No sooner had we posted this than Obama decided to go to Copenhagen after all].  There is no doubt that he is concerned about climate change and takes it seriously. It is also equally clear that the difficulties he faces domestically from within the Senate are serious, and have led him to feel that the possibility of reaching global accord this year is unrealistic.

In spite of this, there is something undeniably depressing about a protocol to replace Kyoto being delayed. Even alone, the very symbolism of the American president’s absence from Copenhagen packs a powerful punch in the gut of the climate change movement.

This tardiness to act on climate change is increasingly at odds with public opinion. 2009 Global Monitor data shows that globally, 67% of consumers agree that climate change is the biggest single problem facing the world today – even after the financial crisis. Take also, the proliferation of grass-roots movements that are galvanising the public’s appetite for change and progress, from 10:10, to Do the Green Thing, to the Campaign against Climate Change, as well as a host of cultural interventions (the RSA’s Arts and Ecology blog is the best guide).

The chasm between the positions of politicians and the public on climate change is perilous. There are risks here for politicians as well, if they get too far out of step with what the public is both saying and doing. Even in the US, carbon emissions are now falling. Closing the gap and delivering meaningful action from the top as well as the bottom could see 2010 jubilant in realising its potential for being the year that finally delivers on climate change.

The picture is from the greenzer blog, and is used with thanks.

Oliver Wright writes:

Since my last post on the role Twitter is playing in relation to more traditional media, a couple of events have highlighted how Twitter, and social media in general, is having a greater influence on significant news events.

When riots recently broke out in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, thousands of young Moldovans protested against elections whose outcome ensured the communist government would stay in power. The events were quick to grab the headlines, with Twitter once again thrust into the limelight as an example of microblogging’s ability to mobilise people.

It was quickly dubbed “Moldova’s Twitter Revolution”, at least by journalists, but after a week of protests (judges subsequently ordered a recount) a more nuanced story has emerged. Those involved in organising the protests explained they used many online tools to organise the protest; planning involved blogs and LiveJournal accounts, followed closer to the actual event by facebook groups and text messaging. Twitter was, among other things, a clever way of ensuring their message gained space in influential media outlets. By this measure the protests have been a resounding success. (For some more in-depth analysis, take a look here and here.)

Closer to home, the political scandal that has dominated media discourse has been ‘smeargate’ (or #smeargate in Twitter), the saga in which Gordon Brown’s political and press adviser, Damian McBride, resigned after leaked emails described plans to publish gossip stories about senior opposition party politicians on a ‘political gossip’ blog, Red Rag. These were, it was said, primarily to be a response to claimed slurs about members of the Labour party on the Conservative-leaning Guido Fawkes’ blog – a Westminster rumour mill.

Whatever one’s political affiliations, the incident highlights the importance placed within government on the influence of the blogosphere. As a result (unintended), the public is now more aware of political mudslinging previously shared between small groups of politically motivated bloggers. In Moldova, a couple of shrewd planners used their knowledge of how the media operates to take advantage of social networks, particularly the viral nature and gravitas of Twitter, in order to garner the maximum media exposure for their cause.

As we’ve noted earlier, taken individually, services like Twitter, and previously facebook, can seem like isolated fads, but seen within the context of an increasingly savvy and networked online community, they take on greater significance.

The picture at the top of the post was borrowed, with thanks, from the Political Graffiti blog.

Tom Ding writes:

I was fortunate enough to attend two thought-provoking, yet decidedly different events recenty: a four-day WPP training course and a conference on the Labour Party and Web2.0. Strikingly, the two were connected in quoting of Roy Amara:

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

When Rob Norman, the CEO of WPP-owned GroupM Interaction, used the quote, he was talking about the difficulty media and advertising companies have in integrating the internet into the core of their business. Since this sentiment could equally be applied to British political parties, and that a vast amount has been written about the use of new media in the recent US election, it was not surprising that ‘Obama’ was one of the most frequently used words at Labour2.0. But even Obama couldn’t out-perform ‘Twitter‘, perhaps a perfect example of overemphasising the short-term.

For much of the event, people were making the right noises: there was talk of ‘relationship management’; of technology as a means not an end; and of the importance of openness, transparency and authenticity. However, when Stella Creasy, an impressive parliamentary party candidate in Walthamstow, reached the podium, the contrast between talk and action was profound. She likened spending time online mudslinging to the old political tactic of ‘talking to your opponents just so they cannot talk to anybody else’ and pointed instead to her weekly email to 2,000 local constituents. Her most potent insight, and one many brands could learn from, was that in these emails she showed people what she was like, rather than telling them.

