Middle class and broke: new polls issue 208 | july 2013 july 208 | issue

www.prospect-magazine.co.uk july 2013 | £4.50 Britain’s folly in Syria britain’s folly in syria in folly britain’s Plus The Da Vinci delusion Clive James Unions—their great failure david goodhart What’s wrong with France? christine ockrent We’re all Machiavelli now jonathan powell Poet of postwar Britain jonathan coe

True cost of EU exit: Richard Lambert In 1912 Malcolm Campbell christened his car “Blue Bird” and a legend was born. More than 100 years later this iconic marque continues to challenge for world speed records using futuristic electric vehicles. Christopher Ward is proud to be the Official Timing Partner for Bluebird and, to celebrate our partnership we have released this exceptional timepiece in a limited edition of 1,912 pieces.

174_ChristopherWard_Prospect.indd 1 10/06/2013 08:16 174_ChristopherWard_Prospect.indd 2 10/06/2013 08:16 We explore further.

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0613 Prospect G PM 07.indd 1 10/06/2013 16:42 prospect july 2013 3 Foreword Give us the real EU figures 5th Floor, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET Publishing 020 7255 1281 Editorial 020 7255 1344 Fax 020 7255 1279 Email [email protected] [email protected] Website www.prospectmagazine.co.uk Editorial Editor and chief executive Bronwen Maddox Editor at large David Goodhart Deputy editor James Elwes There is a particular intense look that Nick Clegg has when Managing editor Jonathan Derbyshire Books editor David Wolf he tells you just how many jobs Britain will lose if it leaves Creative director David Killen Production editor Jessica Abrahams the European Union. “Three million,” he says, his eyes Online editor Daniel Cohen Editorial assistants David Anderson, Daniel bright with certainty, marking each syllable with a slice of Bowman, Mirren Gidda, Matt Wolfson his hand. Publishing President & co-founder Derek Coombs But he has no grounds to be so sure (although his own Commercial director Alex Stevenson job, as the coalition’s most outspoken voice in favour of Publishing consultant David Hanger Circulation marketing director Yvonne EU membership, might be an early casualty of a UK exit). Dwerryhouse Digital marketing: Tim De La Salle Neither does David Cameron, in declaring the present Director of sales Iain Adams 020 7255 1934 arrangements intolerable for this country without the Advertising sales manager Dan Jefferson 020 7255 1934 renegotiation of the “terms of membership” on which he has now embarked. When Head of partnerships and events Adam Bowie 020 7255 1934 pressed on whether Britain’s membership is overall a cost or a benefit, ministers Finance manager Pauline Joy and civil servants scrabble for the few studies that have so far attempted an answer, Editorial advisory board David Cannadine, Clive Cowdery, AC or brandish scattered statistics from the pro and anti Europe camps, based on Grayling, Peter Hall, John Kay, Peter Kellner, Nader Mousavizadeh, Toby Mundy, Robin assumptions so different as to make comparison nonsensical. Niblett, Jean Seaton Richard Lambert (p36) has conducted an impressive review of this scrappy, Associate editors Hephzibah Anderson, Tom Chatfield, treacherous battle as part of his passionate defence of Britain remaining a full James Crabtree, Andy Davis, Edward Docx, David Edmonds, Sam Knight, Ian Irvine, member of the EU. That is a case with which I strongly agree—and for the same Sam Leith, Emran Mian, Elizabeth Pisani, reasons as he gives. Looking at the likely impact on growth immediately following Wendell Steavenson, James Woodall Contributing editors a British exit, contrary to all the hyperbolic claims, there is not a strong case either Philip Ball, Anthony Dworkin, Josef Joffe, way (and Clegg take note—the claims about jobs immediately lost do not spring Anatole Kaletsky, Michael Lind, Joy Lo Dico, Erik Tarloff from any solid survey). Similarly, claims about the cost, or benefit, of “red tape” Annual subscription rates to business pull both ways; again, little good work has yet been done. But one UK £49; Student £27 Europe £55; Student £32.50 powerful argument is that Britain would lose its appeal to foreign investment; the Rest of the World £59.50; Student £35 Prospect Subscriptions, 800 Guillat Avenue, effect would take a few years to be pronounced, but the impact on growth and jobs Kent Science Park, Sittingbourne, me9 8gu Tel 0844 249 0486; 44(0)1795 414 957 then hard to reverse. Fax 01795 414 555 Think tanks and academics are now embarking on more thorough studies, but Email [email protected] Website www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/subscribe none has completed a proper “audit”—and the government has not even started. Cheques payable to Prospect Publishing Ltd. Subscription refunds must be made in This is no basis on which to ask British people to vote “In” or “Out” in 2017. This writing to Prospect within four weeks of a government—not least because of the clash of views within the coalition—owes new order or renewal, and are subject to an administration charge of £15. No refunds are the UK a proper review, driven by a cross-party parliamentary commission. That paid on quarterly subscriptions. should look at the status quo, an exit (and the alternatives for that), and the ways The views represented in this magazine are not necessarily those of Prospect Publishing of improving the single market if Britain stayed in, such as properly opening up Ltd. Best endeavours have been taken in all the market for services—hugely of benefit to this country. cases to represent faithfully the views of all contributors and interviewees. The publisher All this is not to say that a role in the EU should be judged in purely economic accepts no responsibility for errors, omissions or the consequences thereof. terms. Britain gains in its influence in the world from its membership (seeThe Newstrade distribution Syria Trap, p22). It is a delusion of an old-fashioned kind of Atlanticism to Seymour Distribution Ltd 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT think that the United States would pay as much attention to the UK if it quit the Tel: 020 7429 4000 European club. And this country gains from the reinforcement of shared values

Images and culture across the European continent. All the same, the battle that has begun Cover image: James Harkin Cartoons by: Grizelda, Royston, Logan, is being fought in a storm of spurious economic claims. Give us the real numbers— Aaron, AT, MT, Len, Wilbur, Roger Latham and start the work on them now.

ISSN: 13595024 prospect july 2013 5 Contents July 2013

This month Features Arts & books 06 If I ruled the world richard branson 22 The Syria trap 66 Postwar poet 08 Recommends Is Britain’s plan to arm the rebels a Is David Kynaston an objective historian? jonathan coe 10 Letters dangerous mistake? james harkin 70 Heroic absurdity of Dan Brown plus stephen collins’s cartoon strip. His new book is almost worth reading. Opinions clive james 71 More human than you think 14 Whistleblowing on spies Richard Rogers has the answers. geoffrey robertson adam gopnik 15 Reform the Lords 74 The great divide nigel farage Don’t make the NHS into a market. 15 Pick your own laws david owen diane roberts 75 Books in brief 17 Politics and the Bank of England paul tucker 18 Will China reabsorb Taiwan? 30 Middle-class survivalism Fiction jessica abrahams The government has you in its 76 Nate’s pain is now 19 Leave me alone sights. andy davis sam lipsyte terry eagleton plus Fearing for our future peter kellner Life

and The fightback 80 Leith on life david boyle Negotiating the man hug. sam leith

20 What if...? 81 Life of the mind andrew adonis The truth of body language. anna blundy Science 81 Matters of taste Brooklyn foodies. 58 Gene machines 36 Exit? It’ll cost us wendell steavenson Revolutionary The EU is a drag, but leaving would 82 Wine future of DNA be worse. richard lambert Will Puglia come good? “origami.” barry smith philip ball 42 Bad job for Britain 83 DIY investment Trade unions are failing the Who shrank my pension? low-paid. david goodhart andy davis

Special report: smarter cities 48 Invisible republic Endgames 61 Can technology turn a metropolis The travails of François Hollande. into a utopia? christine ockrent 84 The generalist didymus leo hollis 84 Enigmas & puzzles ian stewart 62 Equality through technology 52 The art of power 87 The Prospect List Our pick of events. rick robinson Machiavelli makes a treacherous 64 The world’s most intelligent city guide. jonathan powell 88 The way we were robert bell Western visitors to China. ian irvine

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Android Store 6 prospect july 2013 If I ruled the world Richard Branson

We should be in the business of business

ducation is the key to creating the companies of the ground, not just learn about business theory. future, making business a force for good and providing So many people around the world do not have access to edu- opportunities around the globe. So if I ruled the world, cation. There are 61m children of primary school age who don’t, I would introduce some major changes into the way we and who are at an immediate disadvantage as they try to make Eperceive education. I’d want more focus on real-life learning, lis- their way in the world. If these children could get practical educa- tening and mentoring. There would be less emphasis on memo- tion, they would have the chance to develop skills to innovate, solve rising dates and textbooks, which are of little practical use. problems and help ensure that the next generations in their com- I didn’t like school and I never went to university, but coming munities don’t find themselves in the same position. from this different perspective has helped me to see the crucial We need policies that will give people the opportunity to learn role education can play. As a dyslexic who didn’t excel in the class- and to create environments that stimulate brilliant ideas. Online room, I have seen how education can have a negative impact if platforms such as Khan Academy are allowing students to access support isn’t given—but it can also be the inspiration for bright skills at the click of a button and should be promoted further. new talents. I recently met a fellow dyslexic entrepreneur, 22-year- By harnessing the rapid development of technology, we should old Mick Spencer. He’s short-sighted, could never read the board be able to provide high-quality education to previously remote at school, and soon realised he didn’t want to work for anyone else. places, and in new and exciting ways. He started his own business washing windows and now runs Aus- I would place greater emphasis upon nurturing practical tralia’s fastest growing lifestyle brand—OnTheGo. He’s proved to skills. Despite running a global brand, I didn’t learn be far-sighted in business. the difference between net and gross until I was Similarly, entrepreneurial spirit was not encouraged at my 50. Providing financial literacy and basic business school. When I was trying to get Student Magazine off the education in schools could help people manage ground, bringing in advertisers using the school phone their everyday finances, from credit card bills to box, my headmaster told me I couldn’t continue to run balancing books, and stimulate a new apprecia- the publication and carry on studying. So I decided to tion of how business can have a positive impact leave and pursue my dreams of running a business on individuals and communities. that could make a positive difference to people’s lives. I would also introduce a new approach to Instead of seeing entrepreneurship in opposition mentorship. Rather than talking down to peo- to formal education, the two should complement ple, mentoring should be a two-way street where each other. In the UK we support Start-Up the teachers and students learn from each other. Loans, a scheme to give young entre- This would promote more understanding and preneurs financial support and mutual appreciation of people from other back- mentorship. Students (rightly) get grounds, and a more educated population. loans and grants to attend univer- Education isn’t just what happens inside sity—why shouldn’t young people schools, it should be encouraged in with exciting business ideas get businesses, homes—wherever there the same opportunity? are people who want the opportunity This could be introduced to learn new skills and develop fresh at a younger age, too. Young ideas. Enterprise and Virgin Money As well as provoking more busi- run initiatives in the UK, ness creation and creating the jobs of which could be replicated tomorrow, education can help people around the world, that give reconcile their differences and help children very small sums of create a better, more caring environ- money and challenge them ment for everyone. As Nelson Man- to go out and make a profit. dela said: “Education is the most If this kind of entrepreneur- powerful weapon which you can ial zeal were encouraged, use to change the world.” more brilliant businesses Richard Branson is a busi- would come to the fore. nessman, philanthropist There need to be more and founder of the Virgin programmes to help peo- Group of around 400 ple get companies off the companies

8 prospect july 2013 Prospect recommends Five things to do this month

Both works are meditations Art on mortality: the Bach a portrait of physical torment and spiritual Mexico: A revolution in art release; the Shostakovich an essay 1910-1940 on the moral responsibility of an The Royal Academy, from 6th July artist and a tribute to the aus- Mexico’s greatest 20th-century tere beauty of Mussorgsky’s opera poet, Octavio Paz, called his coun- Boris Godunov and the translucent try’s revolution of 1910 “a return to cadences of Mahler’s symphony the source… a rebeginning.” He Das Lied von der Erde. Famous for was speaking as much about the his operatic collaborations with art that the revolution inspired as composer John Adams, Sellars’s the recovery of a spirit and sense most intimate work is his most of identity that reached back to powerful. After the success of his before the Spanish conquest. 2004 staging of Bach’s “Ich habe An unusual summer show at the genug” with the late, great Lor- Royal Academy focuses on an raine Hunt Lieberson, music-lov- explosive 30 years of Latin-Amer- ers will not want to miss this. ican history through the works of Anna Picard key Mexican modernist painters: Carnival in Huejotzingo, 1939, by José Chávez Morado many of whom did their best work not on canvasses but on the sides Mansour had to shoot street scenes Director Nick Bagnall and of buildings. giving walkie-talkie directions to actor Garry Cooper both have form Dance This has not prevented the a male crew from a parked van— for bracing, site-specific Shake- Political Mother exhibition from bringing together she reveals, often with a sharp wit, speare. Their promenade produc- Sadler’s Wells, 3rd-7th July free-standing pictures by the a society on the point of change. tion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream The first full-length work from famous muralists, Diego Rivera, At school, for instance, the head- in 2011 was staged in Malton town choreographer Hofesh Schecter José Clemente Orozco and David mistress is a controlling glamour- centre, and had Bottom and Tita- premiered at the Brighton Festi- Alfaro Siqueiros (los tres grandes, puss whose affairs are the subject nia reclining on a stack of pallets val in 2010. Such was its impact, “the three greats,” as they’re of widespread gossip, yet the girls in the market square. Their Henry Schecter, an inveterate tinkerer, known). There’s also a portrait by cannot sit in the courtyard between VI, performed on simple 16th-cen- produced a longer version for a Frida Kahlo, who, though matur- lessons lest builders on an adjacent tury-style stages, is less experimen- now legendary performance at ing at the end of the exhibition’s building glimpse them. tal, but no less ambitious. All three Sadler’s Wells. To claim that Politi- era, has come to define a certain The film pedals along slowly at plays are performed in one sitting, cal Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut mythic strain in mid-20th-century first but gathers speed for a sur- with the first installment start- changed the face of modern dance Mexican painting. Works on show prisingly emotional payoff. With its ing around midday, and the last is no overstatement. by Philip Guston, Tina Modotti sharp and surprising portrait of life at dusk. Above the stage, a ranting dic- and others vibrantly demonstrate in the Middle East, it’s no surprise Laura Marsh tator delivers hoarse, indecipher- how excited many foreigners were to learn the producers behind the able speeches, in between shards by this radical art from so unex- film also made the superb Acad- of percussion and electric guitar, pected a source. emy Award-nominated movies Par- Classical music to a succession of shuffling, loping James Woodall adise Now and Waltz with Bashir. figures below. The rhythmic pat- Francine Stock Michelangelo Sonnets by terns of movement suggest prison Shostakovich systems from the chain gangs of Manchester International Festival, Angola to the horrors of Treblinka Film 4th, 5th and 7th July and Auschwitz, with the inmates Wadjda Theatre Glance at the listings for Manches- staggering and trembling their way On release from 19th July Battlefield performances of ter International Festival (MIF) through existence. They dig, they Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) a Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays and you might assume that the crawl, they lope around in circles, resourceful 10-year-old in jeans Various locations. July to August. Michelangelo Sonnets staged by they shake their fists at the sky. and trainers, sits after school play- Full of alarums and battles, Peter Sellars in the Albert Memo- By colliding the relentless ing games with her father while her Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays are rial Hall are those set to music by aural assault of a rock gig with mother is out at work. Beyond the perfectly suited to open-air per- Benjamin Britten. Wrong. While the twisted human architecture front gate women must be robed formance. The Globe Theatre’s the rest of Britain celebrates the of dance, Schecter created an and veiled. Haaifa al-Mansour’s decision to stage these plays at centenary of its most successful entirely new form. Where bold film—the first to be shot entirely the battlefield sites of the Wars composer, MIF is exploring Shos- dancemakers such as Michael inside Saudi Arabia—focuses on of the Roses is inspired. There takovich’s enigmatic 1974 set- Clark and DV8 had skirmished Wadjda’s reckless quest to own will be performances at Towton, ting of Michelangelo’s poems in with similar ideas, Schecter ram- and ride a bicycle on the streets, Tewkesbury, St Albans, and Bar- a performance piece for the dis- raided cultural barriers wield- an activity that was banned until net. These are Shakespeare’s earli- tinguished African-American bass- ing a formidable arsenal of anger, April this year and only permitted est attempts at history, played out baritone Eric Owens and organist humanity and an unyielding con- now in chaperoned areas. It is also with huge casts and encompassing Cameron Carpenter that includes tempt for despotic political sys- the first Saudi film directed by a the stories of Joan of Arc, peasant Bach’s solo cantata “Ich will den tems of every hue. Be brave and go.

© phoenix art museum art phoenix © woman. Constrained in public—al- revolt and political machinations. Kreuzstab gerne tragen.” Neil Norman

10 prospect july 2013 Letters

Making a contribution for, adequate long-term care costs fortunately premised on alleged ing and shaming” of companies covered fairly, and an ever-rising chronic budget deficits since 1948 and individuals, and opening up For too long, politicians declined to NHS bill met, then costs will rise. (disputable mainly because of ac- the books of Ftse 100 companies debate the shift from contributory In my proposals, taxpayers as con- counting on capital items) and to scrutiny, would be a powerful (and universal) benefits towards tributors would control these bud- also on his assumption that an deterrent. Other measures might means-testing. Philip Collins’s gets, and therefore how much they insurance model of healthcare ef- include policing the tax system article (“Who benefits?”, June) is paid in and received back (in pay- fectively checks costs—but just more aggressively, by ensuring the therefore welcome. But the very ments and services). look at the United States! Revenue has the right staff with the real “tension between equality and To have a fair contributory wel- Peter Clarke, author of “Hope and right skills to challenge the tax ar- contribution” is perhaps not as in- fare state also provides the basis for Glory: Britain 1900-2000” rangements of multinational com- soluble as he suggests. Egalitarians limited but transparent redistribu- panies; making tax simplification reject means-testing as a divisive tion. Eligibility would be based on Philip Collins and Frank Field an urgent priority; denying public mechanism that narrows social financial contributions but, in my highlight how means testing has sector contracts to companies en- security’s diverse functions to poor scheme, individuals performing become increasingly dominant in gaged in aggressive tax avoidance; relief. The contributory principle— functions which society values but the welfare system. Labour is right, and drawing up a new code of con- provided it’s interpreted inclusively for which they are not paid, such therefore, to ask how the social in- duct to prevent big accountancy and includes unpaid care as con- as providing care, would have their surance function can be brought firms helping government devise tribution—offers stronger social contributions covered. However, back to the fore. A social security tax law and then advising their cli- protection, including for women in the principle that welfare needs system worth the name should ents how to get round it. This is the couples who benefit from individ- to be earned would remain crystal provide protection at key moments kind of tough action we need from ual entitlement. We look to more clear. The advantages to social co- in life: losing a job, having a baby, the Prime Minister, whatever the progressive taxation and national hesion are clear. retiring from work. But financing outcome of the G8 summit. The insurance contributions to achieve Frank Field, Labour MP such protection will require reduc- fight against tax avoidance must be vertical redistribution. ing demand for welfare and priori- fought on both fronts. Ruth Lister, House of Lords The problem of financing the wel- tising scarce resources. Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the fare state is not just financial.S ince Graeme Cooke, IPPR Public Accounts Committee Philip Collins poses two major the Beveridge era we have lost sight objections to an insurance-based of the significance of the contribu- Tough action on tax Paul Collier’s article highlights the welfare system. One is cost and the tory principle. This proclaimed a difficulty in judging what is appro- other is that such a move would reciprocal relationship based on International co-operation to priate tax planning on the part of limit welfare’s redistributory pow- common citizenship, whereas the tackle tax avoidance, through in- a corporation. The Italian multi- ers, which the centre-left values. Poor Law had reduced its clients stitutions like the G8, is vital (Paul national, Fiat Industrial, recently The cost of an insurance-based to the status of paupers, depen- Collier, “Cracking down on tax announced the decision to move its welfare system is one which ought dent on handouts. Frank Field’s avoidance,” June). However, there location from Italy to the not-well to be given over to the contributors interesting alternative strategy is action the government could and known “tax haven” of Basildon in to decide. If pensions are to be paid (“Here’s my answer,” June) is un- should take at home now: “nam- the UK. The move is to achieve BROADBAND IS BROADBAND IS BROADBAND, RIGHT? WRONG.

