Why I didn't celebrate the death of Thatcher (but why others did)

Compared to many other parts of the city, where I’m from in Liverpool is a relatively affluent area.  People aren’t overwhelmingly rich, but they tend not to be particularly poor either.  Many people own their homes, the schools tend to be good, there are relatively high levels of employment and more 18-year-olds than anywhere else in the city go to university.

I’m a product of this part of Liverpool. My upbringing was safe and secure and I went to university. So although ideologically I have always been against what Thatcherism stood for (at least as long as I have known what ideology meant), I cannot claim to be a victim of it.  For that reason, I also cannot claim to be happy that Thatcher herself is dead.

But you don’t have to stray too far from where I grew up to find the victims of Thatcherism and witness the devastation its policies brought about.  As you drive towards Lime Street from the far north of Liverpool, the houses become more boarded up, the shops more derelict and the streets more empty.  The neighbourhoods just north of Liverpool city centre have failed to recover from an economic war waged against them 30 years ago.  Opportunity is scarce, jobs even scarcer.  There is a sense that whole communities are dying.

The same scenes are repeated across many of the industrial cities that had the same war waged against them.  Thirty years on and not much has changed.  New Labour should – and could – have done much more.  That they didn’t is a testament to the power that Thatcherism has.

I don’t think people like me have a reason to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher: even if we disagree with the principles she believed in and the policies she implemented. This is why there is repulsion from many towards the street parties in places like Brixton.  A sense that the misery of some has been appropriated by the fortunate.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who suffered and continue to suffer as a result of her legacy. And when it comes to these people – the real victims of Thatcherism – it is difficult, and perhaps wrong, for any of us to feel too self-righteous.

Why are social policy academics absent from the national debate on benefits?

If you can believe it, the last three years have been exciting (and worrying) for anyone with an interest in the welfare state.  The Coalition have introduced huge changes to the social security system.  They have dramatically reduced the generosity of certain benefits, capped the amount households can receive, reformed eligibility and introduced stringent new work requirements for many claimants.  Further, the public debate on welfare has been relentless.  What is fair and who deserves what are conservations that stretch beyond the closed world of Westminster policy wonks.

Yet amidst the welfare storm that has swept the country, there has been one notable group that is often excluded from the debate: the UK's hundreds of social policy academics.  Last week, a silence was finally broken with a letter to The Guardian, signed by fifty social policy professors.  Now 'expert letters' have probably never had much influence in shifting the terms of policy or debate; but now, in the social media age - when news is 24/7 and everyone is given a platform through mediums like Twitter - they are probably even less effective than they were in the past.

So why have social policy academics been so quiet at a time when their own discipline is the one of the most talked about news stories: week-in, week-out?  I can't claim to have any definite answers, but I do have a few ideas.  In short, I think there is a vicious circle that exists: one in which social policy academics are excluded from debates, whilst also excluding themselves.

On the one hand then, I think the media must bear some responsibility.  If you listen to radio debates and phone-ins on welfare policy, presenters invariably go for two representatives of completely opposing sides of the debate.  They are (perhaps inevitably) less interested in a more nuanced analysis of policy and want people - such as think-tankers and political commentators - who are able to summarise opposing viewpoints in an articulate way.

However, I don't think this completely explains the absence of social policy academics from national debates.  Thus as well as being excluded from discussions on welfare, there are numerous ways in which academics exclude themselves.  The most obvious way is by failing to engage with new social media effectively.  For example, I attended one day of last year's Social Policy Association conference; an event in which there were hundreds of discussions taking place about the welfare state.  The event had a Twitter hashtag, but there were only around 10 people actively using it to promote the conference.  I also think that compared to other disciplines, social policy academics are relatively sparse on platforms like Twitter and blogs.

The second way in which I think many academics exclude themselves from debate is more complex and is to do with the intellectual relationship many have with welfare.  I think it would be fair to say that many academics working in social policy have a preference for a certain type of welfare state; one that is quite far from the type we have in the UK.  And what this means is that there is a culture of criticism (and even hostility) - empirical, theoretical and moral - that pervades British social policy when it looks at our own welfare system.  In general, I think this leads to those in control of the debate (e.g. TV and radio executives) to assume what academics will think: critical of the government, anti-cuts, pro-welfare expansion.  And if you want to air those kinds of views, you might as well look to media-friendly voices, rather than the (stereotypically) 'dull academic'.