At the WPP event, Chris Hirst, the Managing Director of Grey London, talked about leadership. Two lessons stood out: that conveying urgency is key to actually getting things done; and that in business ‘culture is the behaviour of the management’. Of the dozens of people who spoke at Labour2.0, it seemed that only three really understood this: Stella Creasy, Derek Draper from Labourlist and Oliver Rickman from Google.

Rickman argued that we now live in a world of ‘fast vs slow’, where we are ‘always in beta’, where doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. But most organisations lag far behind in this fast-slow world, reduced to mimicry, Google and Obama just dots on the horizon. On this video evidence though, the Labour party should be hopeful: it seems that John Prescott has at least broken into a technological jog. Better still, and rarer, is the impression that he really does understand why he is running.

Tagged: john prescott, rob norman, roy amara, web 2.0 ]]> http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2009/03/09/the-long-and-the-short/feed/ 0 thenextwavefutures web-20-1 http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2009/01/21/live-and-direct/ http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/2009/01/21/live-and-direct/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:11:45 +0000 thenextwavefutures http://blog.thefuturescompany.com/?p=776 ]]>

Rebecca Nash writes:

Some anthropologists of religion work with people who seek unmediated contact with their gods. Their ethnographies contrast the experience of word as text (scriptural religions) with the immediate word (through a prophet or visions). Christian apostolics have told one anthropologist, ‘We don’t use the Bible, we receive the Holy Spirit, live and direct’.

Live and direct. Curiously this is the same claim that television news makes every day in the era of cheap satellite links and rolling news, but usually the live connection is to a reporter or an expert giving their mediated view of events, with technology – and graphics – providing a patina of immediacy.

And certainly, during the Obama campaign, there was plenty of mediated coverage, through more channels than ever before.  It became too easy, too occupying during the campaign to catch up on events by logging on to YouTube, skimming political blogs, monitoring poll data, reading coverage in magazines and newspapers. All of these channels were harnessed skillfully by Obama – his messages seemed to be everywhere. Alongside this, the media itself played a filtering role, interpreting messages, constructing meaning, and shaping opinion.

But every trend has its counter-trend. The more that’s recorded and interpreted, the more that people want to experience the live event for themselves, without interpretation. I think this desire for an unmediated experience explains in part the huge crowds at the ritual of Tuesday’s inaugural ceremony in Washington, DC.

I left work early myself to see the ceremony ‘live and direct’ (granted, on TV from my couch in London). As an American living in London I knew I wouldn’t have the self-control to watch it later, when the analysis and the commentary would have kicked in. But it was the kind of event where update and analysis were beside the point – the shared live experience, the immediate Word, not the text, was what mattered most.

Rebecca Nash writes:

‘Public facing’ and ‘academic’ are two personal attributes that often don’t go together. But the IIPS was fortunate to host this rare breed at a breakfast briefing this week. Professor Danny Dorling both conducts groundbreaking research on patterns of place and social change, and makes sure it gets covered by the media (here and here and here.)

Danny’s presentation at the IIPS was on the evidence of the strong links between poor public services and local inequalities – part of the IIPS’s ongoing conversation about what role research and public services play in improving people’s lives. Worrying as much of his evidence is, his talk was also a hopeful call to action. Despite the correlation between local deprivation and poor services he argued two points:  First, if we take a look at recent data from The Futures Company, there is public will for social change and social action – and permission for radical change. Second, government has the tools to improve things on local levels and to stop inequalities from continuing to spread on a national scale.

BMRB Social Research’s Head of Methods Joel Williams argued that research can support the policy and service delivery changes that Danny urges – and looked at some different research methods. He identified new research strategies for the places that most need them: for example, opening up administrative data bases in their original forms, targeting surveys in areas with the greatest variety of life outcomes, local authorities working together on common policy interventions, and more facilitation of local area modelling by those conducting national surveys.

Danny’s assumption that government could provide most of the solutions was challenged by Professor Paul Wiles, Head of Government Social Research. He raised questions about  the persistence of long-term, local inequalities, and the way in which these shaped long-term social and cultural perceptions of poorer areas. In short, there are limits to government power and policy making, especially in the face of other powerful agents of change (communities, families, the housing market, and more).

Big questions about government, community, and public and social capital at 8.30 in the morning. But as we only begin to see the effects of economic crash, these issues are only going to get sharper over the coming year – or more.