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You’ll need to be in range of a BT Wi-fi hotspot, have a wireless device and register for BT Wi-fi . Our Fair Use Policy and terms and conditions apply. £1.15 a day is based on BT Infi nity for business Option 2 for £35 a month on a 24 month contract. 12 prospect july 2013 a lower tax cost for the business, dren commit such serious offences Monbiot’s wild imagination from Italy’s corporate rate of 31 that they will remain of interest to per cent to the UK’s lower rate, the authorities in later life. For the George Monbiot’s strange fanta- In fact which is planned to be reduced to rest, wiping the slate clean upon sies about a return to the wild and 20 per cent by 2015. Is this an ex- turning 18 would ensure that young the “rediscovery” of his atavistic The average British motorist will ample where, as Collier suggests, people already struggling in the instincts (“Call of the wild,” June) spend 14 weeks looking for a parking there should be “public condemna- current economic climate do not perhaps tell us more about their space over a lifetime. tion of those who pay low tax,” or face additional obstacles to a stable author than about humankind. As AOL, 28th May 2013 an example of the reality, which is and productive adulthood. Walter Russell Mead has argued that a company will generally seek Andrew Neilson, Director of in Prospect (“The last savages,” In a recent survey, almost one-fifth to minimise expenses, and that tax Campaigns, the Howard League for February), today’s globalised of primary school children said they is a business expense? Penal Reform urban dwellers are the true in- thought the main ingredient in fish Andrew Christensen, online heritors of the curious, acquisi- fingers was chicken. Introduce online voting tive Stone Age groups who laid The Telegraph, 3rd June Erm, no the foundations of modern hu- All of Lucy Webster’s points about man civilisation. Monbiot, like his Up to half of all the food produced It is a pity that David Frum spoiled wheelchair accessibility at poll- 19th-century missionary and an- globally ends up as waste each year. his otherwise excellent review of ing stations are valid (“Get us to thropologist predecessors, wraps Factors include unnecessarily strict Charles Moore’s superb biography the ballot box,” June), but I won- Orientalist constructions around sell-by dates and consumer demand of Margaret Thatcher (“Voice of der whether she goes far enough. the Masai and others he “ob- for cosmetically perfect food. the future,” June) by asserting that My local polling station in Milton serves,” which do nothing more The Guardian, 10th January 2013 the issue that precipitated her fall Keynes is “reasonably accessible” than objectify them as strange, was her refusal to set a timetable to me (as a wheelchair user). Nev- unchanging primitives. Monbiot’s According to its own figures, YouTube for British entry into the European ertheless I have long opted for a fantasies, however “progressive” has 1bn unique monthly visitors, or Exchange Rate Mechanism. postal ballot, mainly because I he believes himself to be, express 15 per cent of the planet. She was in fact Prime Minister can’t physically fill in a ballot paper only the desires of the elite class Bloomberg TV, 5th June when Britain entered the ERM in without assistance. In other words, to dominate their environment October 1990. And her objection I not only have to tell someone else and all who move within it. About a third of students admitted to to setting a timetable for Britain how I wish to vote, I also have to Simon Jarrett, Harrow the University of Cambridge last year to enter the euro was never a prob- rely on them to place my cross in were privately educated—the lowest lem, as the opt-out enshrined in the the right place. This is far from ide- The left should love Burke proportion since the 1980s. Maastricht Treaty demonstrated. al, but it is more dignified to do it in The Telegraph, 23rd May 2013 David Hannay, House of Lords the privacy of my home than in the In his article (“A conservative in public space of the polling station. his bones,” June) AC Grayling Dom Pérignon is named after a Time after time The ability to vote online or via settles for the same caricature of Benedictine monk who was cellar a smart phone seems to be some Burke peddled by his devotees on master at the Abbey of Hautvillers Jessica Abrahams’s excellent ar- way off in the UK. However, this the right. Burke’s concern for vic- and died in 1715. The champagne ticle (“A life sentence,” June) high- would be another significant step tims of imperial injustices in India wasn’t created until the 20th century. lights one of the weakest links in forward in allowing disabled people and Ireland was unparalleled in New York Times, 28th September the rehabilitation revolution. As to exercise their democratic right, his day, though it earned him few 2012 a mentor to several ex-offenders via a ballot that is truly secret. friends in Britain (“I know what struggling to find work I am acute- John Durkin, Buckinghamshire I am doing,” he wrote, “whether Carbon emissions actually help ly aware of the barrier to employ- the white people like it or not.”) to make the earth greener, by ment caused by the requirement to No shock here His political commitments were stimulating photosynthesis and disclose ancient convictions. born not of any indifference to the increasing vegetation—but this The solution is to carry out a In his review of new books on the vulnerable or to social justice but may not outweigh the negative root and branch review of the Re- challenges China is facing today, from an epistemic modesty that consequences of global warming. habilitation of Offenders Act 1974, (“The shock of the truth,” June) can be affirmed as readily from New Scientist, 5th June 2013 which established the principle Jonathan Mirsky maintains that the left as from the right. that convictions can become spent. if these books were allowed into Jennifer Pitts, University of Millionaire households in the US The problem, even after last year’s China, Chinese readers would Chicago raked in $80m in unemployment adjustments to this act, is that the be “astounded” by the “damag- benefits during the economic restrictions on being eligible for le- ing judgements” of these western Global thinkers downturn, due to a lack of means gal rehabilitation are too tight and experts. My observations and testing in federal aid programmes. the qualifying periods are still too discussions with Chinese friends I am bemused by your list of top Bloomberg, 5th April 2013 long. Ex-offenders who comply ful- in Beijing bring me to a different thinkers (May). Seventeen out of ly with the new probation regimes conclusion. The issues the books 65 (26 per cent) are economists. should be incentivised by fast track raise—environmental degrada- If these guys are top thinkers why opportunities to have their convic- tion, decaying social morals, his- is the world economic system so tions “spent” more swiftly. torical amnesia—are the same ones out of control? One would have Jonathan Aitken, former MP that Chinese people are struggling thought that all this brain power with on a daily basis. Much of the would be able to come up with a Jessica Abrahams is quite right to Chinese public these days harbour solution. However, I am gratified highlight the many ways in which little illusion about the woeful state to see science next: 25 per cent. criminal record disclosures can of their society. Similar diagnoses There’s hope yet! hinder people getting on with their from western voices will more likely Denis Brook, Huddersfield lives. A good next step in reforming offer them an affirmation of their the system would be to consider the own judgements than give them Have your say: Email letters@ “They’re trying not to increase plight of those convicted of crimes “the shock of the truth.” prospect-magazine.co.uk. More at: their own pay” while children. Only a very few chil- Helen Gao, Beijing www.prospectmagazine.co.uk ‘BE THE BEST’ ‘BE THE BEST’ THEY WHISPER .

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50283-35 Thatchers Be the Best SPECTATOR 276x210.indd 1 23/04/2013 14:17 14 prospect july 2013 Opinions Havens for spies 14 Reform the red benches 15 Picking and chosing laws 15 Trusting in money 17 A free Taiwan? 18 No emails please 19 What if...? 20

Geoffrey Robertson Hiding whistleblowers Politicians are patsies for the security services

Whistleblowers like Edward Snowden can shows that Putin is no friend to whistleblow- could not be extradited from London with- run—but his own revelations about United ers. Iceland is vulnerable to US pressure. out final approval from Strasbourg, which States surveillance indicate that he cannot A fugitive might be better off, both legally was the problem with Abu Qatada. In Snow- hide. People who reveal such secrets, rather and in quality-of-life terms, in Europe—in den’s case, it is hard to see how the sup- than having criminal motives, act out of con- Germany, say, where politicians are upset posed obtaining by GCHQ of 197 Prism data science—in his case to reveal an eavesdrop- that Prism subjects non-Americans to forms reports on British subjects, collected by the ping operation on such a scale that the public of surveillance that cannot be imposed on US NSA without any oversight, could square in his own democracy and others should have citizens without a court order. Article 10 of with the UK’s statutory data and surveillance a right to know about it, at least in the gen- the European Convention on Human Rights requirements. Moreover, William Hague’s eral terms in which he has described Prism. protects journalists much more securely Commons statement about “the strong There is no evidence that he has put lives than the over-vaunted First Amendment, framework of democratic accountability at risk. But the US reacts badly to the spill- under which prosecutors can put journal- and oversight that governs the use of secret ing of its secrets and goes to great lengths to ists in jail for refusing to reveal their sources. intelligence in the UK” sounds disingenuous punish whistleblowers. Where could a US The European Court of Human Rights holds in Strasbourg, where “democratic account- whistleblower be safe from extradition and that whistleblower protection is necessary ability” means authorisation by independ- the ensuing trial under the 1917 Espionage for the “watchdog” function of investigative ent judges, not by populist politicians who, Act, from which might follow a long stint in journalism. Moreover, that court has long whether Labour or Tory, rubber-stamp most a US “supermax” prison—possibly even the insisted that there must be no extradition to of the spooks’ requests. death penalty? the US when there is the remotest prospect This is the fatal flaw in the British law on Hong Kong, where Snowden says he will of a death penalty, or else if the likely punish- secret surveillance, from telephone tapping resist extradition, is not ideal—its “Court of ment does not fit the crime or involves inhu- to GCHQ’s electronic data collection. It is Final Appeal” is really a court of penultimate mane treatment. It could decide that the authorised by politicians who are security appeal, with decisions subject to reversal by severe sentence awaiting a whistleblower, for service patsies, rather than judges who are Beijing, which may find it convenient to deal making revelations of interest to the Euro- not. It is not, therefore, “authorised by law,” with the US. Pyongyang would offer safety, pean public, precludes extradition. other than in the sense of a law (the Regu- but North Korea is a gulag. Algeria, the ref- The Obama administration does not seem lation of Investigatory Powers Act) which uge of choice for American public enemies to grasp the damage done by its brutal treat- insists that only government ministers, like Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary in ment of Bradley Manning, the US army not independent judges, can sign warrants the 60s and 70s, wants CIA support against whistleblower. European lawyers would only for surveillance operations. Elsewhere in al Qaeda affiliates. Moscow beckons, but the need to instance the eight months of naked- Europe, and even in the US under the Patriot Magnitsky case (Sergei Magnitsky informed ness and intrusive cell surveillance suffered Act, warrants to intercept citizen messages on the crimes of state officials, for which he by Manning as an example of inhumane must be authorised by a judge. was detained in prison, where he was killed) treatment accorded to those charged under If Snowden’s allegations are true and the the 1917 Espionage Act to make extradition NSA spies on foreigners without needing a unlikely. Moreover, the Manning prosecutors warrant, and transmits the information to argue that the mere fact of communication of European agencies who do not go through information to the Guardian and Der Spiegel any authorisation procedure to obtain it, makes him guilty of communicating it to the then there is a gap in the legal protection for enemy, a claim that would breach Article 10. privacy in Europe. On this basis, intelligence The same argument was rejected as “oppres- whistleblowers who fly to Bonn or Brussels or sive” by a High Court judge in England dur- Strasbourg might find a disinclination on the ing a 1978 “official secrets trial,” pointing out part of the authorities to hand them over to that revealing details about GCHQ to a Time the US Marshals. Out journalist was not the equivalent of sell- Geoffrey Robertson QC is a former UN appeals ing it to the Russian embassy. judge. His latest book is “Mullahs Without A whistleblower might, on this basis, Mercy: Human Rights and Nuclear Weapons” The terrorist chant even be safe in the UK, because he or she (Biteback) prospect july 2013 opinions 15

Nigel Farage How to fix the Lords The Prime Minister had the answer—but it melted away

Let’s be honest: it isn’t going to happen. The would be due 24 peers out of the total of is not how it is designed—and it wasn’t— coalition has exhausted its energy for con- 790, as opposed to the three seats that it but whether it works. And by and large the stitutional meddling and, with a portman- currently holds in the upper house. When Lords has worked very well for centuries. It teau of failure, the last thing it needs is to ministers have been asked about this they may be an affront to the egalitarian mindset rake the perennial midden that is House have responded in the following way: “it of the 21st century. But the Lords has acted of Lords reform. Looking back, the coa- is for the Prime Minister to determine the as a far more coherent and successful oppo- lition’s idea was to abolish the lot of them number of nominations for life peerages.” sition to both the Conservative governments and replace them with a directly elected Or, “it is the government’s continued inten- of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and chamber. This idea was shelved due to the tion that Lords appointments will be made the Labour governments of Tony Blair and rebellious quarter on David Cameron’s with the objective of creating a second Gordon Brown, than Her Majesty’s Official backbenches. chamber that is reflective of the share of the Opposition in the Commons ever did. So to replace this idea he came up vote secured by the political parties in the Its quality, like so many of our institu- with another one: to have a proportionate last general election.” Or even, “my Lords, tions has been diminished by the stuffing of House of Lords—proportionate, that is, on the Prime Minister is still keeping it under the benches with failed and retired politi- the result of the previous election. Lords review.” cians. It cannot have passed people’s notice would still be appointed, but the appoint- When asked directly by Lord Pearson, that the recent lobbying scandal that has ments would reflect the vote share across one of Ukip’s three peers, this is how the washed around the Woolsack has exclu- the country. Indeed Lord Strathclyde, the Prime Minister responded: “At present, I sively involved this class of peer. former leader of the Conservatives in the am afraid I am not intending to increase But despite this element, the cross- Lords, stated that the government is “work- the number of Ukip peers, but I have noted bench peers, the Lords Spiritual (Bishops ing towards the objective of creating a sec- what you say in your letter.” of the Chursh of England), and experts in ond chamber that reflects the share of the So has he dropped the policy? His min- their various fields, enliven and invigor- votes secured by the political parties at the isters suggest not. Will he act on his pol- ate the debate. The presence of hereditary last general election.” icy? I suspect the Prime Minister words his peers provides the upper house with a sense All pretty clear. Whether it is a good letter well; what is clear is that he is afraid of continuity. idea or not is a moot point—it is stated pol- of a bank of Ukip peers sitting on the red The overall number of peers could use- icy. Except of course, it isn’t. It again is one benches making life even more difficult for fully be reduced to a more reasonable 500. of those fine sounding ideas that somehow his coalition than they are already doing to This could provide a space for those such as just melted away. But, if it were taken up, a themselves. Ukip, who are cut out of the national debate system like this would mean that the Green As to real root and branch reform, there through the failings of the first-past-the- party, and of course the United Kingdom is no doubt that a rational man or woman post electoral system. Independent party, would all have repre- who set out to design the revising cham- Most importantly, changes to the House sentation in the House of Lords. (The Scot- ber of any nation, let alone a great nation of Lords such as those suggested here tish National party would also benefit, if it such as ours, would not dream of suggest- could be made without sacrificing the odd, ended its refusal to go to the Lords.) ing a model like that of the House of Lords. organic constitutional growth that it is. In fact, under his stated rules, Ukip But surely the point of such an organisation Nigel Farage is leader of Ukip

Diane Roberts Hollowing out the centre Ignoring central government will not make it go away

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, any federal licensing rules or laws. If some Despite the US Supreme Court’s deci- recently told an Anglo-German confer- agent from the DC Bureau of Alcohol, sion upholding the constitutionality of ence that if national parliaments don’t Tobacco and Firearms comes to Kansas and “Obamacare,” South Carolina, and a pas- like a Brussels diktat they should be able tries to enforce US law on “Made in Kansas” sel of other conservative-run states, want to to show the “red card” to the European guns, he or she will be charged with a felony reject it as a violation of their “sovereignty.” Union. I wonder if he knows that US states and could face prison time. The historical term for defiance of cen- have been trying to kick Washington out Missouri, Alaska, Mississippi and 34 tral government by state governments is of the game for nearly 230 years. In April, other states have passed similar laws. Flor- nullification, though perhaps we should call the Kansas legislature passed the “Second ida and Illinois have banned federal drones the 21st century iteration neo-nullification. Amendment Protection Act,” contending over their territories (just in case), Texas The theory, as articulated by Senator John Kansans could manufacture and sell all wants to ignore the federal Clean Air Act, C Calhoun in the 1820s, asserts “the right the guns they like, and own as many Kan- while Arizona and Alabama mean to run of a State to interpose, in the last resort, in sas-made guns they want—even semi-auto- their own immigration policy in direct con- order to arrest an unconstitutional act of matic weapons—without being subject to flict with the national enforcement agency. the General Government.” Of course, it depends on what “unconstitutional” means nation, as the Confederacy claimed, or was Beavers might want to cast an eye on and who gets to decide. In 1828, Congress the federal government pre-eminent? Article Three of the Constitution, the one passed a tariff act aimed at protecting the Southern states were still denying the that explicitly grants the Supreme Court industrialising north from cheap imported children and grandchildren of slaves the the power to do exactly what she thinks it goods. Southern states protested that it right to vote more than 100 years after can’t. Perhaps she is confusing the Consti- hurt their profits, since the British had less General Lee surrendered at Appomattox tution with the earlier Articles of Confeder- money to buy their cotton. Though the tar- in 1865, morePage:1 than 100 years after the 13th ation, a “league of friendship” intended to iff was softened in 1832 under President Amendment, the one outlawing slavery, organize the 13 colonies against British rule. Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, his vice-pres- was ratified. WhileC ongress and the courts The 1777 version envisions a loose arrange- ident, resigned. Calhoun’s home state of keep reminding states that the “supremacy ment of self-governing states, which sounds South Carolina passed the Ordinance of clause” in Article Six of the US Constitu- much more like the EU dreamt of by the Nullification, declared the tariffs uncon- tion says that federal statutes—the Voting current Tory government than the US fed- stitutional, and called up militias to defend Rights Act of 1965, say, or the Patient Pro- eral system as it actually exists. In 1789, the against federal troops. tection and Affordable Care Act of 2010— Articles of Confederation were replaced by The nation, a mere 50 years old, was outrank state law, unreconstructed states’ the Constitution—the one (duly amended about to fall apart. In the end, the admin- rights types and Tea Partiers insist that to pursue radical ends such as allowing istration agreed to a new tariff bill, more their interpretation of the Constitution women to vote and guaranteeing equal pro- favourable to the plantation economy of gives them license to, well, invent a country tection under the law) we operate under the south, and the crisis faded—at least that doesn’t exist, one in which each state today. until 1860, when avowed enemy-of-slavery picks and chooses the laws it will follow and At a Jefferson Day dinner in 1830, Pres- Abraham Lincoln was elected president, ignores the judiciary altogether. ident Jackson raised his glass to “Our fed- and South Carolina made good on its threat The neo-nullification tendency profess eral union, it must be preserved!” Calhoun to secede from the union. Ten other states to revere the Constitution, but I see lit- replied with his own toast: “The union, next followed, igniting the bloodiest conflict in tle evidence that they’ve actually read it. to our liberty, the most dear!” America is, American history. Tennessee state Senator Mae Beavers says as it has always been, in dynamic tension The Civil War was supposed to settle, Washington has no right to regulate fire- between federal rule and states’ rights, but once and for all, America’s biggest consti- arms. Moreover, the US Supreme Court unless the neo-nullifiers actually want to tutional (and existential) questions: could is a “dictatorship.” She told the Tennes- enter into open rebellion against their own a nation whose founding documents pro- see Grand Assembly: “You think that the government, they must accept that they are claimed the “self-evident” truth that we are Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter subject to its laws. created equal and free tolerate the own- of any of these laws. I don’t believe that. I Diane Roberts is is a professor of English at ership of human beings by other human don’t believe it was ever granted the author- Florida State University and a commentator for beings? Was each state sovereign, a de facto ity under the Constitution.” National Public Radio prospect july 2013 opinions 17 Paul Tucker Banks and politicians Will society stand for decisions made by unelected central bankers?

Six years after the financial crisis began, lier this year gave the Bank responsibility for judgement-based approach, with less reli- changes are under way to reduce the likeli- supervising the financial soundness of banks, ance on rules or “box-ticking.” Rules-based hood of it happening again. Among them, building societies and insurers operating in regulators work on the basis of: first, write many countries have given greater powers to the UK—through a new arm called the Pru- rules; then, check compliance with those their central bank—although debate contin- dential Regulation Authority. To ensure that rules; finally, punish breaches. But in the ues about how best to do this. The relation- we look beyond individual firms, parliament past, banks’ management hardly stopped ship with the societies we serve as central also set up the new Financial Policy Commit- their staff from circumventing the rules. bankers has become more extensive, rais- Regulatory arbitrage—exploiting the gap ing questions about how we can demonstrate “It would be a fool’s between the spirit and the letter of the that we deserve the trust placed in us. regime—was at the heart of the problems A central bank can have a wide or nar- paradise to think we that led to the crisis. It would be a fool’s par- row set of functions, all centred on stabil- could write rules on the adise to think we could write a set of rules ity. At the Bank of England, the Monetary on the financial health of a bank, or on the Policy Committee (MPC) has a mandate to health of a bank, or the professional competence of bankers. Nor, maintain low and stable inflation. We have competence of bankers” as parliament has underlined, should we recently increased the transparency of our seek a zero-failure regime, in which regu- analysis so that people can see how we decide tee within the Bank, to enhance the resilience lators strive to ensure that banks never fail. on the extraordinary monetary measures of the financial system as a whole. These In a market economy, the failure of individ- we are taking in these extraordinary times. roles, for the first time brought together in ual firms has to be acceptable so long as they But the Bank now, once again has powers to legislation, touch every household and busi- can be wound down or reconstructed in an achieve and preserve stability in the banking ness in the UK—and beyond. orderly way without taxpayer support. system too, restoring and updating powers With the Bank of England once again At the level of individual firms, the Pru- it held previously. Legislation passed ear- supervising banks, we are returning to a dential Regulation Authority’s approach

Page:1 18 opinions prospect july 2013 to supervision entails making judgements ficing medium-term stability for short-term also, has to be global cooperation on finan- of the kind: “your bank isn’t as strong as you gain. But this is also why society is so inter- cial regulation. Although not fast, this is hap- think it is”; “you must cut back on the risk ested, rightly, in how unelected central bank- pening, and crucially with broad agreement in your book”; “I’m afraid you’re not fit to ers manage any short-term trade-offs. on how to sort out failing international banks run the bank.” And at the level of the system Part of the answer has to be transpar- without a taxpayer bailout. That requires as a whole, the Financial Policy Committee ency. Although much of the data on individ- laws to be passed and banks to be reorgan- will ask whether banks and markets are truly ual firms is confidential, the FinancialP olicy ised, but we can get there. Foreign countries safe. That will sometimes mean heading off Committee will be as transparent as possible, have an interest in the health of our banks, threats to stability coming from around the in line with parliament’s wishes. We will find and vice versa. The key policies on global next corner but one. ways of putting numbers around the degree finance are unavoidably international. As a This shift, from rules to judgement, of resilience the financial system needs. nation strongly committed to free trade and fundamentally changes the relationship Across the Bank’s functions, there is also open financial markets, we should welcome between the regulator and business. But is a deep question about the compatibility of that. society ready to return to a system of regu- domestic and global objectives. A country But we should be as transparent as pos- lation, centred on judgements by unelected cannot combine three different aims: cross- sible about how we go about international Bank of England officials, of risks that will border banking and an integrated interna- reform in the pursuit of stability. That is what not always be obvious to the general public? tional financial system supporting a global trust requires. And as a central bank, we are The best reason for entrusting these judge- economy in manufacturing and services; in the business of trust—trust in the value of ments to unelected officials in central banks financial stability; and national regulatory money. is that the task of achieving and preserv- policies focused solely on domestic stabil- Paul Tucker is Deputy Governor (Financial ing stability requires a focus on the medium ity. This issue came home to roost in the cri- Stability) at the Bank of England, and a member term, even though the steps taken to get sis, when apparently footloose global banks of the Steering Committee of the Group of there will sometimes affect the economy in failed but were bailed out by governments Twenty Financial Stability Board. He writes in a the short run. Politicians and other policy- answerable to national taxpayers. The solu- personal capacity, drawing on remarks made on makers might face the temptation of sacri- tion, not just for the UK but for our peers 28th May to the Institute for Government

Jessica Abrahams China’s one state solution Can Taiwan resist the economic pull of its mighty neighbour?