Overall, I think there needs to be a big debate within the academic social policy community about how to engage better with national conversations about the very subject its members devote their working lives to. This will involve practical steps such as a stronger focus on social media output.  But it will also involve something more difficult: to 'open up' the discipline to a wider range of views about the welfare state, to welcome more intellectual diversity and to challenge existing ways of thinking about social security.  Sometimes academic social policy can feel predictable and insular.  And as long as that remains the case, the debate will continue to go on without it.

Stigma, the poor and inequality

I have written this quick post as a response to a recent article by Peter Taylor-Gooby, entitled: ‘why do people stigmatise the poor at a timeof rapidly increasing inequality, and what can be done about it?’.

The key question is why, when both poverty and wealth are intensifying, has there been a backlash against the poor, and not the rich?  This, as PTG rightly says, is a ‘puzzle’; it was not the case in the 1980s, when sympathy with the poor peaked at the end of the 1980s following recession and mass unemployment. 

What we have seen then is the end of a key idea in social science.  The idea that sympathy with the poor correlates with the economic cycle: low in the boom, high in the bust.  Now it is more low in the boom, even lower in the bust.

PTG outlines numerous arguments about why this might be.  The overall gist is something he calls the ‘moralisation’ of social divisions.  In other words, the middle-class (or ‘mass middle’) not only see themselves as richer than the poor, but morally superior. 

I generally agree with this theory and in my own paper (here) I argue that this kind of moralisation has been dominant in political accounts of welfare reform since New Labour.  The key question then is where this moralisation comes from.  The argument in my paper is that politicians have a prime responsibility for driving it.

However, what you might call ‘public opinion sceptics’ argue the opposite: that politicians follow public sentiment rather than shape it.  I don’t think this is the case with welfare.  As the graphs in PTG’s paper show, public support for benefits fell dramatically with the election of New Labour.  I believe this asserts the importance of what politicians say and do in relation to what the public think.

PTG puts forward three alternatives of how policy could challenge the existing nature of public opinion on welfare: reciprocity (contributory benefits), solidarity (universality) and ‘predistribution’.  The first two are generally old news (although I think there is something to be said for emphasising a stronger contributory principle), whilst ‘predistribution’ seems a relatively seductive idea.  Equality without the expense.

As of yet, we are still relatively clueless as to what the central message of Labour’s manifesto will be.  So far they have toyed with both contribution and predistribution; yet both are relatively ambitious and will involve substantial policy change.  It would thus be easiest for Labour to adopt a ‘Tory-lite’ approach to welfare in 2015. Yet this would be based on the mistaken belief that the politicians follow the public.  And all this will do is play into the hands of the enemies of the welfare state, all of whom are only too happy to set the welfare agenda on their own terms.

What's wrong with the left's argument on immigration?

This is a very quick post (I have lots of work to do and shouldn't be blogging at all).  But today the Prime Minister is set to make a 'big speech' on social housing and immigration.  This has led to some interesting discussions on Twitter about how the left should tackle the immigration debate (similar, really, to debates about welfare).

In general, I think the left uses two arguments to try and change views about immigration:

1. Immigrants make a strong economic contribution to the UK.
2. Fears about immigration are based upon myths.

As the current state of the immigration debate testifies, this strategy is failing.  Largely, I think it fails because a) it adopts a purely rational approach to a sensitive, emotionally charged moral issue and b) it paints people's concerns as being led by a belief in myths.  

Alternatively, I think the left should use three different arguments to support immigration:

1. We should be proud that immigrants from around the world want to come to the UK for a better life (the moral argument)
2. And we will strongly support and invest in policies that promote the integration of immigrants (the inclusion argument)
3. However, we recognise past immigration has brought about great changes for certain communities.  Where we have immigration, we will manage it well (the management argument)

Adopting these arguments would kill two birds with one stone.  First, it would make a moral case for immigration - rather than a cold economic one.  Second, it would recognise people's concerns as genuine; something the left, too often, just doesn't do.  