The picture shows Diego Rivera‘s mural, ‘Contradictions between Rich and Poor 01″. Sheffield University’s ‘Changing UK’ report, co-authored by Danny Dorling, can be downloaded as a pdf from here. The IIPS is a co-venture between The Futures Company and BMRB which develops and promotes the use of citizen insight to support the transformation of public service delivery in the UK.

Editor’s note: Walker Smith, who runs The Futures Company’s Yankelovich division in the United States, has sent a long post reflecting on the 40-year context of Barack Obama’s Presidential victory this week. The conventional wisdom is that blog posts should be short and pithy. But we think that from time to time it’s better to give an argument the space and time it needs to unfold. Walker’s short essay is one of those occasions.

Walker Smith writes:

Barack Obama’s victory on Tuesday night was not unexpected. Three weeks out, political pundits knew that Obama had a lead that has never been overcome in modern political history. (Horse race political junkies will enjoy my favorite campaign resource, www.fivethirtyeight.com.) The real drama came an hour later when Obama took the stage with his family to honor this historic moment in his moving victory speech.

Chicago’s Grant Park, the scene of the victory rally, is a beautiful, expansive park bordering Lake Michigan that to this day still stirs up grueling memories for Baby Boomers like me, of the police violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The question that hangs over Barack Obama’s election is whether it really does represents the end of a 40-year cycle of deep political and cultural division, even though his electoral victory was built on effective party-political organisation rather than cutting across party-political lines.

In 1968, demonstrators set up their staging ground in Grant Park during the Democratic Convention for protests against the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policies. With characteristic irony, Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin dubbed it A Festival of Life.; instead it became a series of violent confrontations between protestors and police that reached a climax the night that Hubert Humphrey won the nomination with a nationally televised 17-minute frenzy of police brutality in front of the Hilton Hotel. Throughout the violence, protestors chanted “the whole world is watching” to the police, and, indeed, later that night, as Connecticut Senator Abraham Rubicoff put George McGovern’s name into nomination at the convention, he famously denounced the “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.” His view was subsequently confirmed by the Walker Commission convened to investigate what happened. In its findings, the Commission called it police riot.

Now, four decades later, Obama was preparing to celebrate victory in the very place that, to many of us, was Ground Zero for the culture wars that have defined our lives and our politics ever since. This serendipitous symbolism was not lost on any of us – Democrats all – gathered around the TV. Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope that it was time to move beyond the Baby Boomer “psychodrama” born of “old grudges and revenge plots hatched” in the 1960s. Obama wrote that he yearned for those things that “bring us together as Americans.” And here he was Tuesday night, bringing us full circle, ready at last to close that chapter of American history.

As they are today, in 1968 Americans were scared, fearful and uncertain. It is a year that is generally regarded as a pivotal year in American history, as 2008 will surely also come to be regarded. No financial crisis engulfed the nation then, although, unrecognized at the time, the stock market was in the early years of a long bear market that would not end until 1982. Instead, 1968 bore witness to a rending conflict of politics and culture that erupted almost weekly into violence, including the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. These events bred the dread and apprehension that ushered in Richard Nixon as President, kindling an era of conservative Republican leadership at the helm of government that would be interrupted only twice, and with little impact, until Obama’s electoral landslide Tuesday night.

In his speech, Obama echoed the past as he looked to the future. He quoted Lincoln and he made recognizable allusions to ideas and speeches of both FDR and JFK. But he also made explicit rhetorical use of phrasings and imagery from two well-known speeches of Dr. King.

When Obama spoke of that night people being able “to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day,” he was borrowing from Dr. King’s 1965 speech from the steps of the Capitol Building in Montgomery, Alabama at the end of the march that began with highly publicized violence in Selma. King said that day that the wait for prejudice to end would not be long because “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In echoing King, Obama, too, was inspiring us to stay committed as we work together for a better nation and a better world.

Similarly, Obama borrowed from an even more uplifting phrase of Dr. King’s when he told us that even though “the road ahead will be long” and “our climb…steep,” he was sure that “we as a people will get there.” These remarks echo very closely the closing lines of the last speech Dr. King gave before he was killed. “I want you to know tonight,” King said, “that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” In Obama’s speech on Tuesday night, there was perhaps no clearer statement of his belief that Americans can rise to the challenges before us and overcome them as a nation, and maybe even as part of the world community.

Obama takes office at a crossroads in American history. Cultural and political observer and New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote of this on Election Day. Brookes argued that there is a confluence of three eras now coming to an end – the end of the long economic boom that began in the 1980s, the end of conservative dominance in recent American politics and the end of Baby Boomer supremacy in American society.