In May, a Taiwanese fisherman was shot When the Communist party seized con- Taiwan preferential treatment as a trading dead by the Philippine coast guard, having trol of the Chinese mainland in 1949, the pre- partner—China is now its single largest trad- entered disputed waters. In response, Tai- vious government, led by the Kuomintang, ing partner, buying about 40 per cent of its wan promptly embarked on naval exercises retreated to Taiwan off the eastern coast. exports. The Kuomintang, the party in power off the coast of theP hilippines. It was China’s Beyond military threats, relations were more for the past five years, is more in favour of reaction, however, that raised eyebrows else- or less non-existent. The People’s Republic of encouraging such links than the nationalist where: it quickly sent a flotilla to join them. China and the Republic of China (Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party. Last year, Tai- “China will not tolerate the shooting of our formal name) agreed that they were part of wan was designated a remnimbi clearing cen- fishermen,” declared an article in the Chi- the same country—but both claimed to be tre, following Hong Kong and Macau. And in nese newspaper, the Global Times. the legitimate government. Taiwan’s claim April, a day after Taiwan said it would relax There is an increasingly vocal debate to leadership became less convincing when, curbs on Chinese investment in its financial about whether Taiwan, for all its fierce sense in 1979, it lost its status as a member state sector, the Chinese bank ICBC announced of democratic freedoms and claims to nation- within the United Nations, and US recogni- plans to acquire a 20 per cent stake in one of hood, is being reabsorbed by China—and tion of its independence, too. As the Carter its largest banks. whether the government in Taipei since 2008 administration established diplomatic rela- Independence supporters have become is too easily letting this happen. The argu- tions with China, it terminated the Sino- uneasy, accusing the government of selling ment gets its force from the depth of the new American Mutual Defence Treaty, which had Taiwan to China or of becoming too depend- commercial ties springing up between Tai- guaranteed Taiwan US military protection. ent on it (although ministers point to new wan, with its own proud record of manufac- Under pressure from Beijing, few coun- free trade deals they are striking with other turing success, and the economic superpower tries still recognise Taiwan as an independent countries). But some Taiwanese—particu- which has suddenly arisen to its west. But state, although it has its own democratically- larly businessmen—argue that economic barriers of all kinds are vanishing between elected government, currency, economy, links make reunification inevitable: Taiwan the one-time adversaries. China does not armed forces and tax and education systems. will eventually become a province of China. recognise Taiwanese passports but residents Its citizens have a strong sense of national That is clearly China’s hope. It has called can now travel between the two using “com- pride; they make much of the cultural differ- for a “one country, two systems” solution patriot permits”: a Taiwanese friend of mine ences between themselves and the new tour- (echoing its policy on Hong Kong), sug- who recently visited mainland China on busi- ists arriving from the mainland, whom they gesting that, under reunification, Taiwan ness told me of her identity crisis when she often regard as impolite or unsophisticated. would lose its sovereignty but retain its arrived at the airport with her permit, unsure But the explosive growth of China’s econ- armed forces and have a senior representa- of whether to join the immigration queue for omy, as well as its new assertiveness, has tive in Beijing. But at the moment, its tac- “Chinese” or “foreigners.” She was given a changed things. Tourist routes have opened, tic appears to be to knit the two economies withering look when she asked for clarifica- Taiwanese TV channels have started report- together inextricably and to strengthen its tion and directed towards the Chinese queue. ing on the mainland, and Beijing has offered claim simply by treating Taiwan as an inter- prospect july 2013 opinions 19

nal region. In 2008, Beijing gave Taipei two ing no commitment to defend Taiwan, car- potential for tension remains because of the pandas as a gift.U nder international regula- ries out “unofficial” diplomatic relations essential clash, which no amount of trade tions it can only loan pandas to other coun- under the Taiwan Relations Act 1979 and can disguise, in culture and in system of gov- tries: the message was that the transfer was supplies it with extensive arms for its own ernment. Taiwan is now profoundly liberal domestic. The bears’ names together trans- defence—Obama has authorised $6bn in and democratic. It has some of the highest lated as “reunion.” deals. Recently, the Republican majority living standards in Asia. These are people Perhaps because China is hoping for the in the House of Representatives has been convinced of their right to vote and to free success of this tactic, a military threat to championing the Taiwan Policy Act, which speech—and who are accustomed to that. achieve its aim seems far less likely than in “will strengthen the relationship between As one Taiwanese young professional put it the past; it has muted its old military rhet- our two nations—and I want to emphasis the to me, “what could China offer Taiwan that oric, although it continues to target missiles word nations,” said Steve Chabot, Chair of would make reabsorption attractive?” at Taiwan. China also cannot be sure of what the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. Jessica Abrahams is the Production Editor of a US response would be; the US, while hav- Even if the economic ties grow deeper, Prospect

Terry Eagleton I am not connected The internet just slows us all down

I shall soon be the only EMV (email vir- sit on a train, I place a small banana on the Nowadays, however, protest is most defi- gin) left in the country. I have never sent an table before me. If I find myself opposite nitely what my email virginity has become. I email, though I’ve occasionally cheated and someone who forces me to listen to his bor- am living proof that all this frenetic, mostly asked my teenage son to do so for me. Nor ing, brain-rotting conversation, I give a loud vacuous, communication is quite super- have I ever used the internet. I am no more “brring brring.” Then I pick up the banana fluous. We all survived without it before it capable of going online than I am of getting and conduct a deafening pseudo-dialogue of started, and I personally have survived with- to Saturn. I don’t know how to text. I do have soul-killing dullness. If the person opposite out it ever since. If people really want to a mobile phone, but it’s immobile. I never protests that I’m sending him up, I ask him contact me, they write. If they can’t be both- take it out of the house, for fear of trigger- in affronted tones whether he has been lis- ered, or have forgotten how to do it, or imag- ing some ridiculous trend in which hordes tening in on my private conversation. ine that writing disappeared with Norman of people march down the street bawl- My resistance to email didn’t start out as Wisdom and drainpipe trousers, that’s their ing into these sinister little gadgets. If you a protest. It’s just one aspect of my general problem. Besides, email is surely just a pass- allowed people to use mobile phones in pub- technological backwardness. I was clean- ing fad. My own prediction is that it will be lic, you might end up being forced to listen ing my teeth with a twig long after the inven- over by next Christmas and everyone will to them on trains and in cafes, asking noisily tion of toothbrushes, and using a typewriter then revert to my own state of technological whether the invoices have arrived. The pros- long after everyone else had switched to a chastity. pect is too appalling to contemplate. The computer. “But how do you revise stuff?” In my view, the internet is really an anti- only time I might conceivably have needed they would ask me. “Revise?” I would reply modern device for slowing us all down, a mobile phone outside the house was when incredulously, one eyebrow superciliously returning us to the rhythms of an earlier, I once turned my car over in the Irish moun- cocked. Showers are a bit of a problem as more sedate civilisation. In the frantic, fast- tains and was trapped inside the vehicle for well. I usually wait for it to rain and then moving years before Apple and Google, you a while. When a passer-by did finally try to dash out and roll around on the front lawn. would ask for a hotel room and the clerk use a phone, however, it didn’t work, since would just write your name down in a book. the mountains were too high. Hang- It was all over in 20 seconds. These days you ing upside down like a gigantic ask for a room and the receptionist starts to bat, my chest crushed painfully type a chapter of his novel. Once he has against the air bag, I felt qui- inserted one or two rather elaborate etly vindicated. subplots and added a few complex I have, however, hit on new characters, he remembers an unbeatable way of tak- what he is supposed to be doing ing my revenge on the and hands you your room key. “Have the invoices Language is first of all a arrived yet?” bri- way of being with other peo-

© ve tta © gade. Whenever I ple, and only secondarily a way of getting things done. Brring brring: “Are This is why the paradigm of you listening in on my human communication is not the public private conversation?” relations agency but the pub. Steve Jobs’s last words are said to have been: “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!” Thinking back to King Lear, it’s hard not to feel that something has been lost. My only problem now is how to get this piece to the editor. Terry Eagleton’s “How To Read Literature” has just appeared from Yale University Press 20 opinions prospect july 2013

...the First World War had never happened? Prospect’s new counter-factual column, this month by Andrew Adonis

To mark the centenary of the Great Cri- into Belgium, the Netherlands or France. lover Venetia Stanley. “Far better to fore- sis of 1914, here is an excerpt from AJP Tay- This led Germany to draw back from sup- stall this while there remains a substantial lor’s unpublished masterpiece, “The Struggle porting a humiliating Austrian ultimatum to peace party vying for the Kaiser’s ear in Ber- for European Union,” which opens with an Serbia, intended for 23rd July, which would lin, rather than risk the triumph of the Ger- account of the signing of the Treaty of Paris at have been rejected and precipitated imme- man war party. For ultimately we could not Versailles in September 1939: diate Austro-German military confrontation stand by if France were invaded.” The historic resonance and opulence with Serbia’s ally Russia and then with Rus- Executing this démarche involved replac- were matched only by the grandeur of the sia’s ally France. ing Grey with Winston Churchill as Foreign two senior crowned heads who opened the Edward Grey, Britain’s weak and vac- Secretary. Churchill signalled an immediate proceedings: the 80-year-old Kaiser Wil- illating Foreign Secretary, had done little “get tough” stance. Churchill was a friend helm II of Germany and the 71-year-old Czar since 28th June. Beyond urging restraint on and ally of the radical David Lloyd George, Nicholas II of Russia. Both spoke movingly all sides, he had no plan of action, leading who was persuaded that no alternative strat- of the path towards European union. Thirty the Germans to believe that Britain would egy was likely to keep the peace. After two of Europe’s heads of government then signed not ultimately intervene and the French to days of perilous uncertainty, German Chan- the Treaty of Paris, establishing a European believe that it would. Asquith, increasingly cellor von Bethmann-Hollweg accepted parliament and executive to oversee the now seized of the gravity of the situation, con- Asquith’s invitation to a five-power confer- substantial “Concert of Europe joint defence sulted the Tory opposition leadership and ence in London to address the Balkan crisis. force for European security.” the army high command, both adamant There are some who believe that a The joint force had first been established that Germany could not be allowed to invade Europe-wide war would not have occurred to police the implementation of the Balkan France or Russia. in 1914 even without the Asquith ultimatum. peace plan, which saw Austria withdraw “Were a Franco-German war to erupt, Crisis after crisis had been resolved without a its troops from Serbia in 1915. Led initially we would inevitably be engaged from the general European war since the Napoleonic by British Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, outset. The political pressure would be irre- War of the 1800s, and this was going to be no it grew from four brigades totalling some sistible at home against allowing Germany different. Perhaps. History always tends to 15,000 troops (one each from Germany, Rus- to rampage over Europe,” render what happened as inevitable. At any sia, Britain and France) to become an inte- Asquith wrote to his rate, it took the threat of Armageddon in July grated military force of more than 100,000 1914 to bring wiser counsels to the fore. by the mid-1930s, deployed under successive The Tsar, seated, Equally poignant at Versailles was European treaties in trouble spots across the and the Kaiser, the closing speech, from the oldest Balkans and southeastern Europe. who both spoke and most distinguished Prime The Treaty of Paris introduced demo- movingly of Minister present. David Lloyd cratic oversight and leadership for this grow- European union George, in the last month of ing European defence capability, and added his great Liberal-Labour a significant free trade dimension to the coalition, was the “father of new “European Union.” the welfare state” in Brit- It was a far cry from the Great ain. His crowning achieve- Crisis of 1914 which began the ment, the creation in 1926 process. In the weeks after the of a National Health Serv- assassination of the Austrian ice, providing free health- Archduke Franz Ferdinand in care funded by progressive Sarajevo on 28th June, Europe taxation, had been copied stood on the brink of general across Europe. Even Rus- war. Austria planned military sia was following suit. reprisals against Serbia while “Some say that social the German pro-war party, led progress comes only by Helmuth von Moltke and through wars and rev- Alfred von Tirpitz, agitated olutions,” he declared. strongly in support of Aus- “But we know better. We tria. Kaiser Wilhelm, who had glimpsed the abyss in 1914. been leaning towards the war Never again.” party against his Chancellor and diplomatic advisors, only Andrew Adonis is an advisor drew back thanks to the famous to the European Command Asquith ultimatum of mid-July. Centre based in Cyprus, a former British colony long e lib rar y p ic t u r e The British Prime Minister governed by a power-sharing an s warned Berlin that Britain would regime embracing the throw its entire military strength island’s Greek and Turkish

y ev m ar y © against any incursion by Germany Cypriots equally

22 prospect july 2013 Features Slipping beyond control? 22 Middle-class survivalism 30 Exit? It’ll cost us 36 Bad job for Britain 42 What’s wrong with France? 48 Machiavelli loses his power 52 The Syria trap Is Britain’s plan to arm the rebels a dangerous miscalculation? james harkin

edding down at a Syrian rebel barracks just behind good idea. Britain, with France, successfully pushed for the Euro- the frontline in Aleppo city was never going to be pean Union to lift its embargo on providing arms to the rebels easy, but it is the screaming which keeps me awake. from 31st May, in a bid to bring an end to the two-year conflict, Long choruses of anguished howls come from the which has claimed more than 80,000 lives, according to a UN esti- other end of a narrow corridor, where the rebels I’ve mate in May. Beaten dinner with are setting on four unfortunates they had just Their calculation is that arming these rebels—or even just detained in the street outside. Unable to sleep, I join some of the threatening to do so—will pile pressure on the Assad regime. other men on the balcony outside, drinking endless pots of Ara- They also hope that it will freeze out other opposition fighters— bic coffee and watching the hypnotic glow of mortar shells rising above all, the Islamist militants of Jabhat al-Nusra, who recently and then gently falling in the night sky. pledged their allegiance to al Qaeda. Foreign Secretary William The commander supervising the interrogation of the four Hague has said: “Our priority is to get the regime in Damascus men, accused of a scheme of looting and perhaps murder, tells and the opposition to the negotiating table... a decision to deliver me they’re being punched, but from the rhythm of the wailing it lethal weapons will depend on the course of these [talks].” Less sounds as if they’re being pinned down and flayed. “Thieves, kill- cautiously, Laurent Fabius, his French counterpart, has talked of ers,” says one rebel. “They were pretending to be with our revolu- “a weapons imbalance because Mr Bashar al-Assad has planes, tion,” sniffs another. etcetera, and the resistance fighters don’t have the same means.” This is a battalion of the Free Syrian Army—the loose lattice He added: “As much as we are working for a political solution, on of hundreds of tiny battalions and a few larger militias, which the ground things have to be rebalanced.” include the forces that Britain has decided to back in a bid to drive Adding urgency to this pitch, in the past few weeks France out the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. They are constantly has said that it has evidence of the use of sarin nerve gas by the changing names and personnel and, in the main, answer to no one regime. To rebut one of the fiercest objections to arming the rebels but themselves. That this group routinely resorts to such brutal from other European governments, Fabius has claimed that anti- treatment of others is not surprising; almost everyone with access aircraft and anti-tank missiles, if supplied, might be rendered use- to a weapon in the city seems to do so, often in response to popu- less by remote control if they fell into the “wrong hands.” lar demand, if those people are accused of looting or working for Yet any extensive encounter with rebel brigades themselves the other side. suggests these calculations are dangerously wrong. For a start, But western governments should think hard about whether there is often little to divide the rebels Britain has chosen to back they really understand their chosen allies before they send from their Islamic counterparts—and none of them have any arms to opposition fighters, as they may do this summer. Many fondness for the west. British ministers and officials have clearly European countries and the United States have recognised the spent much time in Istanbul talking to the National Coalition. National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition The British and French notion is that they might give arms to this Forces, the fractious and ineffectual body which claims to act as body, which would hand them out to the Free Syrian Army. But it the political arm of the opposition in exile, as the “sole legitimate is not clear they have answers to the elementary questions about representative of the Syrian people.” But only Britain and France whether they can control the outcome if they do indeed funnel have argued that arming the rebels on the ground might now be a more weapons into the Syrian warzone. The armed rebellion—in northern and eastern Syria, partic- James Harkin’s reportage, “War Against All: The Struggle for Northern Syria,” is published as an e-book. He will take up a visiting fellowship at ularly—is bound up with family and tribe. In July last year, in a the Reuters Institute, Oxford University, in the autumn town near the Turkish border, on the same day that the armed prospect july 2013 the syria trap 23 i n hark mes ja © “Britain pushed for the EU to lift its embargo on providing arms to the rebels in a bid to end the conflict, which has claimed 80,000 lives” 24 the syria trap prospect july 2013

TURKEY Aleppo rebels moved their rebellion from the sur- Aleppo Salaheddine rounding towns and villages into Aleppo IDLIB 2 miles city, a 52-year-old electrical engineer Homs called Abdul Kar- LEBANON SYRIA eem brought me his ISRAEL IRAQ two oldest sons to talk Damascus to. Both had started out by demonstrating against the regime, JORDAN 50 miles but had tired of the brutal response and thrown in their lot with a battalion of the Free Syrian Army. They were just back from fighting to eject regime forces from Zitan, the family village just south of Aleppo. Ayham, the capa- ble-looking battalion commander, was 25 years old; Molham was a reflective 24 year old who’d left behind an architecture degree at Aleppo University and couldn’t wait to put down his Kalash- nikov and get back to his studies. Three weeks later, however, Ayham was shot dead in a regime counter-offensive in the heav- ily contested southern district of Salaheddine. Since the fighting broke out in Aleppo last year—(Syria’s largest city had previously seemed immune to the uprising convulsing many others)—eight members of Abdul Kareem’s extended family have been killed. All were fighting with the rebels except one—a five-year-old cousin called Khalil who’d gone missing and been found, a week later, with his throat cut. Nearly a year later, Aleppo is caught in the same stalemate as the strategic city of Homs before it. The poor districts of the south and east are controlled by various rebel factions while regime forces are in charge of the rest; Salaheddine remains a battle- ground. Molham, I discovered when I met him again this year, has replaced his older brother as battalion commander. His 100 or so men occupy five different frontline positions; in between shifts they repair to impromptu barracks. One is a former school, which they have been using since September, although it is only several hundred metres away from regime forces. Shortly after I arrive, I emerge from a trip to the outside toilet to find that a sniper, see- ing signs of movement, has just taken a lump out of the front door. The culprit, says Adbul Kareem, pointing in the direction from which the bullet came, is probably a fighter from Iran or the Ira- Salaheddine: rebels queue up at an impromptu soldering works in a nian-backed Hezbollah militias, which have played a big role in pharmacy to have their weapons repaired before going into battle supporting regime forces. For two years, the violence in Syria has advanced through Al-Izaa. Molham looks weary and haunted, still trying to come these cycles of attack followed by revenge massacres and creep- to terms with everything that he’s seen. He’s forgotten all about ing foreign involvement. In a way that threatens to ignite the ten- architecture, he says: it now seems like a different world. With his sions in Iraq and the region more widely, much of the killing is men I rib him about a Swedish female journalist we met last sum- justified with sectarian rhetoric: Sunni against Shia. Syria has a mer and whom he obviously liked. He enjoys the joke, but has no Sunni majority, but has been ruled by the Shia Alawite sect. The time for women: shortly after, he apologises and leaves to go and rebels I talk to are Sunni—most are from the same Al-Akidi clan pray. Last year, when I’d asked Abdul Kareem about the threat as Abdul Kareem, from Zitan. All, with the exception of one 50 from Islamic extremism and al Qaeda, he’d taken offence. “My year old who acts as a spiritual guide, and his teenage son who sons don’t even pray,” he’d barked, both proud and mortified. But runs errands, are between 20 and 24 years old. Quite a few, like with death a daily event, everyone prays now. Molham, were university students when the conflict broke out; In the evening we lie around on cushions in the large school- others, like the men who originally gave rise to the idea of a Free room where everyone sleeps. The generator keeps failing; as we Syrian Army, are defectors from the regular army. talk, we are plunged for long spells into perfect darkness. The They have been taking terrible losses. A few days before I chatter ripples with mentions of the Islamic group Jabhat al- arrive, another cousin from this barracks, a 22-year-old former Nusra, with whom the men have a friendly although uneasy rela-

student at Aleppo University, was ambushed by regime forces in tionship—but not the antagonistic one that you might conclude i n hark mes ja © prospect july 2013 the syria trap 25

ity and their fighting prowess and has no wish to do battle with them. Most are Syrian and good people, he says, even if many of their leaders are fanatical and Iraqi; they’ve discussed working together on operations, but nothing has come of it yet. “Our bat- talion,” he says with some pride, “is the only one in this city that Nusra say they respect.” But while the Free Syrian Army rebels might want western arms, that doesn’t mean they like the west. He blames the west for everything. If they’d helped with weaponry and communi- cation devices as they kept promising, his forces wouldn’t have needed help from Nusra or anyone else. He’s come to the conclu- sion that the west is playing a double game. “They hate Bashar and they hate Nusra, and they just want both their enemies to fight each other.” Syria’s rebels are now in a dangerous bind. Having stirred the full force of a brutal regime, they badly need the battlefield skills and valour of Jabhat al-Nusra to keep their insurgency moving and protect the many civilians who supported them in the first place. But the blind fury of the Islamists of Nusra, who regard the Syrian army as infidels andS hia (and Alawite) Muslims as apos- tates, is pushing many Syrians back towards a discredited regime. On the walls of the school there’s little iconography associated with the revolution or the Free Syrian Army, but a great deal of Islamist imagery. “There is no God but Allah,” read several black flags on two of the classroom walls. During the night a helicopter buzzes overhead, setting off a rebel siren and leading to a moment of panic. After regular attacks from the air, the roof of the school has been cracked open and its upper floors are glass-spattered mess; everyone sleeps in the same room on the ground floor. The sky still belongs to the regime, and the weapons at the disposal of the rebels—Kalash- nikovs, a few Browning pistols and grenades—look puny in com- parison. During one of the blackouts Abdul Kareem wanders out of the darkness to show me a box-like, homemade pipe bomb the men have just assembled. He does his best to chip in and tap friends and extended family abroad but the money, he says, is fast running out. “Now, zero,” he complains. “It’s all gone.” The following day Molham takes Abdul Kareem and me to the frontline in Salaheddine. While another group of rebels drive off in the direction of the government lines, Molham inspects a homemade grenade freshly prepared for his unit from a phar- macy which has been turned into an impromptu soldering works. from the British and French decision to back the Free Syrian “What do you think of Syrian grenades?” he smiles, staring at it Army and oppose the supposed “extremists” of Nusra. for over a minute, turning it around in his hands and practising I’d seen many Nusra fighters on the drive into Aleppo, some- throwing it. times manning joint checkpoints with battalions working within That the rebels badly need more and better weapons is obvi- the Free Syrian Army. At one point Abdul Kareem, who’d driven ous. Yet given the forces ranged against them, it is not clear that me in, asked me to stop taking pictures; Nusra, he said, might it would make much difference to their campaign. He shows me not appreciate it. The hundreds of ramshackle battalions affil- where the regime launched its first air strike on rebel positions iated with the Free Syrian Army still vastly outnumber Nusra, in the city: once an Islamic school, now it is concrete and twisted but numbers are not the issue. Stepping into the vacuum of rebel metal. Much of the rest of the neighbourhood is the same; like expertise and organisation, Nusra has set itself up as the spe- many of the most visible symbols of Syria’s armed rebellion, from cial forces of the Syrian rebellion, every bit as ruthless as the pro- Baba Amr in Homs to the towns surrounding Damascus, Salahed- regime, paramilitary Shabiha (Assad supporters) on the other dine has been reduced to rubble. As the regime has retrenched side. in the last six months it has resorted to hurling heavy surface- “Everyone wants to fight, and they don’t much care who they to-surface missiles at areas of the north it has little hope of win- fight with as long as they’re good,” shrugs Molham. He does offer ning back. The previous day I’d looked around some of the places that “if the world gave us weapons we wouldn’t need any help the regime forces had hit. The effect was more like an earthquake from these people”—the argument that seems to underpin the than an explosion: whole streets reduced to tiny white bricks. British and French conclusion. But as it is, he talks to Nusra reg- The regime has healthy stocks of ballistic missiles, both Rus- ularly. Like all the other rebels I meet, he respects their religios- sian and Iranian, and these ones appear to have been fired from 26 the syria trap prospect july 2013 © r e ut s © William Hague and Laurent Fabius (back, centre and left) at the Friends of Syria meeting in Jordan in May. Diplomats included Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister and Qatar’s Prime Minister (front, left and centre left) and US Secretary of State John Kerry (front right)

nearly 300 kilometres away in bases close to Damascus. Some the latter with better weapons would bring them to the bargain- rebel activists have taken to reporting their departure when they ing table. Instead, they would redouble their efforts to finish the see them launched. job—and Molham admits that his rebellion no longer defines that For all the debate among governments internationally about task as the pursuit of freedom and democracy, but of honour and whether there is firm evidence that the regime has used chemical revenge. “Five or 10 years,” he says. “I won’t leave. I must stand.” weapons, it has more than enough conventional weaponry to kill When I suggest a political solution he scolds me for my naivety. its citizens many times over. Should it ever run out, it has access “All the clever people have leftS yria. And for us this is not a game to more, through the support of Russia and Iran. By unfreezing of chess.” the EU embargo on supplying the rebels Britain and France have I’d heard much the same last summer, when I asked the osten- reckoned that they can call Assad’s bluff. But they have to contend sible leader of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo (and another with the open unease of many EU governments—and in Britain, cousin of Abdul Kareem and Molham) about his international members of parliament, where David Cameron has offered a free backers in the Gulf states and the west. “They don’t give us any vote after more than 80C onservative backbenchers demanded an support, and what support they do give us is corrupt or not worth opportunity to block the supply of weapons. having,” he’d growled. “And in return for this they want us to make And Syria’s shadowy security state works best when it’s in a a deal with this regime. It’s not going to happen.” corner. Dark rumours of foreign plots to destabilise the country It is not surprising that the Syrian rebels don’t much like the brought its ruling clique to power half a century ago, and have west. From the beginning many of them saw al Qaeda and Nato as done much to keep it there since. That is still the regime’s best more or less indistinguishable; foreign interlopers who were not to card. be trusted but whose protection might prove handy. The first Free For their part, the vast majority of the rebels I have met in Syrian Army rebels I met, in a Damascus safe house in February Syria are openly contemptuous of their putative political repre- last year, were ordinary soldiers from farming communities who sentation abroad, with its shifting coalitions, accusing it of being had broken from the regular army as a result of the brutal mili- in thrall to shady foreign interests and too far removed from the tary response to civilian demonstrations in their areas. Their mis- real fighting on the ground. It is tolerated by the rebels because sion was plainly defensive; they had no real strategy about how to they think it might win them weapons and recognition from the oust the Assad regime and had come to the meeting only to ask international community. It is highly unlikely that equipping for more weapons. Now, they feel betrayed. European countries Mandela’s Dream A Political Tour 24 January - 2 February, 2014 Twenty years after the ANC first came to power Political Tours examines its legacy and asks how far it has succeeded in keeping Nelson Mandela’s dream alive. Like all our tours our journey combines meetings with ordinary people, politicians and the nation’s leading analysts to provide an exceptional travel experience. For more information on this or our other tours this autumn contact [email protected]. China Growth and Change Sept 2 - 12,Georgia Oct 5 - 13, Turkey Oct 26 - Nov 3,Libya After The Revolution 16 - 23 Nov