Why do the Tories find it so hard to win elections? A loyalty explanation

Recently I've been looking at a lot of data from the BHPS, the long-running UK panel survey.  And amidst looking at unemployment, welfare-to-work and wellbeing, I've been side-tracked (procrastinating) by looking at people's choice of political party over time.

One of the main advantages of the BHPS is that it tracks the same individuals over time.  So unlike a traditional survey (where we only look at people once - a cross-section), we can examine how the same individuals' behaviour changes - or doesn't - over time.

With regards to political parties, this means we can use panel surveys to see how flexibly people move their support between different parties.  And this is where the BHPS can come in useful.  It ran between 1991 and 2008; precisely the time when the Tory hegemony over UK politics was coming to an end (and is yet to return).

One plausible explanation of why the Tories have found it so difficult to win a majority is that their support moves about more.  In other words, people might move closer to the Conservatives in year X but then shift to another party in year Y.  In addition, Labour might find it easier to win a majority because people are less likely to shift their allegiance from Labour to another party.  So, looking at the BHPS, to what extent is this the case?

Looking only at people who stated they were closest to one of the three main parties, over the course of the panel we see 60254 recorded instances of people choosing Labour (52%), 40743 choosing Conservative (35%) and 15556 choosing Liberal Democrat (13%).  This is not too surprising; during the course of the panel we had three major Labour general election victories.

No. of recorded preferences for the three main parties, BHPS 1991-2008

However, we're not really interested in the question 'how many people said they were closest to the main parties?' but, within their respective pool of supporters, how many people stuck with the same party over time?  Are Labour supporters more likely to stick with Labour than Tory ones are?

Percentage of respondents who stuck with the same party over time

And this what we see.  The Lib Dems - perhaps unsurprisingly as the third party of British politics - have the least loyal supporter base: only 64% of Lib Dem supporters only ever supported the Lib Dems and not the two main parties.  

However, the graph also shows the Tories falling short of Labour.  All in all, 88.5% of people who said they were closest to Labour out of the three main parties didn't switch their allegiance to the Tories or the Lib Dems.  The corresponding figure for the Conservatives is 83.8%.  This means that over time, whilst around 16% of Conservative supporters shifted their preference, only 11.5% of Labour supporters did.  This might sound a relatively small difference; yet as the Conservatives found out in 2010, they failed to recoup the vital 3-5% of the electorate they needed to get a majority.

There are of course many other reasons why the Tories haven't won since 1992: bad leadership, bad policies and, whilst it lasted, a booming economy.  But the above data suggests another important reason: Tory supporters are more likely than Labour ones to switch their political allegiance.  And with the rise of UKIP, for David Cameron things - surely -  can only get worse.

Contribution and three questions for the left on welfare

This is a quick piece provoked by a discussion I’ve been following on Twitter today, revolving around whether or not Labour should structure its welfare policy around the contributory principle.

There are genuine and valid concerns being raised about the contributory principle.  Mainly, what about those who can’t contribute much/at all: young people, carers, disabled people and so on.  For many on the left, contribution should not be the governing principle at the heart of the welfare state.

What I want to briefly argue here is that people on the left should be arguing for contribution.  And this applies to two different groups: those who see contribution as an end in itself and those who should see it as a means towards the kind of welfare state they want.  To my mind, this position follows logically from the answers to three questions.

1. What kind of welfare state does the left want?

While there is a small but vocal wing on the left who are generally supportive of the existing welfare state (probably with more done on work incentives and labour market policies), I think there is a majority on the left (split between the ‘Blue Labour’ and traditional social democratic wings) who want to radically change the welfare state to win back public support for social security.  This generally involves a desire to see more generous benefits, the protection against new social risks and properly funded and dignified back-to-work and training programmes.  While there are differences and disagreements, I think more unites these two wings of the left on welfare than divides them.  In general, this is an argument for welfare expansion.