While there are many problems to be fixed, Brooks foresees the emergence of a new America. America is free to reinvent itself, because, suddenly, the country is unfettered by the forces that have determined the direction of the country for the past few decades. Barack Obama, he believes, is the man for the moment.

This is the kind of promise that has always animated Americans. Yet, there is a dread that weighs upon the American spirit these days. It is seen in the utter collapse of confidence and self-assurance as measured by every poll conducted over the last three months. It is seen in the yearning for leadership and integrity expressed by so many as they left the voting booths on Tuesday. It was in evidence Tuesday night as millions of Americans literally danced in the streets in dozens of cities after Obama’s victory. It was the reason for the crash in retail sales reported on Thursday. Americans are spooked and as a result they have retrenched. Before any new era can be opened, the American verve must be recharged.

This is a tall order for Obama. He invited us Tuesday night to share that vision with him, and for that moment we did. There were no dry eyes in our group that night. Even my Republican friends, to a person, have said that they, too, had a lump in their throats. But Obama’s job is going to be tough.

For one thing, Obama’s victory was not achieved by cutting across party lines. Journalist Bill Bishop has studied and written extensively about the yawning partisan divide in American society. (We’ve blogged here before about his book, The Big Sort.) In his initial analyses of the county-by-county voting patterns across the country, he finds that Obama did in 2008 what Bush did in 2004. Each built margins of victory in their respective strongholds – blue counties for Obama and red counties for Bush – that were large enough to overcome their deficits elsewhere. It’s true that in red counties Obama closed the size of the losing gap that Kerry had in 2004, but Obama won by winning the blue counties by huge margins. Only the rare red county in 2004 actually turned blue in 2008. In short, despite Obama’s unifying rhetoric, his success was created in a highly partisan way.

In fact, America has not made a 180-degree ideological turn. Instead, Americans are just plain worried about the economy, and the state of the economy determines Presidential election outcomes. Ray Fair is a Yale economist who has shown that in Presidential elections the change in the incumbent party can be predicted from the economy alone (using inflation and two measures of GDP: his 2008 assessment is on his website). No surprise, then, that James Carville hung that famous sign in Clinton headquarters during the 1992 campaign – “It’s the economy, stupid.” The economy elected Obama. If this election had been about national security, McCain would likely have won in an electoral landslide.

The wounds of 1968 have not healed yet, and the fears of 2008 loom large. But Barack Obama brings a different temperament to the Presidency. He believes in possibilities because he himself is living proof of the power of those possibilities. He gives other hope and faith in those possibilities when he echoes the inspiring words of American icons; heroes, really. If America is to emerge as a different place, it will not be because America has become something different already. It will be because Barack Obama has the audacity it takes to rally the nation in a unifying way behind a hopeful, confident vision of possibilities. He has begun this already. So far, it’s working. As my friends and I said to each other as we went our separate ways Tuesday night, we must keep faith with what Obama reminds us is our quintessentially American strength, the belief that, yes, we can.

The photograph at the top of this post is from the Boston Globe’s campaign blog, Political Intelligence.

Courtesy of the Transition Island Blog

Andrew Curry writes:

We’ve been thinking quite a lot recently about the impact of recession on consumer behaviour, and I was asked by Radio 4′s Beyond Westminster to join a panel discussion about this, which is broadcast tomorrow (Saturday 9th – if you missed it, you can hear it on the website for another week).

The other panellists were Chris Leslie, of the New Local Government Network (and a former Labour MP), and Jeremy Leggett, who runs one of Britain’s largest solar energy companies, solarcentury, and also wrote a fine book, Half Gone, about the end of the oil economy.

It’s difficult to summarise the flavour of a fifteen minute discussion in a few lines, and I wouldn’t want to spoil the programme, but some themes seemed to emerge:

• The upwards shift in oil and energy prices is a step change not a blip (a Dutch energy consultancy recently estimated that the floor price for oil had reached $110/barrel).
• In the short term this is reducing car use, but hurting the poorest hardest, mostly through the cost of their domestic energy bills (the poorest tend not to own cars).
• In the longer term, however, the government has to make a choice between orchestrating a full-scale shift to renewable energy sources, or trying to muddle through with conventional energy (Leggett is a member of the group which wrote the recently published The Green New Deal, which linked energy innovation, climate change response, and financial reform).
• Shifting to renewables will take investment, which probably isn’t going to come from taxation but could – without going into the economic theory here – come from market incentives and from encouraging people to save more, which would be good for the long-term stability of the economy.

Some of the evidence suggests that people are ahead of the politicians here. But it will still take some political courage to act on this – a quality which seems sadly lacking from British politics at the moment.