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Photo © Thys Dullart 28 the syria trap prospect july 2013 and the US, by continually hinting that they are about get tough eem and his sons. The situation is becoming increasingly bleak for on the Assad regime, flirting with different opposition alliances the rebels. Not a single division of the Syrian army, not even those and implying that the regime was on the point of collapse, may largely Sunni brigades the regime is allegedly keeping in reserve have given these young men false hope—encouraged them to go because of concerns about their loyalty, have left en masse to join out and fight, even die, in the hope that governments would come the rebels. The minorities and many moderate Sunnis are scared to the rescue. Whatever the west does now will, in their eyes, seem of this anarchic rebellion, but are also painfully aware that this too little and too late. tired, brutal regime can’t protect them forever. Some have tried Meanwhile, the west is in danger of misreading the threat from hard to disentangle their communities from the battles that are Jabhat al-Nusra. That threat is certainly real and growing, but it being fought in their name. is to Syrians and not the west. Even if many of its leaders are for- After Iraq, it was predictable that the implosion of the Assad eign, the bulk of its fighters seem to beS yrian and have no appe- regime, authoritarian and secular, like that of Saddam Hussein, tite for international terror. While there have been flashes of would see many Syrians retreating to their religious and ethnic tension between Nusra and Sunni tribes over resources and their identities and a rogue’s gallery of opportunists arriving to set out puritanical edicts, the Free Syrian Army rebels are not going to their stalls. Those in think tanks like to float the break-up of the turn on them because the west wants them to; Nusra, after all, has Syrian state as a potential solution, but I have yet to meet a Syr- done much more to help them. ian who is enthusiastic about it, or who even thinks that it will happen. The borders of the Syrian state may have been drawn up “Europe and the US, by in 1916 by the British-French Sykes-Picot agreement to suit the national interests of those two countries, but they have acquired continually hinting that they a reality over the passing decades. are about to get tough on the If Britain and other EU countries really want to help Syrians, they would be better advised to step up humanitarian aid to the Assad regime, have given millions of displaced Syrians who urgently need it. They might also grant visas to many, like the rest of Abdul Kareem’s young these young men false hope. family, who are living in shocking conditions in refugee camps Now they feel betrayed” around the country’s borders and who cannot get a visa to go any- where else. And even if we did persuade one powerful brigade of rebels But what Syria needs more than anything else are honest bro- to clamp down on Nusra in return for weapons, the last thing kers inside the country who can reach out across military lines Syria needs, in a powder keg of grudges and uneasy alliances, is and encourage Syrians to talk to each other—as has been done yet another proxy militia pitting Syrian against Syrian. The likely recently by Syrian Kurds trying to broker peace between Shia and effect would be to blow the armed rebellion apart, and it is far Sunni communities. It is much easier said than done, of course, from clear that “our side” would win (or that they would stay on but it remains the only way to separate the regime from its peo- our side if they did). And what do we do if we give our chosen ple. It is also the only course that can now bring Syria and the rebels everything they are asking for, including a no-fly zone, and whole region back from the sectarian catastrophe towards which the Syrian army, with one press of its ballistic button, blows them it is thundering, and squeeze out the extremists and proxies on and our weapons to smithereens? There is no appetite at all in the both sides. EU or US for committing forces; rather, the opposite. After so many tens of thousands of deaths, it would be even Hague and Fabius have spoken as if their own governments are more cruel if a popular movement for self-determination should convening the talks, but they are just two small players around end with the country slipping beyond anyone’s control. a very big table. Unless they can win the support of America— unlikely, given President Barack Obama’s focus on getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and beyond that, on Iran’s nuclear pro- gramme—their rhetoric is not going to be matched by meaning- ful action on the ground. The real effect of any supply of arms from an EU country would be to trigger a kind of arms race, in which countries vie to pour weapons into the crucible. Turkey, Qatar and the other Gulf states might step up their own arms deliveries to their choice of opposition rebels as they jockey for regional championship of Sunni Islam. Russia, Iran and Hezbol- lah would very likely respond, with greater force and conviction, the Iranians determined to protect their fellow Shia. That would aggravate sectarian fault lines, pitting militant Islamist against militant Islamist in a way that, even now, few ordinary Syrians say they want. On our way back from Aleppo to the Turkish border, Abdul Kareem and I are forced to take a different route because of heavy fighting around one of the last remaining regime holdouts, an air base called Menagh. I find out later that some rebels were ambushed by irregular fighters who came from a nearbyS hia vil- lage; several were killed, including a young friend of Abdul Kar- “He’s an affected Tory”

30 prospect july 2013 Middle-class survivalism We are the prime target for politicians struggling to restore the public finances. Is there any escape? andy davis © phil disley phil ©

ooking back, I can put my finger on the time when career. A lot of things that had been quietly taking care of them- a clutch of appealing illusions I had carried unques- selves for years suddenly needed attending to. In the process of tioningly with me throughout my adult life began getting to grips with them and starting to plan a financial future to fall away. It was late 2009, just two years into the for three generations of my family, the extent of my previous bliss- financial and economic debacle that still surrounds ful ignorance became painfully obvious. Lus, but long before I or most other people finally realised that Life is a lot easier and less stressful if you like your job and the what we thought was just another temporary downturn—albeit company you work for. The money turns up every month and the a bad one—was in fact something totally different. It was game seasons roll round. Colleagues can become good friends over the over. An old way of thinking and doing things was finished. years and the social life of the office is something you miss when That autumn my wife was pregnant with our first child, the it’s gone. But for all its attractions, I would have to be utterly des- realisation was dawning that we could no longer put off facing perate before I took a salaried job again (which I fully acknowl- up to the steady advance of my mother’s dementia, and a happy edge puts me among a very fortunate minority). The first big and supportive relationship with my employer, which had lasted illusion I left behind that spring was that any company would ever almost 15 years, suddenly become the exact opposite. By the fol- really care for me, as opposed to the role I was being paid to carry lowing spring I had an infant son, a disorientated mother living out. Perpetuating this comforting illusion is a key function of mid- among strangers behind locked doors and a cheque instead of a dle management and stupidly I allowed almost 15 years of positive experience to lull me into believing it. This turned out to be a pro- Andy Davis is an associate editor of Prospect and winner of the 2012 found mistake and one I won’t make again. Wincott prize for personal financial journalism No one who has their eyes open should put their faith in the prospect july 2013 middle-class survivalism 31 company they work for—by all means trust individuals you work What do people think with and know well, but on no account allow yourself to believe 5% is the most important that the institution has any interest at all in you as an individual. YOUR factor in determining It doesn’t, and moreover it is not the institution’s job to care about 42% ACCENT you. It’s yours. social class? The job you do Being a financial writer, I’ve naturally come across other, more impersonal ways to view the true balance of power that exists 64% of people think hard between companies and the people that work for them. Hunt work is the most important around online and you can find charts that show labour’s share factor in personal success of profits at long-term lows and capital’s share looking healthier consider44% themselves middle class... 33% than ever, or charts that show real wages (after taking inflation ...the same percentage consider think it’s luck and 17% into account) going nowhere while the cost of living steadily rises. themselves working class think it’s parental connections They’re all telling the same basic story—the widely held belief that holding down a salaried, professional job offers a relatively low-risk way of making a living, while working for yourself is a much more high-risk strategy, is not necessarily correct. The truth is that both approaches nowadays carry big risks, but the people who work for 48% others have far less control over the risks they are taking. The rec- think today’s teenagers will be ompense for that used to be security and relative peace of mind— nowadays, I’d choose greater control over my own destiny and the worse off than their parents inevitable anxiety that goes with it any day of the week. For the full YouGov poll results see Peter Kellner’s article overleaf Britain’s middle classes are routinely labelled the “squeezed middle,” but that squeeze is far more than simple financial pres- Where was the evidence that her advisor was thinking about her sure; in fact, some aren’t squeezed in that sense at all. Certain changing needs and helping her to prepare for them? Nowhere, of fortunate people I know still have well-paid jobs and have seen course. Once the sales job was done, that was the end of the story their monthly mortgage outgoings tumble to extraordinarily low and another of those appealing illusions went by the wayside. I amounts thanks to rock-bottom interest rates. But I don’t detect had been interested in investment for a long time and instinctively any great sense of well-being and optimism from them. They still felt it was something I’d rather do for myself given that I had been sound anxious and uncertain about the future when I speak to a financial journalist and, unlike many others, I didn’t find the them and, having gone through the process of unravelling my prospect particularly intimidating. Trying to fix the ludicrously mother’s finances after she went into the care home, I can see good inappropriate situation that my mother’s advisor had left behind reasons why they should be. convinced me that entrusting your most vital interests to the ten- About a month before I left my job, we had moved my mother der mercies of the financial services industry is an extraordinarily into a home close to where my sister and I live. Then began the risky thing to do. Yet for most people, who don’t want to or can’t do task of working out what savings and investments she had and how this kind of thing for themselves, there is little choice. we would come up with the £30,000-plus per year that her resi- It was an accident of poor timing that meant we had to overhaul dential care was going to cost. our mother’s financial arrangements to try to secure her a low-risk I grew up thinking my parents were comfortably off and income from her investments at about the worst moment in living once we tracked down the paperwork this belief turned out to be memory to attempt such a manoeuvre. Ever since the depths of broadly true. As part of the wartime generation, she had worked the financial crisis in early 2009, interest rates on bank deposits hard, saved and owned property through its long bull market with and returns from “safe” government bonds have ranged between the result that, at 85, she had a teacher’s pension, property she low and pitiful. The result is that it now takes far more capital owned outright and a decent sum in personal investments. What than before the crisis to create the same quantity of income, which she didn’t have was enough income to meet her monthly bills. leaves those who must live off their savings and investments in a How could this be? She had apparently done everything right terrible position. but was still well short of being able to pay her way in the world. The only realistic choice we had in trying to ensure our moth- The reason will, I suspect, be depressingly familiar to many oth- er’s income would meet her needs was to put her money into ers who have been through the same process with their parents. investments that were riskier than I would have liked but that From what I could discern, my mother must have had a financial offered a higher level of return. I don’t feel at all comfortable with advisor at some point—at least this was the most obvious expla- this responsibility but there’s not much I can do about it. The bills nation for why her money had been spread across a roll-call of turn up every month and even one of those final salary, public sec- the UK’s leading fund management groups (all the big names got tor pensions that certain right-wing newspapers enviously deride their share), and why all of it was invested in equity funds that is not enough to meet them. held shares in the same narrow list of large companies. The other Why have we had to take these risks with a very old woman’s things these funds had in common was that none paid out any reg- life savings in order to ensure she can afford the care she now ular income to her and they all charged at least 1.5 per cent a year needs? The simple answer is that we, along with millions of others, in management fees, around a third of which would be handed to believed that the people we elected, trusted and paid to manage the advisor who had channelled her money into these funds and this country’s financial affairs knew what they were doing. They then departed the scene. clearly didn’t. People like her are just so much collateral dam- Where was the ongoing duty of care that I would expect from age and there is no one but us to pay what it will cost to plug the someone who was still taking half a per cent a year of her money? vast hole that has opened up beneath our feet. Quite simply, we 32 middle-class survivalism prospect july 2013 are the sitting ducks with incomes and assets. That means more faith in the orthodox choices, that’s the only way left to go. taxes, fewer benefits, worse services and lower returns (coupled I should probably qualify that last statement a little. We are with higher risks) from our savings and investments. paying into low-cost, self-invested personal pensions on behalf Since I have now run very short of institutions in which to trust, of our children who are still very young (eight, six, three and I take a rather different view of the world from the one I used to one) on the basis that the more long-term saving we can do for hold. I guess you could call it middle-class survivalism. them now, the longer the money will have to grow into some- These days, I’d far rather rely on myself and my family than on thing worthwhile for their old age. The contributions qualify for any of the institutions I used to believe would “be there for me” tax relief at 20 per cent (a good deal for them since they pay when I needed them. Risky and uncertain though it is, I’d rather no tax) and once a year I invest the money that has built up in work for myself and choose more of the risks I take in life than put very low-cost index-tracking funds. It might sound a quixotic my future and that of my dependents in the hands of an employer gesture, but one of the few things I do still believe is that long who—when push comes to shove—gets paid not to care about me. periods of time can enable even small investments to produce I would far rather make my own mistakes in deciding how to man- worthwhile returns, provided you keep the charges to a mini- age our money than pay for the privilege of having someone else mum. I’ll probably never know whether that faith is misplaced, to blame when things go wrong. And I will never again lock up since by the time our eldest child reaches retirement age I will money in the pensions system so that I can be forced to buy an be at least 105, but I’ll go on my way knowing I did what I could. overpriced, underperforming annuity with it and condemn myself The other goal of this exercise, of course, is to find more ways to an inadequate income in perpetuity. It’s not that I don’t want to to pass on wealth from one generation to the next—not just by provide for my old age—I do. I just don’t want to wear the strait- bequeathing what we have left when we die (inheritance tax per- jacket of a conventional pension. I’ve put enough money on that mitting), but also by doing some of the hard work of saving for particular horse already and in the interests of spreading my risks their old age well in advance, so that when they reach adulthood I need to find other ways to tackle this problem.O nce you’ve lost they will have greater scope to spend or save the fruits of their Fearing for our future Few of us now believe that today’s teenagers will be better off than their parents peter kellner

We all know that our society is becoming Social class is a tricky subject, not least These were pretty clear-cut classifica- more unequal; but what role does social class because we don’t all agree on what the tions half a century ago, when two-thirds play in determining today’s winners and los- labels “middle class” and “working class” of jobs involved manual labour, typically in ers? I have both good and bad news for those mean. The conventional measurements—as factories, mines, shipyards or on the land. who yearn for a classless society. The good recorded by the white collar “ABC1” (mid- These divisions are less relevant in today’s news, according to YouGov’s latest survey for dle class) and blue collar “C2DE” (working vastly different landscape, where white col- Prospect, is that most of us think that hard class) headings in pollsters’ tables—relate lars are often frayed and many blue collars work and talent matter more than going to to the type of job done by the head of each have designer labels. the right school or having rich parents. The household. If the main breadwinner works in Formally, the ABC1 middle classes now bad news is that we regard today’s Britain an office or has a professional qualification outnumber the C2DE working classes by as essentially a meritocracy for the middle or is a senior or middle manager, then he or four to three. However, when we asked people classes, not yet a meritocracy for all. she is deemed middle class. Families whose to say which class they belonged to, we found breadwinner has a manual job or relies on a huge mismatch between people’s “objec- Peter Kellner is President of YouGov state benefits are deemed working class. tive” social class and how they defined them-

Changing face of social mobility in Britain Which of these contributes most to personal success? %* Which of these matters most in How much does social class rather than personal abilities Hard work 64 deciding social class? % (We asked for up to two of these factors determine success? % Intelligence 42 to be chosen) Speci c talent 36 Job/occupation 85 Fifty years ago Social skills 35 42 Income 56 Today Luck 33 34 Honesty/moral strength 24 Education 37 Parental wealth/income 22 33 Parental support/ encouragement 20 Parental social class School/university choice 20 21 Home type/location 9 7 7 Parental connections 17 16 Willingness to lie 9 (*We asked for up to four Accent A great Not Not Physical strength 3 of these factors to be chosen) 5 deal much sure prospect july 2013 middle-class survivalism 33 own labour as circumstances dictate, rather than racing against the Rock and was told, to my surprise, that although I was only the clock to amass a pension fund from scratch. after the amount I needed to replace my old loan, I was “entitled” Doing this helps to dispel some of my worry that our children to a vast additional sum which in effect I could treat as an over- will not enjoy the same standard of living that we have. Looking draft facility, to be drawn down as and when I saw something I back one generation, I suspect I’m probably at least as well off fancied. Being a staid and boring sort, I was utterly horrified at as my mother was at the same point in her life and quite possi- the prospect of having that much easy credit on tap but I couldn’t bly more so, for two main reasons. The first is that she worked just turn it down—the bank had to give me the full amount and I all her career as a school teacher, excelling at a vital job that could then give back anything I didn’t want. And this was how I was never going to make her fortune, while I went to work in the found myself in a branch of Northern Rock, signing a cheque for press and enjoyed the considerably greater benefits that flowed just shy of £200,000 and handing it to the cashier, just so I could from that decision. The second is that I was fortunate to enter borrow the amount I actually wanted. the property market during the greatest credit boom in modern The money was real enough—it showed up on my bank state- history. Access to abundant cheap mortgage finance on terms ment for a few days and then vanished again—but the experi- that were exceedingly lax enabled me to multiply my equity ence was utterly unreal. The world we lived in back then was full many times over in a very short period of time. of strange occurrences like this one, all of them made possible Like many others, I suspect, I have a strong sense of before and by the belief that we were on some kind of golden escalator that after about the financial crisis.L ife before it was one way, life after would carry us ever higher. It didn’t and it couldn’t, and I am feels quite different, but not necessarily worse in every respect. not at all sorry to have left this weird world behind. Although it The branch of Northern Rock in the town where I live has might feel that way, I don’t think my life is any more precarious recently been rebadged as Virgin Money, but every time I walk or risky now than it was then. I just think I’m a bit more aware past it I’m still reminded of the most surreal financial experience of the risks that were always there, hiding under the comforting of my life. Back in about 2004, I remortgaged my then-home with illusions that I had carried, unquestioned, along with me.

selves. Overall, people divide themselves 2 per cent, or around 1m adults, say they This might not matter too much if we evenly between working class and middle were born into middle class families but thought that the progress towards a fully class. But fully one-third of ABC1 respond- are now, themselves, members of the work- meritocratic society would continue, with ents say that they are working class—and ing class. These figures confirm that social steadily increasing opportunities for people one-third of C2DE respondents insist they mobility depends on congenial jobs becom- to enjoy the benefits of a middle-class life. In are middle class. ing more numerous—not on the children of fact, we tend to think the opposite. Just 25 We also asked people which social class better-placed parents suffering the pains per cent think that today’s teenagers will find their parents belonged to. These figures of outright relegation from the ranks of it easier than their parents to be middle class. confirm that the shift from a working class the middle classes if they are not up to the Many more, 40 per cent, think they will find to middle class majority is not just the prod- mark. it harder. And by a margin of more than two- uct of the traditional system of social clas- This helps to explain why most people to-one, we fear that today’s teenagers overall sification; many people feel that it reflects still think social class influences life chances. will be worse off than their parents. what has happened to their own family. Fifty-six per cent say that it affects a teenag- The gloomiest of all are those with no Altogether, 15 per cent of the public—equiv- er’s prospects of doing well in adult life “a direct experience of working class life. alent to 7m adults—say they are middle great deal” or “a fair amount.” Our percep- Among the (subjectively) middle class chil- class themselves but have working class tion is that it used to matter even more: 85 per dren of middle class parents, pessimists parents. cent say that teenagers 50 years ago needed outnumber optimists by more than three- However, we should not overstate the the turbo-boost of better-placed parents to do to-one. Our age of austerity may be causing degree of mobility. Seven out of 10 people well in life. But we are far from becoming a some retreat not only in living standards, —more than 30m—reckon they belong to society in which people think success is purely but also in our journey towards a society in the same social class as their parents (19m a matter of merit, and nothing to do with the which the benefits of being middle class are working class, 13m middle class). And only kind of family into which we were born. open to all.

Thinking about social class, how would you best describe Will today’s teenagers Will today’s teenagers Would fewer middle yourself, and to which social class did or do your parents ˆnd it easier or harder end up better or class and more working belong? % than their parents to be worse o than their class Britons be a good middle class? parents? or bad thing? The class that would best describe your parents Easier Don't Better Don't Good Don't know o know know 60 How you would describe yourself 10 10 14 12 44 44 25 20 31 21 % 24 % 23 % 51 7 40 48 1 1 3 4 4 Neither Working Middle Upper None Don't Little or no About good class class class of these know Harder dierence Worse o the same Bad nor bad © Joe Partridge/Rex Features A C tosupport people’s lives, and not on the creative destruction of thiscountry depends theonbuilding sustainableof businesses and people—to rebuild local production. theheartmovement ofa which useslocal assets—land, energy can support them. backoneforthemselves bybuilding thekindeconomyof that classeswith reasona for their existence. children. classes fall into a state of panic when choosing a schoolthe world. forBy 2025, theirthere will be 260m. No wonder globalisation.the middle about partly T is it And written. be can softwareby computer aroundas codethe fast worldas about technology. longerhaveeconomic underpinning.an T 1. 34 (Fourth Estate) David Boyle is the author of “Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes?” dependupon with its taxes, while the corporate world and the infrastructurethepayingall forwe of task the ontakes it if It is impossible to imagine a large and comfortable middle class 2. ally enriching a new financial elite—at financial newtheir expense. a enriching ally actu were work hard reward and families middle-class benefit would supposed they icies T each successive round of bankers’ bonuses. pensions dissolving and their efforts made to look ridiculous by peratelycompeting forplaces shrinkinga in global elite, their thesuburbspricedofoutthey theirgrew in, upchildren des theirclaimedonbehalf.act to terminal. Ifwe don’t, the downward spiral survive.islikely may classes middleto be the aims, these arefive simple proposals. Wer generation. next Here the for lifedle-class pen if we are to preserve the possibility of mid l o taxation. of els hey failed to grasp, until it was too late, that pol here are now around 150m universityaround150mnow are students here around he key problem is that the middle classes no classesmiddle thethat isproblem key he ity speculators who happen to pay heavy taxes for the privilege.