2. Where do the public stand on this vision?

Now this is where welfare policy gets tricky.  Public attitudes to welfare are volatile.  While there is a strong level of residual support for the idea of a welfare state, it is surely the case that any talk of ‘welfare expansion’ will fall on deaf – and hostile – ears.  There is thus a profound gap here between what many on the left want and where a large majority of the public tend to stand.  Which leads to question 3):

3. How do you expand welfare when the public are against your ideas?

Amongst those on the economic right of Labour, the response to this question has been: ‘you can’t’.  The nature of this strategy is to see public attitudes as immobile and predetermined. 

But this is the wrong strategy; not only is it defeatist and ignorant of the recent history of public attitudes, but it ignores the reality that, often, public opinion responds to what politicians say, and not vice versa.  Many on the left should thus see their vision of welfare expansion as ultimately possible.

However – and this is where contribution is important – this will take some time.  Shifting public attitudes is a long-term game and needs to be done incrementally.  Margaret Thatcher knew this.  The residual, stigmatising welfare state we have today is the end product of a 30 year journey.  When Thatcher first came to power, her radical plans to scale back social security were opposed by large swathes of the population.  In response, the governments of the 1980s and early 1990s implanted ideas and introduced change slowly.  Ultimately, as the present system testifies, they were victorious.

Labour should learn these lessons of history when it comes to welfare.  The road to a radically different and more generous welfare state will be long.  Contribution – while opposed by many on the left for good reasons – offers a way of increasing public support for welfare whilst boosting the protective powers of social security.  Whether Ed Miliband proceeds with this idea could define Labour’s election in 2015.

Does income equality make us happier?

I've been interested in the central claims of The Spirit Level for quite a while now.  And for those who have been in a bunker since 2009, its authors - the epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett - argue that the level of income inequality in a society determines a wide range of health and social problems.  Reducing income inequality, then, is a proposed cure for a whole batch of social ills.

I think in general The Spirit Level has increased the standard of debate around inequality.  No longer do we think of inequality in crass economic terms: will a bit more inequality make everyone a little bit richer?  Now we think about the social costs of inequality.  And part of this is how inequality makes us feel.

One of the key arguments of the pro-equality lobby is that high levels of inequality make us feel bad.  We might feel an injustice that others get so much more than us.  We might feel uncomfortable in places where people are different to us.  We might feel shame that we can't afford what others so easily can.

Turning this on its head, the opposite should also be true.  We should feel better when other people - especially those around us - are similar to us.  The world should appear more just, we should feel more comfortable and less ashamed of our social status.  But to what extent is this true?  Does higher equality make us happier?

Fortunately, data from the (now defunct) Citizenship Survey allow us to explore this further.  There is an interesting question from 2010 that asks people whether their friends earn a similar amount to them:

Subsequently, we can split people's answers into two categories: a) people who have friends who all have similar incomes to them (1) and b) people who don't (2-4).  In practice, 27% of the survey's respondents fall into category (a): what we might call the 'equal' group.  When we examine these groups against their average level of life satisfaction, we can see if there are any systematic differences.

In the Citizenship Survey, life satisfaction (once reversed) is measured on a scale of 1 - 5: where 1 equals 'very dissatisfied' and 5 equals 'very satisfied'.  The average score for the whole sample in the survey (11,063 people) is 4.1.  So where do the 'equal' and 'unequal' groups fit in?

As it turns out, the 'equal' group - those people whose friends have similar incomes to them - have an average life satisfaction score of 4.2.  The 'unequal' group - those who tend to have friends with different incomes to them (whether higher or lower) - have an average score of 4.1.

This is a relatively small difference, but it could be an important one.  And when we look at relationships like this we want to know whether such a difference is due to other factors.  It could turn out, for example, that having friends with similar incomes is correlated with other things we know increase life satisfaction: religion, where you live, age or having children.  So the next step is to assess the effect of equality on life satisfaction using multiple regression techniques that control for a whole range of variables that we also think are important for happiness.  In my model, this includes labour market status, education level, age, gender, region, income, religion and ethnicity.

Once we've done this, the results still suggest that having a strong level of equality within your group of friends is linked to a higher level of life satisfaction.  The effect is not huge (but it is statistically significant).  It is about a third of the size of the effect that marriage has on life satisfaction and a quarter of the size that having a job has.  If you want to be happy then, perhaps the old adage is true.

And don't make friends with bankers.