Make the corporate world pay their existence Claw back an economic reason for Nobodyis going to go out of their way to provide the middle Whoever is to blame, something has to hap T i i prl te al o te ide lse themselves. classes middle the of fault the partly is his generation ago, the financial journalist financial the ago, generation tling against high inflation and punitive lev punitive and inflation high against tling bat were classes middle the 1970s, the In class. middle the as demise” been own ever its in had complicit “so class no that declared Hutber S P T ne hn scesv gvrmns have governments successive then, ince rofessional skills are being replaced he middle classes should put themselves at The middle classes need to mobilise politically before it’s too late e weeto achieve Y et todayet they find themselves The fightback T T T he economic future of heywill have toclaw his is partlyis his - - -

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house prices, rebalance the economy ownership owner-occupiers.and tocalm measures would dampen Bothspeculation. tion in homes with rent controls andthe restrictive same amount. In covenantsthe short term, to welimit could also limit specula said George Bernard budget.” understandingevenannutrition, of cookerymanagingand a value, such as “confidence, self-esteem, respect for others...and perateforinformation otheron aspectsschooling of that they are often suspicious of results-based league tables, but are des politics.” of monopoly. should also use their economic muscle muscleagainst to thepersuade growing government power to close theglobal tax elitehavens; do not. but they at any rate, represents the interests of either. It is now clear that neither right nor left, in mainstreamthemiddle classes and politicsthe left represents the working classes. Wehavebroughtbelieve beentoup thatright therepresents 3. “Nobody talks to them these days.” knowunteertoldthewasheadteacherbyI theiron first visit. these findings. “ U challenged the idea that schools are better when they are bigger. ised into increasingly large institutions. ters because state education at secondary level has been organ R 5. Demand smaller schools esearch by the charitytheesearchbyFamily nfortunately, ignored successive have secretaries education

R Demand political support E ducational research carried out over the past generation has ecreating the conditions of the last property bubble is about theunderstanding that they could only beexchanged for iin ht 9ya lae ae od t oia sm on sums nominal at sold are 99-year that leasesdition pendence,wouldI make ituniversal, subject tothe con T S T his is a key problem for the middle classes, and it mat incehome ownership underpins and promotes inde hat is going to have to change. as far as most Whitehallmost aspolicymakers’far as imagina tionswilltake them. as the recenttheBuy”scheme,“Helptoashave been R els in thein els tograsp that short-term help like this can only unablepoliticians seem but afford homes; ple currentthetakengovernmentby peo helpto push prices up further for the next generation. T itbecame impossible and home ownership lev ing and lucrative, right up to the point at which omania. pounds. south alk to the children, if you can,” one school vol It is crazyisthatIt mymodest suburbansemiin 4. Bring down house prices T he middle classes need to use their political S haw, is “so clever in industry, so stupid in L P no i wrh ery af million a nearly worth half is ondon U laying the housing market was thrill K fell below those of Bulgariaandbelowfellofthose K L ives has shownivesthathasparents E mergencymeasures, such

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36 prospect july 2013 Im ages ssociation A ssociation © Michael Probst/ A P/Press Michael © Exit? It’ll cost us Remaining in the European Union is vital for Britain richard lambert

ould Britain fare better if it were outside the Europeans like me have had quite a few disappointments to cope European Union? The Prime Minister has with in recent years: the failure to complete the single market; promised an In/Out referendum in 2017 and design flaws in the eurozone that were brutally exposed by the the polls say that a vote today would have us global financial crisis; and today’s bleak economic outlook. But so heading towards the exit. Would that, as Euro- far, most of the arguments on either side of the debate have been Wsceptics claim, be a chance to shake off the costs and constraints based on assertions, rather than hard data. of an economically and politically sick continent, and to build a On the Eurosceptic side there are wild estimates of the costs prosperous future in a wider, more dynamic world? Or would it of EU membership, and on the other, improbable figures about instead represent a reckless gamble—one which would damage the number of jobs that would be at risk if Britain left. NickC legg Britain’s future prosperity? has suggested 3m—but such figures should be taken with a pinch Full disclosure: I have always been a believer in Britain’s role in of salt. Europe. As editor of the Financial Times in the 1990s, I supported However, the evidence is clear, for those willing to look for it. the case for the United Kingdom’s membership of the euro. Pro- From an economic perspective, the risks associated with leaving the EU would be significantly greater than the costs of staying Richard Lambert is a former Editor of the Financial Times,former Director inside. Let’s start with the supposed costs of our membership of General of the CBI and Chancellor of Warwick University the EU, which are not as great as it is often claimed. The UK’s prospect july 2013 exit? it’ll cost us 37 contribution to the EU budget, in net terms, is about £8bn a year, Brussels. And the British would not be alone in seeking change. according to the Treasury, or around 0.5 per cent of GDP. That is Implementation of the directive is patchy across the EU, and 16 far less, per capita, than the EU average of €244. countries are now using an opt-out. Agreement over the directive It’s most unlikely that we would save all our gross annual con- can hardly be beyond the reach of sensible negotiation. tribution of £13.8bn in the event of a British exit. To take one The more important point is that the UK’s labour market has example, farmers receive EU subsidies of around £3.4bn a year become a lot more, not less, efficient and resilient in the past few from the EU. They are a formidable lobbying group, and would decades thanks in good measure to the reforms set in train by the be pressing hard for compensation from the taxpayer in the event late Margaret Thatcher. Private sector employment in this coun- that these funds were withdrawn. try has held up astonishingly well over the past five years, as work- ers have been willing to trade wages for jobs. That’s in marked Regulation contrast to what happened in both of the last two recessions. As a In any kind of guessing game, the words “red tape” and “Brus- result, the unemployment rate is currently 7.8 per cent, way below sels” comfortably fit alongside each other. Britain’s EU-hos- the EU average of over 12 per cent. An index of employment pro- tile media constantly has fun with the latest daft ideas from the tection legislation, again published by the OECD, shows that the fringes of the European Commission, and businesses regularly UK is only slightly more restrictive than that of the US and Can- complain that Britain makes a bad situation worse by “gold plat- ada, and a very great deal less than elsewhere in the EU. When ing regulations,” making them more costly to follow. But if there it comes to labour market rules, Britain belongs firmly in the is to be a single market, there must be common rules. Much more Anglophone rather than the European camp. It’s not in the same effective than a free trade agreement, which simply gets rid of league as the likes of Spain or France. tariff and subsidy barriers to trade, a single market grapples with non tariff barriers—such as different regulatory regimes—which Benefits of membership are often a considerably larger obstacle to cross-border trade. For Membership of a 500m-strong single market brings tangible eco- most people in this country, including our Prime Minister, the nomic benefits. But it’s just as difficult to calculate those as it is single market is probably the EU’s greatest achievement. the costs. So rather than dreaming up numbers on either side of As Luuk Van Middelaar, the Dutch political philosopher the argument, it’s safest to suggest that in the context of Britain’s and advisor to Van Rompuy, wrote in a recent book: “Building economy, which has an annual output of around £1.5 trillion, the a market, unlike creating a free trade area, continually requires net cost of membership is close to being neutral. new legislation which, even if mostly technical, at times involves Those who argue that the costs of EU membership are crip- deeply political choices.” In Europe’s internet economy, who pling British business have to answer the German question: how decides the rules on consumer privacy? In a European market for is it that a country with a more regulated market for products and financial services, who picks up the tab when a bank goes bust? services, a more restrictive market for labour, and a higher EU Eurosceptics assign large numbers—up to 5 per cent of GDP— budget contribution than Britain has turned itself into the world’s to the costs of EU regulation for British business. However, some most successful export nation? of these regulations would be necessary if Britain were outside What are the positive benefits of EU membership to the UK the EU, such as the rules dealing with hazardous chemicals. And economy? The most obvious answer is through foreign direct the increased access to markets that ensues from Britain fol- investment—international companies building up business activ- lowing these rules means that the net cost is likely to be rather ities in this country. This has never been more important—with modest. household budgets under pressure and government cutting back, The latest survey of the UK by the OECD, a group made up private sector investment will be a vital driver of growth and job of the world’s major industrialised nations, showed that in 2008 creation. the UK was ranked the least restrictive for product market reg- Foreign-owned businesses are also a very important source ulation, not just of all EU countries, but of all OECD mem- of innovation and productivity growth. They are much more bers—including the United States. For overall administrative research intensive than their British-owned counterparts: they regulation, Britain was number seven. The World Economic account for a quarter of all business research and development Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2012-13 placed the in the UK. In the past few decades, they have transformed whole UK eighth out of 144 countries for its overall competitiveness— sectors of the British economy, from motor vehicle manufactur- this hardly suggests an economy that is being strangled by red ing to financial services. tape. (Four other EU countries—Finland, Sweden, the Nether- Half of all European headquarters of non-EU firms are based lands and Germany—came in ahead of the UK in this table.) in the UK—more than in Germany, France, Switzerland and the The Eurosceptic view of labour market regulation is also hos- Netherlands combined. The UK has been the leading destination tile. The working time directive, which requires a maximum work- for inward investment in Europe for many years, thanks in part to ing week of 48 hours, was introduced in the very different political its language, location and legal system. climate of the early 1990s to make the single market more accept- A survey by UK Trade and Investment shows that, of the com- able to trade unions. It’s had a real impact on the public sector, panies it helped to locate in the UK during 2011-12, the two most especially on British hospitals that rely heavily on junior doctors important factors when considering the UK as an investment to care for patients out of hours. But the consequences for British location were, first, that other similar businesses were already businesses today are limited since they can use an opt-out allow- successful here and, second, that skilled workers were available. ing workers to put in more than the 48 hours a week. But next highest on the list came Britain’s potential as a gateway The working time directive, along with the associated tem- to other markets in the region: nearly three-quarters of investors porary agency workers directive, needs reforming; but it’s not rated this as either very or fairly important. For Japanese motor important enough in economic terms to be a casus belli with manufacturers in particular, the UK has been a very attractive 38 exit? it’ll cost us prospect july 2013 launchpad for sales into Europe. That’s why, back in the 1990s, Growing Eurosceptism in the City partly reflects the broader a number of them lobbied vociferously for UK membership of national mood, but there are specific reasons for a more hostile the euro. Their investment has rebuilt what was a moribund sec- attitude. One is the view that EU regulations since the financial tor in this country, and turned it into a major export earner with crisis have been shaped in part by the idea in continental Europe a heavy focus on Europe. Four-fifths of the cars made in theU K that the financial catastrophe was a consequence of Anglo-Saxon are exported, the bulk of them to the EU. In 2012, a bad year for capitalism. As François Hollande said in his election campaign the European car market, 75 per cent of Toyota’s UK exports went last year, “mon véritable adversaire, c’est le monde de la finance.” to the EU. But the two initiatives that have been the source of particular To address Nick Clegg’s point about jobs: leaving the EU rage in the City have been the proposed cap on bankers’ bonuses would not cause huge job losses overnight, and no doubt lots of and, above all, the proposed financial transaction tax (FTT). people would find other things to do. All we know for sure is that, Although the UK will have no part of such a tax, the Commis- if leaving the EU were to damage the UK economy, then jobs sion has made it plain that the FTT would apply to transactions would be lost over time. in the City if the counterparty has had its headquarters within the FTT zone. The Square Mile A second reason for tensions in the City stems from the nature There’s a similar story in finance. A survey byT heCityUK, a body of the eurozone crisis itself. Eurozone members are being forced that promotes British finance, of 147 location decisions between to contemplate deeper integration to hold the system together. 2006 and 2012, found that more than two-fifths of financial firms This would include a banking union, of which the UK would not gave access to European markets as a core reason for choosing be a member. One concern is that the integrity of the single mar- London. Financial firms also place a high premium onL ondon’s ket could be jeopardised by the actions of the eurozone core. attractions for talented workers from across the EU and beyond. Another is that those countries could attempt to discriminate However, in June, Ernst & Young, the business services firm, against non-members, an example being the European Central published its annual survey of the UK’s attractiveness for invest- Bank’s wish to locate clearing houses handling euro-denomi- ment. It contained some worrying findings. For the first time the nated business within the eurozone as opposed to London. UK slipped behind Germany in 2012 in terms of new projects So how can these arguments be unpicked? There is no doubt- secured. Ten years ago, the UK secured more than three times ing the EU’s importance to the City. Wall Street flourishes on the as many new inward investment projects as Germany. Now, glo- back of the vast US domestic economy. London, with no com- bal investors rank us behind Germany as Europe’s most attrac- parable domestic support, is built instead on the European tive country for new investment in the years ahead. Germany has economy. In 2011, £17.6bn of the UK’s £46.7bn trade surplus in also maintained its lead over the UK in attracting projects from financial services was derived from business with otherEU mem- emerging economies like China. ber states. The single market is of crucial importance to non-EU Here again, there’s a German question for the Eurosceptics. firms locating a subsidiary in London and operating across the Why is China choosing a country that is locked into the heart EU through branches of most types of financial services. That’s of what they see as a moribund union? There’s more. The Ernst because, like firms from within the EU, the single market gives & Young survey showed that inward investment in the UK was them a passport to carry their services across all 27 countries in increasingly concentrated in the southeast—investment in Eng- the union. If they are cleared to operate in one country, they can land outside London in 2012 was nearly a quarter below the level do business in them all. If that passport were taken away in one two years earlier. And the most attractive sectors for foreign inves- country, there would be a strong temptation to move to another. tors are seen as business and financial services, together with If the UK were to leave the EU, the strongest voices in financial software. With a few exceptions, Britain is struggling to secure regulation would be those with a cultural bias against what they foreign investors in sectors like manufacturing, chemicals and see as London’s casino-type capitalism, and who would be look- electronics. And unless you believe that leaving the EU would ing for ways to weaken its competitive advantage. And London, create enormous cost savings and new dynamism for business for its part, would not be able to turn its back on an economic in Britain, then it’s hard to think of any reason why the current region which accounts for such a large part of its business. Much debate about leaving Europe should be anything other than dam- better for the UK to retain a seat at the regulatory table, work- aging to the UK’s attractions as a location for foreign investment. ing with allies to retain liberal and open capital markets. It’s not Financial services are one of the prime sources of inward a lost cause—witness the way in which the FTT is being delayed investment in the UK, and make up one of the sectors where the and whittled down in the face of pressure from across Europe. It UK has real global strength. There are strongly opposed views in may turn out to be not much more threatening than stamp duty the City on the European question. If you believe the gossip col- on share transactions, which the UK already imposes. umns, prominent hedge fund managers are becoming close to the As bank lending shrinks across Europe, our European part- UK Independence party. And Nigel Lawson, the former Chancel- ners will need us more. Companies are increasingly seeking to lor of the Exchequer, claimed in an article for the Times in May raise money in the capital markets, and the US model is becom- that escaping from the “frenzy of regulatory activism” emanat- ing more relevant. There, banks account for about a fifth of ing from Brussels would be one of the prime economic reasons long-term company financing. In big European countries, the for quitting the EU altogether. On the other side of the argument, proportion is nearer 70 per cent. Europe will need a bigger, more Gerry Grimstone, Chairman of Standard Life and of TheCityUK active corporate bond market to finance growth, and London is has said that: “It is really poppycock to believe that the City can best placed in Europe to deliver—provided it stays in the game. survive in its present form if it is not an integral part of the Euro- If we don’t, the lights will not go out. In the words of Richard pean financial services framework.L ondon must have complete Gnodde and Michael Sherwood, co-Chief Executives of Goldman and unfettered access to the wholesale euro markets.” Sachs International, the threats “would manifest themselves over prospect july 2013 exit? it’ll cost us 39 time, not overnight. It takes years for businesses to move head- were less preoccupied with Europe they could do a lot better in quarters and for other cities to build the houses, schools, office the faster growing economies of Asia. The stuff we are best at, space and services needed to handle a new cadre of workers.” But, these countries often don’t want. they conclude: “Large international and European companies see Something that most countries want, however, is Scotch a Britain divorced from the EU as a much less attractive place. whisky, which is a test case of how the EU helps to amplify the Threats to British involvement in the EU are threats to British commercial prospects of a British product. An analysis in the business.” It’s one thing for a hedge fund to respond to unwel- Economist earlier this year argued that “the EU is now the indus- come changes by moving to Switzerland; it’s quite another for a try’s essential sword and shield for conquering world markets.” bank, with thousands of employees. And these are the ones who The EU still accounts for around two-fifths of totalS cotch sales. are most likely to see a British exit as a threat. When a new country joins the single market and removes its trade barriers, its consumption of whisky tends to shoot ahead. And Trade whisky makers prefer common EU rules to lots of national regu- The effect on trade must also be considered.R oughly half of Brit- lations on everything from bottle sizes to labels. ish exports go to the EU, a proportion that has been declining Above all, the EU’s weight in global trade negotiations is cru- in recent years as emerging economies have gathered steam and cial to an industry which still faces roughly 600 protectionist bar- Europe has languished. Between 2009 and 2012, exports of goods riers around the world. Indians consume almost as much whisky to the EU rose by just over 6 per cent, whereas those to the rest of as the rest of the world put together. But they mainly drink local the world jumped by more than a third. stuff that would make any true Scot faint in horror. And they However, exports to the emerging economies are modest. Brit- impose whacking tariffs of around 150 per cent on imported ain sells more to Sweden than to India, and more to Denmark whisky, putting the real thing beyond the reach of all but the rich. than Brazil. One reason for this is that Britain does not produce Small wonder that the distillers are hoping for big things from the enough of the goods and services that these countries want. The free trade agreement that the EU is now negotiating with India. OECD has analysed the export structure of the UK and Germany The UK on its own would not have anything like the same clout and compared this to the import structure of the BRIC countries. around the negotiating table. This shows that Germany is very strong in precisely those sec- In other words, British exporters don’t just benefit from access tors where countries like China are most hungry for imports, to the single market. They also gain from free trade arrangements especially machinery and transport equipment. But the UK is that the EU has negotiated with much larger parts of the globe. strongest in areas where imports to the BRIC countries are least The big one that’s on the table now is a potential free trade agree- important and in some cases face heavy protectionist barriers, ment between the EU and the US. such as financial and business services. So it makes no sense to An independent assessment of the impact of a success- suggest, as do some Eurosceptics, that if only British businesses ful Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal

Our seat at the top EU table is our future

A common One set of rules, a level market of 500 playing field, making trade million customers easier and cheaper Worth £11 trillion of GDP. Representing 25.1% of world GDP and 17.0% of world trade Our membership of the EU creates growth and millions of 50% of investment to the UK comes jobs at home. It is the platform from other EU member states. It is upon which Britain builds its worth £351 billion a year. Over 40% of global ambitions. our exports go to the EU and they are tariff-free

Find out how EU membership benefits you and help keep Britain at the core of the biggest common market in the world. Join the European Movement www.euromove.org.uk/@euromove 40 prospect july 2013 concluded that it could benefit the UK by between £4bn and sities get a fifth or more of their research funding fromE urope. £10bn a year. No one knows what the UK’s position would be in Research collaboration across borders, in projects like the EU- these trade deals if it were to break away from Europe. Would it sponsored Innovative Medicines Initiative, is also very important, have to negotiate them all again separately, and if so how long and so is the free movement of scholars. Paul Nurse, President would it take and what might the terms be? of the Royal Society, points out that it was easier for our recent Nobel prize winners, the Russian-born Andre Geim and Kostya Terms of exit Novoselov, to come to the UK because they were already working Everything would depend on the conditions of an exit. One in the Netherlands. In Nurse’s careful words, “looking at it from option might be to become like Norway, and join the European the perspective of science in the UK, it would be hard to make a Economic Area. A Norwegian government report, published case for us being better off outside theEU .” last year, said: “The most problematic aspect of Norway’s form of association with the EU is the fact that Norway is in practice Reform of EU bound to adopt EU policies and rules on a broad range of issues The good news is that there is now a growing appetite around without being a member and without voting rights.” “ This,” the the capitals of Europe for reform of both the governance and the report adds coyly, “raises democratic problems.” This is not a operations of the EU. Europe badly needs growth, and the cur- prospect to set anyone’s heart beating. rent crisis provides an opportunity for changes that might not Or Britain could aim for the Swiss position, and do business have been politically possible in easier times. with the EU through a series of bilateral deals. But that would be The single market remains incomplete, notably in services. painfully hard work, and would involve trade offs. With no agree- These now account for around 70 per cent of employment and ment for financial services, for example, theS wiss have come up value added within the EU, but for only 20 per cent of intra-EU with their own very stringent set of rules. It’s unlikely that the trade—indicating the low tradability of services across borders. EU would offer similar treatment to an economy of theU K’s size, The 2006 services directive left national governments with too especially in the aftermath of a painful divorce. Added to which, much discretion to decide what constitutes a barrier to the pro- countries outside the EU, like Norway and Switzerland, don’t vision of cross-border services, and there are all kinds of areas benefit from its free trade agreements. The Prime Minister has where increased competition would boost productivity and qual- rightly knocked both of these ideas on the head. Nigel Lawson ity. Construction and retail are obvious examples. We should also goes a step further and argues that “the relevant economic con- work to create a fully functioning digital single market, and one text nowadays is not Europe but globalisation, including global in information and communications technology. Employment free trade, with the World Trade Organisation as its monitor.” law could be made much less intrusive to reflect today’s changed But the WTO does not offer free trade, and does not cover serv- economic circumstances. ices as fully as the single market. We should push for more free trade agreements and agree a Europe is a vital market for food and drink, the UK’s biggest deal with the US. This would provide a great platform for those manufacturing sector. Nine out of the top 10 markets for UK who argue in favour of continued UK membership of the EU. exports of food and non-alcoholic drinks in 2011-12 were in the More can be done, too, to ensure a better regulation agenda. It EU. World Trade Organisation or not, tariffs on sales to theEU in should be easier to scrap redundant legislation—at present, get- important sectors like dairy products would be prohibitive if the ting rid of a redundant law is almost as difficult as passing a new UK was out of Europe. There would also be pressure from domes- one. There should also be an independent EU authority to vet tic producers—farmers, car manufacturers—to impose tariffs on proposed legislation for its impact on growth and competiveness imports both from the EU and the rest of the world, with damag- and do a better job of holding back legislation like the FTT. ing consequences for consumers. Much will depend in the next few years on how the Prime Min- That’s why a prominent Eurosceptic like Conservative peer ister plays his hand. He knows that the way to achieve progress Rodney Leach argues that exit would be a big mistake: instead, in Brussels is through consensus rather than by threats. He also he believes, the UK should stay in the union and fight for reform. knows that he is not alone in his wish to deliver what he described The Eurosceptic think tank Open Europe last year concluded, in his speech in January as “a more flexible, adaptable and open after an in-depth study, that “from purely a trade perspective... European Union in which the interests and ambitions of all its EU membership remains the best option for the UK.” Or as the members can be met.” Prime Minister put it in January, “continued access to the single He has potential allies across the continent. The risk now is market is vital for British businesses and British jobs.” Though it that the loudest voices in this country will be those of the Euro- is impossible to put numbers on the potential risks to UK trade sceptics, and that political considerations will cause him to nego- of an EU exit, it is fair to suggest that they would be substantial. tiate with one hand behind his back, setting out too many red lines and, in the process, unsettling too many potential allies. Science Business leaders have an important role to play here. They Finally a subject that deserves more debate is science. Britain’s prefer to keep out of the political spotlight. But they are paid to strong research base has made it a major beneficiary of EU sci- assess, manage and, where necessary, mitigate risk. So if they ence funding—nearly £5bn of so-called Framework Seven fund- believe, as I do, that the risk to British business of EU withdrawal ing and £1.2bn from the European Research Council, which in exceeds the costs of membership by a wide margin, and has the the latter case is more than a fifth of the total.E arlier this year, it potential to cause lasting economic damage to our country, they was announced that 80 out of the 302 senior researchers awarded have a responsibility to speak out. Now. a share in the latest tranche of Research Council money would be based in the UK, twice as many as the next most successful coun- This article is developed from the Gresham College Special Lecture try. Some of Britain’s most globally successful research univer- 2013 Get a better perspective on the Non-Executive landscape

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Find out more non-execs.com In association with 42 prospect july 2013 Bad job for Britain More people now do low-skilled work—why aren’t the trade unions doing more to represent them? david goodhart

f you are lucky enough to be invited to Wimbledon this sector. Gordon Brown, in his penultimate budget as Chancellor year, the strawberries you eat will probably have been in 2006, declared: “We will need only 600,000 unskilled jobs grown in this country; about three-quarters of British by 2020.” strawberries are now home-grown. Back in 1990, most of Today, however, academics and labour market analysts such our strawberries were imported. as Rowthorn, Caroline Lloyd, Ken Mayhew and John Philpott IImport substitution is generally to be welcomed, espe- reckon that there are, depending on your definition, anything cially in a country with a huge trade deficit. But the between 8m and 11m low-skilled jobs in the British economy; jobs Wimbledon strawberries are not a sign of economic success. that require no significant educational qualifications and can be On the contrary, they are a sign of what economists call a low picked up in anything from a few minutes to a few days. In some skill/low productivity equilibrium. Thanks to Britain’s flexible sectors the numbers are falling; in others they are rising. Overall, labour market, and its low wages, all sorts of basic economic the number seems pretty steady. activity is profitable here that is not profitable in, say, Denmark Most of these jobs are also poorly paid. Around 1.5m are paid or Germany. at the minimum wage of just over £6 an hour, but another 5m, That helps to create jobs—though in the case of the strawber- according to Philpott, are paid at below what activists and some ries, most of the workforce is imported from abroad on temporary policymakers refer to as the “living wage”—described by David contracts. But it also reduces the incentive to automate or even Cameron in 2010 as an idea “whose time has come”, it is con- to organise the workplace more efficiently and so to move up the ceived as the minimum pay rate required for a worker to provide chain to higher productivity and better paid work. his or her family with the “essentials of life”. This is currently The low level of trade union organisation at the bottom end agreed to be £8.55 an hour in London and £7.45 in the rest of the of the labour market is one reason for the long tail of poorly paid country. Many of these workers qualify for the working tax credit “bad jobs.” And the unexpected small upward blip in union mem- “top-ups” introduced by Gordon Brown. According to the Insti- bership in 2012—the first increase in private sector membership tute for Fiscal Studies, paying workers less than the living wage since the 1970s—is unlikely to change that. costs the Treasury around £6bn a year due to lower income tax In any case, the low level of unionisation among the work- revenue and national insurance payments, and higher spending ing poor where, one might think, unions are needed most, is a on benefits and tax credits. symptom of something bigger that has happened to the British Since status increasingly follows the money, most of these jobs, economy and labour market in the past two decades. For those however vital some of them might be, are not socially esteemed. home-grown strawberries are a fruity rebuke to the dominant The old idea of the dignity of labour—that any job, however economic narrative of an emergent “knowledge economy” driven menial, has a purpose and respect attached to it—seemed to die by an expanding army of highly-skilled graduates. That story is with the heavy industry that inspired it. When most people in not completely wrong but, according to Cambridge economist the country were doing pretty basic, low-skilled work, as was still Robert Rowthorn, it misses the bigger picture: the entrench- the case 50 years ago, it made no sense to disdain it. But when ment of “a kind of dual economy, sometimes called an hour- an increasing number of their generational peers are going to glass-shaped economy, with about 35 per cent of people working university or working in the better-rewarded high productivity in high productivity sectors—from cars to finance—and third of the economy, it becomes inevitable, perhaps, that people another 35 per cent working in a low productivity sector, mainly will start to look down on more basic jobs, especially those that private sector services like retail, cleaning, care and hospitality.” involve serving the richer and better educated. Since 2009 almost all new jobs have come in the low productiv- There is often a mismatch between the high expectations that ity sector. many young people acquire before they leave school—in many One of the biggest public policy errors of the past genera- cases without the exam results to turn those expectations into tion in Britain has been the belief that low-skilled jobs were on reality—and the grim reality of the third of the labour market the way out. When I was the employment editor of the Financial taken up with low productivity work. This may be part of the Times in the early 1990s, almost every week a new report would explanation for why, despite buoyant private sector job creation, land on my desk declaring the imminent disappearance of low- youth unemployment is stuck at around 1m (about 20 per cent skilled jobs; it was assumed that in the future everyone would be of 16 to 24 year olds), which is higher than it was in the recession working in highly-skilled jobs in business services or the creative of the early 1990s. With the stress in mainstream culture on aspi- ration and success, the basic jobs that we still desperately need David Goodhart is the director of Demos and editor at large of Prospect. to fill—cleaning, supermarket shelf-stacking, caring for the eld- He is the author of “The British Dream” (Atlantic Books) erly and so on—are seen by too many young people as only for prospect july 2013 bad job for britain 43 © Chris Laurens Chris © A strawberry picker at work in Northumberland: “three-quarters of British strawberries are now home-grown”

“failures and foreigners.” What is more, many employers openly actually rose, by 59,000 in 2012. After reaching a high point of admit to preferring older workers or eastern Europeans with 13m in 1979, union membership in the UK has halved to about lower wage expectations and often a superior work ethic, espe- 6.5m, falling sharply in the 1980s and 1990s and then more cially in the hospitality sector and parts of food manufacturing. slowly after Labour returned to power in 1997 (mainly because Around 20 per cent of low-skilled jobs are filled by people born it expanded employment in the union-friendly public sector). outside the UK. It is true that, in the past year or two, downward But of the 26 per cent of the workforce who are still in a union pressure on immigration from outside the European Union and most are in the public sector, where more than half of employ- some of the recent reforms to the welfare system have created an ees are unionised, compared with just 14 per cent in the pri- increase in domestic employment in sectors like social care, but vate sector, though that does include strategically important employers often struggle to recruit locals at the wages they can sectors such as large manufacturing plants, utilities and transport. afford to offer. The unions have a particularly weak presence in the low- Increasing the pay and status of the bottom 10m in Britain’s skilled and poorly paid one-third of the labour market where they hourglass labour market has become a central issue in British are needed most, both from the point of view of individual work- politics, especially, but not only, on the centre left. Ideas such as ers and, arguably, from that of the British economy (countries “predistribution,” which focuses on the level of market rewards which do not have such a long tail of low pay, such as Germany before state redistribution through cash transfers, and phrases or Denmark, are hardly economic failures). However, this is less like the “squeezed middle”—both popularised by Labour leader surprising than it seems if you consider trade union history. The Ed Miliband—are all based on the idea that pay at the bottom origins of trade unionism in the 19th century lie in the “labour should be higher. But how will that happen? aristocracy” of craft unions which themselves had some distant In the past the answer was simple: trade union organisa- relationship to the trade guilds of the Middle Ages. The end of tion. And for the first time in a decade, union membership the 19th century saw the emergence of more general unions— 44 bad job for britain prospect july 2013 most famously what later became the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU)—among semi-skilled and unskilled fac- tory hands and dockers. The tussle for status between these two strands of trade unionism is an important part of the story in the 20th century. This was a story that finally petered out in 2007 with the creation of the mega-union Unite out of the remnants of the TGWU and Amicus, itself created from a merger of two large craft unions. Meanwhile as trade unionism dwindled in the private sec- tor with the disappearance of the old heavy industries, and the declining size of the average workplace, the centre of gravity of British unions shifted to the public sector. It also moved up the income and status scale. Astonishingly, 52 per cent of union members now have a degree or some other higher education qual- ification, compared with just 41 per cent of the workforce as a whole. So, in their 150-year history, the unions have moved from being mainly guilds for skilled craftsmen to being mainly guilds for public sector professionals, with a phase in the middle when they also recruited poorer, less skilled workers. Today, at the sharp end, in the bottom 10m, among the clean- ers, deliverers, call centre workers, bar staff and care work- ers, unions are largely absent. There is one notable exception: USDAW, the shopworkers union. It is the only large union that has grown through recruitment in the past decade rather than through merger. It now has 427,000 members, up almost one- third over the past 10 years. USDAW has grown because employment in retail has grown and it is recognised by most of the big supermarket chains, including Tesco, Britain’s largest private sector employer. But even USDAW has to run to stand still—partly because of the high churn in the sector, it lost 60,000 members last year and recruited 70,000. And its 335,000 members who work in retail represent only around 10 per cent of the workforce in that sector. vate sector workers are covered by collective agreements on pay John Hannett, the USDAW General Secretary, says that “most and conditions. This does not mean that individual union mem- unions never really recovered from the ending of the closed shop bership in a workplace that does not recognise a union for bar- in the 1980s. They never re-learnt how to recruit and retain mem- gaining purposes is pointless. Union membership is increasingly bers.” His own union has had no choice but to develop those an individual insurance policy, providing various work-related services, above all legal support in the event of disciplinary pro- “Astonishingly, 52 per cent of ceedings or redundancy. But it does little to challenge the overall weaker bargaining union members now have a position of workers in relation to employers or the falling share of wages in national income, which partly reflects that.T he share degree or other higher of wages in GDP was 65 per cent in 1975 and is now around 50 education qualification” per cent. For that bargaining position to shift workers need changes in the law; in other words, they need politics. And bread-and-butter skills, and it has done so with an impressive here, as in so many other areas of economic life, the German business focus. model is fashionable once again, at least among union leaders The upward tick in union membership has come in retail and and centre-left politicians. Indeed, at the end of April, Frances other parts of the private sector, as public sector employment O’Grady, the General Secretary of the TUC, became the continues to decline quite sharply. But it does not represent a first leading union figure to admit that British unions made return of union power, least of all at the bottom end of the labour a “strategic error” back in the 1970s in not opting for a market. For it is not so much union membership that matters German-style system when it was on offer from the then-Labour but collective bargaining coverage in workplaces and even whole government. sectors of the economy. “And here,” says Carl Roper, the Trades The German system of “co-determination” introduced in Union Congress national organiser, “the news is less encouraging. the 1950s requires that employees be represented on company Overall, collective bargaining coverage has continued to fall and boards and given an institutionalised “voice” in day-to-day man- is now below 30 per cent.” He points out that it is beginning to fall agerial decisions through works councils. This system, which even in the public sector. only applies to larger companies, is not without its critics in The contrast with Germany is striking. Union membership in Germany, but the constraints on managerial power that it creates the private sector there is not very much higher than in Britain, at seem to be more than compensated for by the sense of respon- only just over 20 per cent. But almost 60 per cent of German pri- sibility that it engenders among unions. It is employees and prospect july 2013 bad job for britain 45 H a c kett l REUTERS /Pau i/demotix, © l i/demotix, © see © not unions that are the legal beneficiaries of co-determination, Left, Ed Miliband gives his “One Nation” speech: “he is unable to but employee representation tends to be dominated by unions. talk to the nation about union influence” because of his party’s O’Grady, who is the first female GeneralS ecretary of the TUC, relationship with them. Above, cleaning workers in London had this to say about German-style industrial democracy in a campaign to receive the living wage recent lecture: “It poses a challenge to us in the trade union move- ment. It implies a role that is not just more ambitious, but more Automotive Council and will be represented on BIS’s sector demanding, than the one we usually have now. It means accepting consultations too. responsibility, moving out of a comfort zone of short-termism.” A related development that could increase the institutional Opting for this German model of industrial relations did not clout of unions is the possible return of some sort of national seem so attractive to O’Grady’s predecessors back in the 1970s, apprenticeship system. Proper industrial apprenticeships when shopfloor power was still considerable and there was an declined drastically with the disappearance of the industrial entire legal framework of wages councils, industrial training giants, such as ICI, that used to offer most of them. And unlike in boards and sector bodies in which unions had an institutional Germany, there was no national framework to help sustain them voice. in the businesses that remained. These have mainly been swept away in the past 30 years. But Paul Corby, the former National Construction Secretary of the if you listen carefully you can hear the stirrings of an admittedly Amicus union, says that the failure to sustain a strong culture of diluted version of 1970s corporatism. In a wonderful irony, on the intermediate technical and manual skills has contributed to the day that Margaret Thatcher, the slayer of corporatism, was bur- decline of middle income/middle status jobs, which is one reason ied there was a preparatory meeting of civil servants and indus- for the emergence of such a stark dual labour market. “The old try leaders for the sector body consultation meetings being craft unions were an important local lobby for higher-end manual planned by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills skills training, but in the great wave of union mergers their influ- (BIS)—cousins of the so-called “little Neddies,” the industry ence got drowned out and the training world came to be domi- consultation bodies set up by the Macmillan government in the nated by professional graduates.” early 1960s. With so much focus on the expansion and reform of higher The BIS sector bodies will be modelled on the much admired education in the past 20 years—including a target in the early Automotive Council established by Peter Mandelson in 2009, 2000s of sending half of the age cohort to university—techni- when he was Business Secretary, which is thought to have played cal and higher manual skills have continued to be relatively some role in the recent success of the car industry in attracting neglected. This is another reason why employers have been so a new wave of inward investment. Unions have a voice on the keen on substantial immigration of skilled manual workers 46 bad job for britain prospect july 2013 from Ireland, eastern Europe and elsewhere. According to union paign is still in its infancy—only around 100 companies are signed estimates about 70 per cent of skilled construction workers on big up—and the power of publicity and transparency—“naming and civil engineering projects in southeast England are not British. shaming” at least larger employers—has untapped potential. International evidence suggests that where union collective One obvious objection to such a campaign is that it will drive bargaining remains relatively entrenched, income inequality is large numbers of smaller businesses to the wall. “Just because the tempered and the hourglass economy less pronounced. Yet in national minimum wage at the end of the 1990s increased incomes Britain, despite the return of some union influence as industrial without the job losses that some people had feared does not mean policy has become fashionable again, it seems unlikely that the that an over-ambitious living wage would have the same benign decline of collective bargaining will be reversed. outcome,” says the influential labour market consultant John At the very least this is something that ought to be on the Philpott. “But,” he adds, “there is also a strong case for politicians agenda of the main centre-left party. One reason it is not is the to say that there are some low-paid jobs that we simply do not want increasingly dysfunctional institutional relationship between the to encourage—they cost the taxpayer too much in tax credits and unions and Labour. The fact that Ed Miliband was partly elected keep us trapped in the wrong sort of economic structure.” on union votes and that most of the party’s funding comes from Pay is not the only thing that can be improved for the bottom the unions means that he is unable to talk to the country about 10m. Even quite basic and repetitive jobs can be designed in such why a return of moderate union influence would be a good thing. a way that they are more satisfying to do. It is about simple things: One group noticeably absent from Labour’s “One Nation” are the listening to employees, reducing the monotony with some job very trade unions that founded the Labour party in the first place. rotation and offering a sense of progression to those who want it If Labour was less institutionally bound to the unions it could and have merited it. There are employers who employ lots of peo- also be a more critical friend. And the unions need such friends ple in quite basic jobs—such as food retailer Iceland and Admi- because for every moderate and successful USDAW there is ral, the car insurance company—who also win prizes for creating a declining behemoth like Unite, created out of several union places that are good to work. “If people like what they do they will mergers and riven by power struggles between different factions do it better, it’s as simple as that,” says Henry Engelhardt, Chief of the left.L en McCluskey, the General Secretary, has just been Executive of Admiral. re-elected­—beating off a challenge from the far left—on a turn- This sort of best practice evidently does not spread of its own out of just 15 per cent. accord. The key is to nail down some sort of right to an employee The other union leaders who have caught the public eye—such voice even if it falls short of full-blooded German-style co-deter- as Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union mination. So perhaps it is possible to imagine a “grand bargain” or Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers—are left- in which the unions, having regained some national legitimacy by ist militants whom we hear about only when they are calling for disentangling themselves from the Labour party and re-engaging a general strike or making visits to Cuba. And Unison, the main with their own members, lead a successful “bottom 10m” cam- public sector union, is notorious for its “loony left” branches. paign for a living wage and increased consultation rights. To min- One recent example illustrates just how unrepresentative some imise the economic costs, there could be a long lead-in period for branches are. In a large London council, the Unison branch has the implementation of the living wage, giving employers time to about 4,500 members of whom around 25 turned up to the last adjust and counteracting the squeeze on differentials.T here could meeting, where a motion was proposed condemning the Wool- also be exemptions for smaller employers with tight margins. wich murder, the EDL and Islamic extremism. At the urging of Ed Miliband said about his party recently that “the clue is in the Socialist Workers Party, an amendment was proposed delet- the name,” but the remarkable thing in recent times is how lit- ing the reference to Islamic extremism. It passed by 13 votes tle Labour has had to say about what actually happens in work- to 11. places. Interfering with a manager’s right to manage has been One small change that could help the unions to become less taboo for a generation. But what if that managerial freedom has dominated by such unrepresentative cliques is to introduce online produced an epidemic of low pay and productivity and a higher voting. This is the kind of thing that Ed Miliband should be sug- benefits bill? It may be time for Britain’s workplaces to get politi- gesting but can’t because of Labour’s union connection. Instead cal again. it is left toR obert Halfon, the Tory MP for Harlow who has long taken a constructive interest in union affairs, to argue in favour of this idea. But help may be at hand for both sides in the love- less marriage that is Labour-union relations. Unite is thinking seriously about disaffiliating from theL abour party, following in the footsteps of two small left-wing unions—the rail union, the RMT, and the fire brigade union, the FBU. If that happens, other Labour-affiliated unions might follow suit. Could that liberate both Labour and the unions to act more effectively on behalf of Britain’s bottom 10m? And what might that mean in practice? A much higher minimum wage—you might call it a living wage—is the most likely route to a higher wages floor. So far, despite good publicity, the living wage cam- paign has delivered wage rises to only about 45,000 workers, according to Jane Wills of Queen Mary, University of London. Around 15,000 of them are in London, many of them employ- “Wow! The devastating satire on the failure of the American dream ees of large, profitable organisations in the City. But this cam- just LEAPS out of the screen at you!” Prospect (275x210mm)_Layout 1 26/02/2013 16:22 Page 1

When the Party’s Over: The Politics of Fiscal Squeeze in Perspective

n today’s era of fiscal austerity, fiscal consolidation and spending cutbacks dominate the politics of many of the world’s democracies. Street protests, rule by ‘econocrats’ and draconian policy shifts dictated by – or blamed on – international Icreditors have become commonplace. Old political alignments are being tested and new battles are emerging over whose expectations are to be disappointed and who should be blamed for fiscal squeeze.

This conference aims to explore how the politics of fiscal squeeze has played out in different times and places, looking in depth at half a dozen historical cases of fiscal squeeze, exploring what conclusions we can draw for current debates about fiscal squeeze from earlier cases in other democracies.

Tuesday 9 and 10 July 2013 9am to 5.30pm

Speakers include: Rachel Lomax, formerly of HM Treasury and the World Bank Niamh Hardiman, University College, Dublin David Heald, University of Aberdeen Rozana Himaz and Christopher Hood, University of Oxford Alasdair Roberts, Suffolk Law School, Boston Donald Savoie, Université de Moncton

FREE but registration required. www.britac.ac.uk/events

Lunch not provided. In partnership with:

Related events: Tuesday 9 July 6pm - Keynote lecture by Rachel Lomax, formerly of HM Treasury and the World Bank. More details can be found on the British Academy website.

Wednesday 10 July 6pm - Panel discussion more details can be found on the British Academy website.

Charing Cross, Piccadilly 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH 48 prospect july 2013 © pool/reuters/corbis © Invisible republic The travails of François Hollande are a symptom of France’s deeper malaise christine ockrent

t the end of May, François Hollande visited the Insti- thought of themselves as revolutionaries. But the truth is that tut d’Études Politiques (or “Sciences Po”) in Paris, they long for a monarch. They want the man (and so far it has one of France’s elite universities and a supply line for always been a man) they elect to the Elysée Palace to come from the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), where le peuple—no businessmen or aristocrats allowed (Valéry Giscard the country’s top bureaucrats, known as énarques, are d’Estaing made it, but he is a fake aristocrat). Once anointed, Atrained. Opening a conference on the future of Europe organised the President is expected to behave as the embodiment of the by the Berggruen Institute on Governance, Hollande reminded republic, the institution in full majesty. Hollande’s predecessor, the audience that he had been a student on the same benches, Nicolas Sarkozy, forgot this basic principle when he involved his and had taught economics in the same lecture hall. After a few family in a Kennedy-esque inauguration ceremony and later used words of greeting from the host, the President clapped heartily. foul language to insult a passer-by, and spoke of his love affair That was awkward. The Président de la République is not supposed with the model Carla Bruni at a press conference in one of the to applaud anyone but his peers, and then only sparingly. gilded rooms at the Elysée Palace (“With Carla, it’s serious Ever since the execution of Louis XVI, the French have stuff”). Hollande is struggling to look the part too, though for different reasons. Christine Ockrent is a journalist and a former Editor-in-Chief of L’Express Disillusionment with traditional political discourse among the prospect july 2013 invisible republic 49

has expanded—though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since Georges Pompidou, who was rather stout, is now remembered with fondness for his short but successful presidency. In fact, Hollande behaves exactly the way his friends describe him to be in private: good natured with a great sense of humour, a sharp mind and a quick tongue—the kind of jolly, clever fellow one is always pleased to have dinner with when he comes to Paris. He’s like your favourite cousin from Corrèze, the province which has elected him as enthusiastically as it once did Jacques Chirac. This style is exactly what Hollande had promised the French people during the campaign: unlike his jittery predecessor, a one-man show of a president, he would behave “normally.” Nobody quite knew what he meant at the time, but voters were so exhausted by Sarkozy’s hyperactivity that they didn’t care. Their enthusiasm didn’t last long, however. While the French want their president to exude quiet authority, they also crave grandeur, energy and panache. And whatever one thinks of Sarkozy, he sometimes managed to play the part. Hollande enjoyed no honeymoon with public opinion after the election. His victory had been narrow (he won 51.6 per cent of the vote to Sarkozy’s 48.4) and disappointment set in almost immediately. He chose a Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, who is just like him, only shallower, and set about running his government in the same way that he had managed the Parti Socialiste during the decade he spent as its First Secretary: with all ideological ten- dencies included and none neglected. In office, Hollande has continued to behave as a party boss rather than a president, wasting time and political capital in appeasing internal conflicts, many of which have in fact only got worse. This is especially true in the Ministry of Economy and Finance, where no fewer than seven ministers share port- folios but not the same views (the most debilitating conflict being that between the Finance Minister and protégé of Domi- nique Strauss-Kahn, Pierre Moscovici, and the Minister for “Industrial Renewal,” Arnaud Montebourg, who ran to Hol- lande’s left in the 2011S ocialist presidential primary). Hollande’s approval ratings rose briefly at the beginning of “The President is expected to behave as the embodiment of the this year when, as “Commander-in-Chief,” he waved the drapeau Republic... Hollande is struggling to look the part” tricolore and sent French troops into Mali. But at home his trips to la France profonde, where he insists on talking to ordinary peo- French people, of both right and left, has deepened as the econ- ple, cracking jokes and kissing cheeks, have backfired. Famili- omy has slowed and unemployment has grown. France is not the arity has bred contempt and, on a few occasions, the President only country in Europe to be suffering from a kind of democratic has had to endure public abuse of a kind his predecessors never fatigue, but the syndrome here seems particularly acute, and it experienced. has got worse since Hollande was elected. Populists of both right They didn’t face such dire economic and social conditions. Not and left have been emboldened: Marine Le Pen on the extreme that the French people are suffering anywhere near as much as right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the extreme left denounce a the Spaniards, the Portuguese or the Greeks, of course. But they self-satisfied elite, while a series of juicy political and financial are convinced that austerity is already taking its toll (during the scandals have helped to further stoke popular discontent. Trust election campaign, Hollande promised to restore “budget disci- in politicians, the media and the institutions of national and pline” but was recently forced to acknowledge that France will European government is draining away fast, while opinion polls fail to meet the target of reducing the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP show an unprecedented degree of pessimism about the future. by the end of 2013) and that stringent reforms to the labour mar- Hollande’s popularity has collapsed dramatically since his ket and social security are under way. In short, they think that the election. In early June, just over a year into his tenure, only 28 per future is bleak and the present much worse than the past. cent of respondents in a poll trusted him to deal with the coun- According to polls, the French are the most depressed peo- try’s problems effectively (this was a record). ple in Europe. They are also in the grip of a kind of cultural nos- Hollande’s problem is that although he has mastered the lan- talgia. News magazines sell more copies when they put “the guage—unlike Sarkozy, he went to the right schools—he sim- glory of Louis XIV” or “the genius of Napoleon” on the cover ply doesn’t convey authority. During the presidential campaign than they do when they choose to go with current affairs. And in 2012 he tried hard to lose weight and look younger; now he the recent large demonstrations across France against the legal- dyes his hair too dark, the way older men do, and his waistline isation of gay marriage and adoption were not simply protests 50 invisible republic prospect july 2013

Cahuzac immediately dismissed the it was Cahuzac he sent out to defend Notes on a scandal story as “defamatory” and toured the the administration’s record to the television and radio studios exuding an air media.) The affair also left François Jonathan Derbyshire of wounded serenity. He also assured the Hollande’s campaign pledge to re-estab- Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, that lish an “exemplary republic” looking On 4th December last year, the investi- Mediapart’s allegations were baseless. somewhat threadbare. In response, and gative website Mediapart, one of whose Despite further stories about his in the teeth of opposition from some of his co-founders was the former editor-in- finances in early 2013, including a rather cabinet colleagues, Hollande announced chief of Le Monde, Edwy Plenel, pub- lurid report in Paris Match claiming that legislation designed to “re-moralise” pub- lished an explosive story. It alleged that private detectives working for Cahuzac’s lic life. Among the measures proposed Jérôme Cahuzac, the Budget Minister estranged wife had verified the existence was a requirement that government min- and a former cosmetic surgeon special- of the Swiss account, he continued to issue isters make a public declaration of their ising in hair transplants, had kept secret denials. And he went on doing so even assets. from the French tax authorities the exist- after he was forced to resign his ministe- Hollande still has much to fear from ence of a bank account, containing around rial post when magistrates in Paris began the Cahuzac affair, however.O n 21st May, €600,000, at UBS in Geneva. investigating his case. It was only on 2nd a parliamentary inquiry began into the Mediapart’s story relied heavily on April, after further revelations in the satir- “dysfunctions in the actions of the govern- a memo on Cahuzac’s financial affairs ical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, that ment and agencies of the state between written in 2008 by Rémy Garnier, a now Cahuzac finally admitted to having kept 4th December 2012 and 2nd April 2013, retired tax inspector in the department of the account. and the handling of an affair that led to Lot-et-Garonne, where the minister’s par- With his departure, the government the resignation of a member of the gov- liamentary constituency was located. Gar- lost one of the most eloquent advo- ernment.” The inquiry will hear testimony nier alleged that Cahuzac had opened the cates of its economic policy. (When, ear- from senior members of the government, account some time between 1988 and 1991, lier this year, Ayrault announced that though not from the president himself. when he was an advisor to the then-Health France was not going to meet its defi- Jonathan Derbyshire is Managing Editor Minister, Claude Evin. cit-reduction target by the end of 2013, of Prospect against a government that had sought to divert attention from of his five-year term without losing his political base, his support- the country’s economic woes. They were also the expression of a ers maintain. To continue denying harsh realities, say his critics. deep longing for a time when change was slower and family val- Several well-sourced stories have appeared in the French press ues appeared to have been entrenched in a strict Catholic social recently in which Hollande’s closest advisors have complained code—the moral corset that the generation of May 1968 had that they can’t read the President’s mind—he always seems to thrown off. agree with the last person to have seen him. Some of Hollande’s difficulties are specific to his political tribe. Dissecting Hollande’s character has become a favourite pas- The left in France has not undergone the kind of ideological shift time among Paris’s chattering classes. They pronounce on his mid- that Willy Brandt in Germany and Tony Blair in Britain suc- dle-class childhood, his right-wing father, good schools and good ceeded in imposing on the Social Democratic party and Labour grades, his lack of idiosyncrasies, save for an aversion to marriage party respectively. There has been no Bad Godesberg or Third (he never married Ségolène Royal, the mother of his children), his Way for the Parti Socialiste. The words “social democracy” are mainstream politics pitched somewhere between François Mitter- rarely heard on the French left, a legacy, perhaps, of the influ- rand’s taste for Machiavellian strategising and the European ide- ence of the now nearly-defunct local Communist party. Invited als of Jacques Delors, his mastery of the nuts and bolts of party to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the SPD in Leipzig on 23rd politics and lack of charisma and government experience. There May, Hollande praised social democracy “for its sense of dialogue is nothing remarkable about him, yet this is the man who over- [and] its search for a lasting compromise between economic per- came the vicissitudes of the French power system, albeit thanks to formance and social justice.” He even went so far as to praise the Strauss-Kahn’s sexual indiscretions, and made it to the top. labour market reforms introduced by the last German Social Aside from the question of character, what is fascinating about Democratic Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder—reforms of the sort the Hollande presidency is what it tells us about the evolution of that most of his party comrades find it impossible to countenance the French elite, their grip on the levers of power and their pain- in France. ful adjustments to globalisation. This was a speech designed specially for a German audience. A Born in 1954, Hollande embodies both the strengths and weak- week earlier, during a press conference at the Elysée intended to nesses of the system set up in France after theS econd World War demonstrate the President’s resilience and determination to “go to train a new, meritocratically selected class of public servants. forward,” the language was quite different. Hollande was asked He studied political science at Sciences Po and economics at the why he refused to describe his policies on the budget deficit, tax HEC business school and ended his training at ENA, the finish- reforms and job creation as “social democratic.” His reply took ing school for the upper echelons of the civil service. He emerged an almost psychoanalytical turn: “You are asking me who I am? from ENA in 1980, as part of the graduating class known as the Terrible question. I am a socialist. Do I have to say ‘social demo- “promotion Voltaire,” where he met most of his closest friends and crat’? It happens that I have run the Socialist party for years. I am political allies, many of whom today hold key positions either at a socialist who wants to lead France to success.” the Elysée or elsewhere in the state apparatus. This was quintessential Hollande: playing with words, mov- Apart from a few eccentrics who decided at an early stage ing crab-like, keeping the mask on, gaining time. For what pur- to go into business or, even worse, to study abroad, Hollande’s pose? To achieve his goal of reforming the country in the course circle have no professional experience of private enterprise, no prospect july 2013 invisible republic 51 knowledge of business except in the publicly-owned industries During the election campaign, both candidates promised to and little curiosity about the outside world (Hollande’s first visit restore a mythical Golden Age of French prosperity and pre-emi- to China, all 36 hours of it, took place in April). To them, Brus- nence, while barely mentioning Europe and not uttering a single sels was—and still is—foreign territory, a posting at the European world about globalisation, China or the rest of the world. Commission regarded as a kind of exile and certainly a waste of Since then, unemployment has risen steadily, reaching a time compared to a place in one of the Paris ministries or a job in historic high in the spring. The latest official figures, show- local politics. Mastering a foreign language was never a priority. ing that more than 3.2m people are out of work, one in six of They were brilliant and ambitious, the best and the brightest, and them under the age of 25, emerged as Hollande was holding they made their way convinced that their duty was to perpetuate a joint press conference with Angela Merkel in Paris. Cling- the glory of the mighty centralised state. ing to his pledge to reverse, against all the odds, that trend by Times have changed, however. One or two generations later, the end of the year, the President showed once again how dif- the system of “énarques et polytechniciens”—the science-orientated ficult it is for a French leader to acknowledge that his country École Polytechnique being the other reservoir of top civil serv- has become the junior partner in the Franco-German axis. He ants—is under fire. It is criticised for producing a self-perpetuat- also demonstrated how deft he is at double-talk. He called for ing caste, for promoting women only reluctantly and for the most better governance of the eurozone and succeeded in getting Mer- part excluding people of immigrant origin. It nurtures, the critics kel to agree to the appointment of a full-time chairman in charge say, incestuous relations between political and business networks. of coordinating budget and social policies in exchange for deep- This has bred a small-town mentality (a cruel blow to the reputa- ening structural reforms. Yet, the day before, in true Gallic fash- tion of cosmopolitan Paris), with the members of the caste prac- ion, Hollande was fulminating against the European Commission tising the kind of “omertà” that kept Strauss-Kahn’s behaviour for being so bold as to specify which reforms France should actu- from the public gaze for so long, and allowed Jerôme Cahuzac, ally pursue. “France will never take its orders from Brussels,” he the former Budget Minister, to join Ayrault’s cabinet despite declared, just as Mitterrand, Chirac and Sarkozy all had at one rumours about his lack of financial self-discipline (he was forced point or another. Only circumstances have since got rather worse. to resign in April, after it was revealed that he had not declared The French know better than their elite would like to admit a secret account he kept at a Swiss bank to the tax authorities). that the country must come to terms with decline. Ever since the revolution, they have been taught to believe that their mes- ntellectual critics of this system tend to be more influ- sage is universal. Now they realise it needs translating. They are enced by Marxism than their counterparts anywhere else weary. They are legitimately proud of what they have accom- in Europe. Much the most compelling criticisms, however, plished and enjoyed over decades, but cower from the prospect come from insiders, people who have been through the same of what is to come. Itraining and now denounce it as provincial. You find them run- France is not alone in fearing a diminution of its former ning multinational companies, whether in luxury goods, phar- influence under the pressure of globalisation. But words here maceuticals or engineering. They come from the same schools have yet to be adjusted to facts. The president still has not and belong to the same networks as the hauts fonctionnaires, addressed the country, with the degree of solemnity appro- but have adjusted their ambitions to broader horizons. Unless priate to his office, and explained clearly what is at stake and they are directly targeted—like the “pigeons,” a group of entrepre- what his course of action will actually be. But this is not the way neurs and investors who successfully defeated some extravagant he does politics. There is never a good time to face reality, and tax measures a few months ago—these worldly-wise executives anyway, there will be local and European elections next year. don’t comment on domestic economic policy, fearful of media Hollande promised during the campaign that he would “revive exposure and fiscal harassment. As a result, their experience and the French dream.” One year on, the contradictions of his pres- knowledge of best practice and global trends are restricted to their idency—he calls for reforms without sacrifices and wants to cut own kind. the deficit while preserving the system of social benefits—remain The French remain culturally suspicious of business. unresolved. “My enemy is the world of finance!” Hollande exclaimed to great applause at a rally during his campaign. A few months later, his government hit very high salaries with a 75 per cent tax. Except for Emmanuel Macron, a highly regarded young presidential advisor and énarque with a stint as a banker at Rothschild’s on his CV, nobody in Hollande’s staff, or theP rime Minister’s for that matter, has any experience of private enterprise. The same goes for members of the cabinet (the one exception, until recently, was Cahuzac, who used to run a hair transplant clinic). In Paris, politicians, high-ranking civil servants and political journalists talk to one another. There is a great deal of talent and competition, and a respect for rhetoric and verbal flamboyance. Vocabulary matters. Finding the right formula to describe a prob- lem is regarded as almost as good as solving it. The more complex the approach, the better. ENA does not teach you pragmatism— what matters is to be “intelligent,” a very French notion that is difficult to express in any other language. “Shall we turn the portraits around before proceeding?” 52 prospect july 2013 The art of power Machiavelli makes a tempting but treacherous guide jonathan powell

t is exactly 500 years since Machiavelli wrote The Prince, yet thinker who changed the world but no one can agree on what he he still continues to fascinate. Two new books have joined was actually trying to say. He has been adopted by figures as differ- the more or less constant stream of works trying to inter- ent as Mussolini and Gramsci, Napoleon and Rousseau, the poet pret what he really meant, the first byP hillip Bobbitt, The Milton and the rapper Tupac Shakur. Every commentator has a Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the World different interpretation.T he one common factor is that everyone Ithat he Made, argues that he was really a constitutionalist and the wants to make Machiavelli agree with them. prophet of the coming nation state, and the second Niccolo Mach- Following this pattern, Bobbitt, a constitutional lawyer and iavelli: An Intellectual Biography by Corrado Vivanti, interprets his historian who I admire, decides that Machiavelli is a constitu- thought in the context of his life. tionalist like him, and that the central theme of his work, so far Bobbitt draws parallels between Machiavelli’s life and his own, undetected by others, was the creation of a new constitutional careering from the academy to government to the writing cham- order—which is of course also the subject of Bobbitt’s books The ber. As Vivanti beautifully illustrates, Machiavelli’s life and works Shield of Achilles and Terror and Consent. He wants a single, con- are intertwined. From humdrum beginnings, in 1498 Machiavelli sistent and comprehensive reading of his works and therefore was catapulted into a position roughly equivalent to a Permanent decides that The Prince and The Discourses are two parts of one Secretary by the execution of Savanarola, the radical monk who book that should have been called The State—an expression he briefly ruled Florence.S hortly after this promotion, Machiavelli believes Machiavelli uses in a new way. (This argument is com- became secretary of the Council of Ten of Liberty and Peace, plicated by the many different ways in which Machiavelli used a position roughly the equivalent to National Security Adviser. the expression in his works, the subject of an extended appen- His tenure in office coincided with the heyday of the Florentine dix to Vivanti’s book.) Bobbitt suggests that Machiavelli started Republic and he worked closely with the leader, Piero Soderini, on The Discourses first when he was released from prison in 1513 a moderate who Machiavelli clearly and only interrupted it to dash offThe liked, but who was hopelessly indeci- The Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the Prince because he saw an opportunity sive. Machiavelli was a great success World that he Made to influence Giuliano de Medici (to as an official and much loved by his by Phillip Bobbitt (Atlantic, £22) whom the book was originally dedi- fellow bureaucrats. He was sent to a Niccolo Machiavelli: An Intellectual Biography cated) and then returned to work on series of embassies for Florence, most by Corrado Vivanti (Princeton, £19.95) completing The Discourses in Decem- notably to follow Cesare Borgia, the ber. The only problem with this the- illegitimate son of the Pope, who was waging a bloody campaign ory is that, as Vivanti points out, it almost certainly didn’t to conquer the nearby Romagna for his father. Borgia’s ruthless happen, not least because “in nine months he would have had methods attracted the admiration of Machiavelli and he drew to have written a complex and demanding set of chapters of The many of his lessons in The Prince from observing him. Discourses, not to mention The Prince.” Machiavelli’s two big successes in office were recapturingP isa, Nonetheless Bobbitt’s approach is highly stimulating when he where he worked with Leonardo da Vinci, and in the creation of tries to address the five main contradictions in Machiavelli’s work. a citizen militia to replace Florence’s dependence on mercenar- The first is that The Prince takes the form of “a mirror book”— ies. When the Medici returned to Florence in 1512 Machiavelli a common type of “how to” manual for rulers at the time—but was thrown out of office and into jail where he was tortured. He shockingly appears to turn classical and Christian advice on its was released as part of a general amnesty in 1513 and retired to head. This has led subsequent commentators to suggest that his small farm outside the city to write, while spending the next Machiavelli’s book was a satire or cautionary tale. Bobbitt’s 14 years until his death desperately and unsuccessfully trying to answer is that it is not a mirror book at all but a constitutional get back into government. As well as his two masterpieces, The treatise offering a new basis of legitimacy for a new ruler. Prince and The Discourses, he wrote a History of Florence, The Art Second, and most intriguing, is the contradiction between The of War and a farce, La Madragola, which reflected his bawdy sense Prince, which appears to advocate autocracy, and The Discourses, of humour. His works intimately reflect his experiences in office which appears to argue for republicanism. Bobbitt’s answer is and his later reading of the great classical authors such as Livy that the two were part of a larger work in which he foresaw two and Tacitus. different steps in the evolution of a state: first the creation of a The central paradox of Machiavelli is that he is seen as a great state by a new prince and then its transformation into a repub- lic, the better form of government. Bobbitt points out that Mach- Jonathan Powell was Downing Street Chief of Staff from 1997-2007. He is iavelli never advocates a monarchy over a republic in The Prince, author of “The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World” but he does make it abundantly clear how much he admires the prospect july 2013 the art of power 53 tures a Fe Alin a ri/ R ex © The Medicis as portrayed in Benozzo Gozzoli’s Procession of the Magi: Machiavelli was thrown out of office by the Medici family in 1512

Roman Republic in The Discourses. “success of a political society is not so much to have a prince who Third, Machiavelli separates politics from ethics, suggesting governs wisely while he lives,” but rather “one who organises the that the ends justify the means. Bobbitt asserts, correctly, that government in such a way” that its fate rests upon ‘the virtue of Machiavelli is not amoral, but simply believes that you cannot the people.’” And that is why a Republic is better because it can carry your personal morality into government and still be a good replace its leaders according to the demands of circumstances. leader. If you are acting as an agent of the state you must subor- The final contradiction is thatThe Prince ends with a chapter, dinate your personal preferences to the common good. Bobbitt “An Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians,” which calls this “the duty of consequentialism” by which he means that seems totally out of character with the rest of the book in its emo- the leader’s primary responsibility is to produce the best results tional tone and its focus on one particular, current issue, rather for the state. than the detached consideration of timeless lessons elsewhere. Fourth, Machiavelli seems torn between “virtu” and “fortuna” Here, Machiavelli passionately urges Lorenzo de Medici to bring as drivers of events. Sometimes he seems to say success is all down about the unification of Italy by driving out the French andS pan- to luck and sometimes he seems to say it depends on the manly ish. Bobbitt believes this is not an anomaly at all but the natural virtues of the leader. Bobbitt’s answer is that Machiavelli resolved culmination of the book’s argument that the success of leaders this tension with his idea of “collective virtu,” which allowed for should be judged by the common good, which favoured republi- different leaders appropriate for different times. He believes that canism and the rule of law, and that a new unified state in the 54 the art of power prospect july 2013

centre of Italy was the best way of bringing this about. sons together with those he drew from his reading of the classics. In 1500, when Machiavelli was in government, Christendom His books can be quoted selectively, like the Bible, to illustrate was still a complex system of overlapping duties and entities many contradictory points. rather than a society of politically distinct states. Technologi- It is true that Machiavelli was writing at a time of great fer- cal and social change, however, increasingly required an effective ment, when Luther was challenging the Catholic Church, when administrative apparatus. As that came into being, the legal char- Leonardo, whom he knew, was designing revolutionary inven- acteristics, such as legitimacy and sovereignty, moved from the tions, when the art of war was changing with the use of artillery person of the prince to the state. Western feudal kings, like the and when feudalism was collapsing. His great contribution, how- King of France, had legitimacy without much power, while the ever, was not to foresee what would happen in the future but to recently installed princes in Italy had power without legitimacy. break with the tradition of interpreting everything in terms of Machiavelli offered the latter an answer to their lack of legitimacy theory and, in particular, the values of the Catholic Church. He through the concept of ordini, or constitutional structures—a fea- was a myth-buster who wanted rulers to make rational decisions ture of Machiavelli’s work which Bobbitt thinks is insufficiently in light of the probable consequences they would bring about on appreciated. Machiavelli was, he says, the first to understand that this earth rather than the hereafter. Machiavelli does not give us feudalism was dying all around him and that a new structure of an orderly way of thinking, but his arguments force us to justify organising human affairs would appear, which was to be the “neo- or reconsider our positions. classical state.” Bobbitt concludes that The Prince foreshadows Just as in the plays of Shakespeare we still see circumstances “the new constitutional order in Europe and the emergence of the and motives that we find familiar so in Machiavelli’s works we find first modern states.” He even goes so far as to suggest that Machi- lessons for government that still apply today. David Cameron and avelli is the “spiritual godfather” of the US Constitution. George Osborne, in their economic policy, clearly learned from Machiavelli’s advice to be bold early on and administer disagree- orrado Vivanti, who died last year, was a distinguished able medicine quickly rather than dragging out the pain. Hav- historian who published the classic version of Machi- ing done so will stand them in good stead if the economy recovers avelli’s complete works. Not surprisingly, he too wants by the next election in 2015. But they have been less assiduous to bring coherence to Machiavelli’s complete oeuvre in heeding Machiavelli’s advice to reformers: “he who innovates Cand does so by relating the different works, including the plays, will have as his enemies all those who are well off under the exist- poetry, histories and The Art of War, to Machiavelli’s life and the ing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who period of history in which they were written. Vivanti argues that might be better off under the new.” Reform in health, in educa- Machiavelli’s government jobs helped him develop his thoughts tion or in the civil service will incur the opposition of vested inter- and gave him firsthand knowledge of different sorts of states ests—teachers, doctors and civil servants—but will not enjoy the across the Alps. This, in turn, equipped him with an understand- support of the public because they do not really believe in the ing of comparative politics. He also puts Machiavelli’s republi- advertised improvements until they are delivered. That means canism in a personal and historical context. He spent his time in that politicians planning reform must have a clear strategy of how government fighting “theO ptimates,” the upper classes of Flor- to deal with the vested interests, particularly if, as in the pub- ence, who attempted to frustrate his every move, and who suc- lic service, you need those same vested interests to deliver the ceeded in convincing him that “only a government founded on change you have promised. the people is solid.” Machiavelli’s real value lies therefore not in creating a new Both Bobbitt and Vivanti’s books are excellent, and accessible school of Machiavellian thought but in illustrating the eternal to anyone interested in finding out more about Machiavelli. But truths of human nature. The reason we still read him 500 years both try too hard to make Machiavelli coherent and to persuade later is that his work still provides one of the best practical prim- readers that Machiavelli really agreed with the authors’ pet theo- ers there is for anyone exercising power and leadership. ries. In this respect, both are ultimately unconvincing. Machiavelli would have been mystified to be told that he had foretold the rise of the nation state. And while there is a common thread to Machia- velli’s thought from beginning to the end, he was constantly devel- oping his ideas and refining them, changing his mind in the face of the facts. He was above all else empirical in his approach. I, too, was guilty, like these authors, of trying to bend Mach- iavelli’s thought to agree with my arguments when I used The Prince and The Discourses as a device to tell the story of Tony Blair’s time in government. The maxims Machiavelli set out, for example that it is better to be feared than to be loved, or that a leader needs to be a fox as well as a lion, hold for New Labour as well as they did in the 16th century. But not all his lessons are rele- vant to the modern world, nor do we have to bend over backwards to justify his apparent infatuation with the blood-soaked, and ultimately unsuccessful, Cesare Borgia. It is ahistorical to try to force too much coherence on Machiavelli. He was not a political philosopher trying to come up with a “theory of everything” but a practitioner who learnt from his experience as an official and dip- lomat in service of the state of Florence and who tied those les- “Scroll down a little...” -($1/8&%$521,/7' 'HDOHUVDQG$JHQWVLQ0DVWHU3DLQWLQJVDQG'UDZLQJV

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On 4th June, ahead of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, politicians and businessmen met at Prospect’s roundtable in Westminster to discuss the issue of tax avoidance and what can, and should, be done to tackle it.

ow can countries ensure that they collect all the tax due to them? The dent in tax revenues caused by the financial crash and ensuing recession has made it Heven more important that treasuries get their due—and yet the financial mechanisms deployed by companies to minimise their tax bills have never been more complex, or effective. In a recent Prospect cover Paul Collier, third from right, advised David Cameron on tax avoidance ahead of the G8 story, Paul Collier, a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford acceptance… that international tax rules required to pay; we support that. But to say University who advised David Cameron have got to catch up with modern business.” somehow they need to make a decision on tax avoidance ahead of the G8 summit, Much current legislation, he said, was ethically, how much is beyond that?” estimated that the total amount secured in created for an era before multinational Hu Zhangliang, Political Minister from the tax havens around the world and hence out companies and e-commerce. He criticised Chinese embassy, stressed China’s interest of reach of tax authorities now stands at $21 successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, in an international settlement, and Naoki Ito, trillion. Britain has the presidency of the G8. who took office promising to simplify the tax Minister of Economic Affairs at the Embassy What can it do about tax avoidance? code but did the opposite. of Japan emphasised Japan’s commitment Collier probed this theme further at Bill Dodwell, Head of Tax Policy at to regulatory reform in Africa, without which Prospect’s roundtable, held in association Deloitte, added that moves to improve growth there would remain below potential. with Deloitte, the financial services firm, and the quality of information available to However, Simon Henry, CFO of Shell, ICAEW, the accountancy organisation, and tax authorities were important, and that made clear that he felt some issues are chaired by Peter Kellner, President of YouGov. “helping tax authorities understand where wrongly conflated. The practices of money Huge amounts of revenue from the extraction multinationals make their money is a really laundering and bribery are, he noted, of natural resources are stolen, said Collier, valuable part of that solution.” “addressed by existing legislation.” Tax especially in Africa. But lecturing other Melanie Ward, from the charity ActionAid, avoidance and the revenues from resource countries is no good; the emphasis should stressed the importance of reining in tax extraction are different. Speaking as the be on “putting our own house in order.” havens, without which, she said, tax evasion representative of a multinational business, Transfer pricing, a legal accounting couldn’t happen. They are “the lifeblood Henry said that companies look for stability, practice where profits are assigned to a of the system,” she argued, pointing out transparency and, in taxation terms, “a level favourable tax jurisdiction, represents one that 10 of the most prominent are Crown playing field, not one that can be distorted, of the biggest problems, Collier said. He Dependencies or Overseas Territories of the either through bribery and corruption or described “the ability to establish shell United Kingdom. The Labour MP Iain Wright otherwise.” He added that he was glad to see companies which can be vehicles for wanted to see authorities “clamp down” on a US presence at the debate: “They’re the corrupt money, but which cannot be readily tax avoidance, and the Conservative MP experts in adding on layers” to the tax code, traced” as “one of the great legal scandals Nigel Mills agreed that action was required, “and every layer of complexity encourages of our age.” In one case, “a bribe of $2m but said that it was “very difficult to see what the clever taxpayers to look for the loophole.” ended up with the government losing legislative changes will actually be passed.” David Cameron has said that he intends natural resource claims to the tune of about He suggested attempts to create global laws to push forward with plans to curb tax $5bn.” Authorities should now target the would be problematic. “You need a global tax avoidance during Britain’s presidency of the mechanism for concealing such bribes. body to achieve that,” he said, which “I don’t G8, and that only an international agreement “The legal work that makes it impossible think anybody would seriously want.” will do. In his closing remarks, Collier was to track [corrupt payments] is not done in Mark Tokola, acting Deputy Chief of optimistic. “We have a realistic prospect of Africa—it’s done here. We therefore should Mission at the United States embassy in major change,” he said. “I hope we seize it.” do something about it,” for example, building London said that the US recognised the Go to www.prospectmagazine.co.uk to the global regulation such that more corrupt global dilemma, as well as the problem listen to the full debate. money can be detected. Only the G8 has the posed by the state of Delaware, regarded as authority and scope to create such a global a tax haven. But he found the UK debate on regulatory system, Collier said. tax “hard to follow” when it came to shaming Michael Izza, CEO of ICAEW, argued large multinationals into paying more tax. that the G8 needs to demonstrate “a candid He noted that “corporations pay what they’re sponsored by aberdeen asset management roundtable 57 prospect roundtable Equity markets

A year ago, John Kay, economist, published “enormously detailed rules of increasing acceptable, they have the option of low- the Kay Review of Equity Markets and complexity.” There has been “an explosion cost Exchange Traded Funds. He challenged Long-Term Decision Making, commissioned in the quantity of information,” he said, for Kay that the past “lost decade” for investors by Vince Cable, Secretary of State for example, by making companies report their has been quite as bleak as described, if the Department of Business, Innovation earnings quarterly, but while this has added dividends are taken into account. and Skills. The question was whether to companies’ costs—and to the profits of Joanna Cound, Managing Director equity markets in Britain were serving some intermediaries—it has been “close to (Government Affairs) of BlackRock, said that the interests of users—mainly savers and useless” in meeting the needs of users. her firm spent “a huge amount of time” on pension fundholders—and companies. He One important problem, he said, was relations with companies “trying to reassure concluded that they were doing so poorly. the short-term behaviour of markets. Savers [them] that they should invest for the long On 14th June, Prospect held a generally wanted to invest over the long term, term.” That was the only way ultimately to roundtable at Aberdeen Asset Management as did companies. But intermediaries had enhance the value of the investments, by to debate his conclusions and discuss inserted short-term goals into the market, prompting companies to perform better, she whether anything had changed in the partly because they were assessed and said. past year to increase the likelihood of his remunerated on that basis. Kay now calls for David Paterson, Head of Corporate recommendations taking place. a closer relationship between investors and Governance at the National Association of the companies in which they invest. Pension Funds, noted that people who are he starting point, Kay argued, Martin Gilbert, CEO of Aberdeen Asset members of a “defined contribution” pension should be that markets exist for Management, an independent asset scheme, where what they pay in is set but the benefit of users. Yet their management company now in the Ftse the returns are not, are more alert than in the experience in the past decade 100, said that some change was already past to costs and performance. But those has been discouraging; savers underway. Asset managers are doing far with a “defined benefit” scheme—where Thave seen disappointing returns, and more of their own research, he said, and the benefits are part of the contract—have gains absorbed by charges from the layers cutting back commission paid to brokers, entirely different concerns, largely about the of financial intermediaries between them whose own research activity was struggling. risk that those benefits might not eventually and the companies in which they put their When Kay joked that “the sell-side analyst be paid. money. Markets are not working well for may have reached its sell-by date,” Gilbert Simon Walker, Director General of the users, he said, and are no longer a source responded, to laughter, that “they never had Institute of Directors, challenged Kay’s of much capital for companies, who tend many ‘Sell’ recommendations anyway.” claim that politicians have little role in to fund their development out of their own Gilbert added that fund managers such as bringing about desired change—what about cashflow or other resources. Meanwhile, Aberdeen were increasingly behaving as reviewing capital gains tax, or different “market intermediaries have had a owners of shares in companies, and would classes of shareholding. Kay gave an remarkably prosperous 10 years,” he said. typically hold an investment for 10 years. emphatic “No” to the first, and “Yes” to the Politicians have approached this entirely Edward Bonham Carter, Group Chief second, saying that the visceral hostility to it the wrong way, he said. They have moved Executive of Jupiter Fund Management, in Britain was now out of date. from a world, before the equity markets’ agreed that fund managers are building Steve Wingood, Chief Responsible Big Bang of 1986, where the structure of more active relationships with companies. Investment Office, Aviva Investors, the industry provided curbs on behaviour, Savers are far more aware of costs and that, challenged Kay’s vision, saying that it to an attempt to regulate behaviour with if they don’t find a fund manager’s charges marked such a radical transformation from the present that it was hard to see how John Kay, economist, talks with Martin Gilbert, CEO of Aberdeen Asset Management to get there. Kay acknowledged that, but came back to the starting point: markets exist for the benefit of users, and as they become more aware of shortcomings, it would help. In the past year, he said, he had been encouraged by the response he had had from the fund management industry— but was aware that those who sounded positive were “a self-selecting group”. Those who were profiting most from the current conditions, he said, have least reason to join such a debate.

To hear the roundtable discussion, and

- kon for a list of participants, go to www.prospectmagazine.co.uk schorr sophia © 58 prospect july 2013 Science

Gene machines DNA “origami” is opening the door to the smallest structures ever made, says Philip Ball

James Watson and Francis Crick’s paper in of a molecule whose chemical structure and memories are now so small that con- Nature on the structure of DNA, published encodes instructions for zipping up only ventional methods of carving and shaping 60 years ago, anticipated the entire basis with the right partner has been seized by materials are stretched to the limits of their of modern genetics. The structure they the field of nanotechnology—engineer- finesse. postulated is both iconic and beautiful: a ing matter at the scale of nanometres (mil- DNA nanotechnology offers one way double helix, composed of two entwined lionths of a millimetre)—the dimensions of for scientists to replace such methods of strands of conjoined molecular material, molecules. production. Rather than taking a lump of each consisting of a sequence of genetic Here it becomes immensely hard, if not material and sculpting it into the desired building blocks. The two strands are bound impossible, to arrange and manipulate shape, nanotechnologists can instead use to one another by chemical bonds and, as objects using the techniques that work at the selective bonding characteristics of Watson and Crick realised, for the binding larger scales. However, the ability to pro- DNA to assemble objects at the molecu- to be secure there must be a perfect match gramme assembly instructions into strands lar level—and perhaps even to dictate their between the sequence of building blocks on of DNA offers a powerful new alternative, movements. each strand. Any errors in this matching raising the possibility of tiny structures and For example, chemists have now created make the double helix apt to separate again machines that “make themselves” from molecular machines from bespoke pieces into its component strands. DNA, packaged their molecular-scale components. of DNA that can move along surfaces. in an organism’s genome, carries informa- Research in nanotechnology has been They have made molecular-sized cubes and tion essential to the organism’s functioning propelled partly by the race to miniaturise meshes, and have figured out how to per- and replication. But the details are complex transistors and other components of micro- suade DNA strands to fold up into almost and still being unravelled, and this picture electronic circuitry. Computer processors any shape imaginable, including Chinese ogy: l o n h c e T stitute of of stitute In Un iversity ia ia n ork Y ifor l d, Ca d, n , New S eema n , othemu R

l ow r: © Pau © r: ow l L & Be & L C. Nadria n of Courtesy U N A ) ter (L Ce n ter Na n omedi c i e n d b e c k Lu Kj ems, © Jørge n © Clockwise from top left, Seeman’s DNA cube; Rothemund’s smiley face; a map of the world; DNA cubes with opening lids prospect july 2013 science & technology 59 characters and maps of the world smaller from the bottom up, starting with individ- lar cells within a human body that require than a single virus. They are devising DNA ual atoms and molecules. treatment, or which is released only when computers that solve problems mechan- Unlike most other molecules, DNA certain genes become activated. ically, by the patching together of little will do precisely what it is told. Research- As aficionados of Lego and Mecano “sticky” tiles. They are using DNA tag- ers have worked out how to program DNA know, once you have a construction kit the ging to hitch other molecules and tiny par- strands to weave themselves into webs and temptation is to give it moving parts: to ticles into unions that would otherwise be grids, like a chicken-wire mesh, onto which add motors. Molecular-scale motors are extremely difficult to arrange, enabling other molecules or objects can be attached. well-known in biology: they make mus- the chemical synthesis of new materials In February, a team at Marshall Univer- cles contract and allow bacteria to swim. and devices. In short, scientists are find- sity in West Virginia showed that giant These biological motors are made of pro- ing DNA to be the ideal nanotechnologi- molecules called carbon nanotubes—nano- tein, but researchers have figured out how cal construction material, capable of being metre-scale tubes of carbon which conduct to produce controlled movement in artifi- programmed to assemble itself into struc- electricity and have been proposed as ultra- cial DNA assemblies too. One approach, tures with a precision and complexity oth- small electronic devices—can be arranged championed by Bernie Yurke of Bell Labo- erwise thought unattainable. in parallel pairs along a strip of DNA ori- ratories in New Jersey and Andrew Turber- Although this research places DNA in gami. The carbon nanotubes were wrapped field at theU niversity of Oxford, is to make roles quite unlike those it occupies in living with single-stranded DNA, which attached a DNA “pincer” that closes when a comple- cells, it all comes from the direct applica- to corresponding strands fixed to the DNA mentary DNA strand sticks to the arms of tion of Watson and Crick’s original insight. circuit board, anchoring the nanotubes in the pincer and, acting as a kind of “fuel” A single strand of DNA is composed of four place. to power the device, pulls them together. types of molecule, whose chemical names The astonishing versatility of DNA ori- A second strand strips away the first and are shortened to the labels A, T, C and G, gami was revealed in 2006 when Paul opens the arms wide again. Using similar and in the double helix they tolerate only Rothemund at the California Institute of principles, Turberfield and Seeman have one kind of partner: A pairs with T, and C Technology in Pasadena unveiled a new made two-legged “DNA walkers” that stride with G. This means that the sequence on scheme for determining the way it folds. along DNA tracks, while a “DNA robot” one strand exactly complements that on His approach was to make single strands devised by Turberfield and colleagues can the other. programmed to crumple into back-and- negotiate a particular path through a net- So a DNA strand will pair up securely forth hairpin-like turns by the pairing-up work of such tracks—it is directed by fuel with another only if their sequences are of bases so as to create a two-dimensional strands that prompt a right- or left-hand complementary. If there are mismatches shape. The folds were pinned in place with turn at branching points. along the double helix, the resulting bulges staples made from short DNA strands with They and others are also working out or distortions make the double strand appropriate complementary sequences. how to implement the principles of DNA prone to falling apart. This pickiness about Rothemund developed a computer algo- self-assembly for computing. For exam- pairing means that a DNA strand can find rithm that could work out the sequence ple, pieces of folded-up DNA represent- the right partner from a mixture containing and stapling needed to define any folding ing binary 1s and 0s can be programmed to many different sequences. pattern, and showed experimental exam- stick together to encode information, and Chemical methods for making artifi- ples ranging from smiley faces (opposite) can be shuffled around to carry out calcu- cial DNA, first developed in the 1970s, have and stars to a map of the world (oppo- lations—a sort of mechanical, abacus-like reached the point at which strands contain- site) about a hundred nanometres across computer at the molecular scale. ing millions of A, T, G and C bases can be (a scale of 1:200,000,000,000,000). These There is even the tantalising—some assembled in any sequence. These tech- complex shapes could take several days might say scary—possibility that DNA niques, developed for genetic engineering to fold up properly, allowing all kinks and structures and machines could be pro- and biotechnology, are being used to create mistakes to be ironed out, but researchers grammed not only to self-assemble but DNA strands designed to assemble them- in Germany reported last December that to copy themselves. It’s not outrageous to selves into exotic shapes. each shape has an optimal folding temper- imagine at least some products of DNA The potential of the approach was dem- ature (typically around 50-60 degrees cen- nanotechnology acquiring this life-like onstrated in the early 1990s by the chem- tigrade) at which folding takes just a few ability to reproduce, and perhaps to mutate ist Nadrian Seeman of New York University minutes—a speed-up that could be vital for into better forms. Right now such specula- and his collaborators. They created DNA applications. tions recede rapidly into science fiction; but strands designed such that, when they were Last March, Hao Yan of the University then, no one guessed 60 years ago where mixed together, they twisted around one of Arizona took the complexity of DNA ori- the secrets of DNA self-assembly would another not in a single helical coil, as in gami to a new level. He showed how the take us today. Watson and Crick’s famous model, but as a design principles pioneered by Seeman and Philip Ball is a science writer framework of short, interconnected double Rothemund can be tweaked to make curved helices that formed the struts of tiny, cube- shapes in two and three dimensions, such shaped cages (opposite, bottom left). No as hollow spheres just tens of nanometres one had any particular use for a DNA cube; wide. Meanwhile, in 2009 a Danish team Seeman was demonstrating a proof of prin- saw a way to put DNA cubes to use: they ciple, showing that a molecular shape that made larger versions than Seeman’s, about would be extremely hard to fashion using 30 nanometres across, with lids that could conventional chemistry could be engi- be opened an closed using a “gene key.” neered by figuring out how to program its This development was especially excit- components to build themselves. ing because it suggested a potential way to Although regarded for some years as lit- store drug molecules until an appropriate tle more than a clever curiosity, Seeman’s genetic signal releases them for action. In work was visionary. It showed how nanote- this way, the possibility arises of being able chnologists might build very small objects to deliver a drug directly to the particu- ͚dŚŝƐĞdžƚƌĂŽƌĚŝŶĂƌLJǀŽůƵŵĞĨƌŽŵ<ĂƌŝWŽůĂŶLJŝ>ĞǀŝƩ ͚ůƵĐŝĚĂŶĚůŝǀĞůLJĞdžĂŵŝŶĂƟŽŶŽĨƚŚĞƐƚĂƚĞŽĨ ŝƐĂŵƵƐƚͲƌĞĂĚĂŶĚƉƌŽǀŝĚĞƐĂƵŶŝƋƵĞǁŝŶĚŽǁŽŶƚŚĞ ĐŽŶƚĞŵƉŽƌĂƌLJĨĞŵŝŶŝƐŵĨƌŽŵƚǁŽǁŽŵĞŶǁŚŽƌĞĂůůLJ ƚŚŝŶŬŝŶŐŽĨ<ĂƌůWŽůĂŶLJŝĚĞŵŽŶƐƚƌĂƟŶŐƚŚĞƌĞůĞǀĂŶĐĞ ŬŶŽǁǁŚĂƚƚŚĞLJ͛ƌĞƚĂůŬŝŶŐĂďŽƵƚ͘DŽƐƚŝŵƉŽƌƚĂŶƚůLJ͘͘͘ ŽĨŚŝƐŝĚĞĂƐƚŽƚŚĞĐŚĂůůĞŶŐĞƐŽĨƚŚĞϮϭƐƚĞŶƚƵƌLJ͛͘ ƚŚŝƐŬŝƐĨƵůůŽĨŚŽƉĞ͛͘ James Putzel, London School of Economics Libby Brooks, deputy comment editor, Guardian Pb ISBN 9781780326481 £17.99 Pb ISBN 9781780326276 £8.99

͚ůĞĂƌůLJǁƌŝƩĞŶ͕ǁĞůůƌĞƐĞĂƌĐŚĞĚĂŶĚĚĞĞƉůLJĐŽŵŵŝƩĞĚ ͚tĂůĚĞŶĞůůŽ͛ƐǁŽƌŬŚĂƐďĞĞŶĐŽŶƐŝƐƚĞŶƚůLJŽƵƚ- ƚŽŐůŽďĂůƐŽĐŝĂůũƵƐƟĐĞ͕ƚŚŝƐŬĨŽƌĞŐƌŽƵŶĚƐĚĞĐĂĚĞƐ ƐƚĂŶĚŝŶŐ͕ŚŝŐŚůLJŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟǀĞĂŶĚĨƵůůŽĨŝŶƐŝŐŚƚ͛͘ ŽĨƌĞƐĞĂƌĐŚŽŶƐĞdžƵĂůŝƚLJŝŶĨƌŝĐĂ͛͘ Noam Chomsky Robert Morrell, University of Cape Town, South Africa Pb ISBN 9781780320458 £12.99 Pb ISBN 9781780323817 £12.99 Zed Books LATEST Radical International Publishing T ITLES 61 Special report Intelligent cities

July 2013 My kind of town?

Can technology men took the strain, pulling the ropes taut, 50 years there were skyscrapers overlooking turn a metropolis the platform rose bearing the inventor Eli- Manhattan. sha Otis as well as barrels and heavy boxes, Cities and technology have long influ- into a utopia? until it reached 30 feet above the heads of enced each other. Otis’s elevator was the throng. invented at the same time as innovations After a dramatic pause an assistant in railways, sewers and steel manufacture; Leo Hollis cut the hoists with an axe and the crowds combined they would determine the shape gasped as they expected to see the engi- and scale of the modern city. Today, we are he “Exhibition of the Industry of neer crash to the ground. But the platform experiencing a new technological leap: the All Nations” opened in May 1853 only dropped a few inches and remained intelligent city, which is being heralded on Reservoir Square, New York there, suspended in the air, held by Otis’s with the same fevered, messianic opti- and caused a tourist boom, simi- patented safety device, the “safety hoister.” mism and hard sell as Stephenson’s Rocket lar to the one caused by the Great Above the murmur of astonishment, Otis or Bazalgette’s sewers. To be smart is to be TExhibition in London two years earlier. assured his stunned audience, “all safe, modern, we are told; a failure to embrace Each day in one of the main halls a crowd gentlemen, all safe.” It was a spectacle that the liberating power of information is to be gathered, huddling in front of a stage upon changed the history of the world. Otis had morally suspect. But this poses the ques- which stood a structure that appeared at not invented the elevator, but had made it tion of what precisely the role of technology first glance like a gallows. Above a platform safe. Before Otis’s innovation, few places in might be in the modern city. Can it turn a rose a tall structure of wooden boards with the world—apart from Sana’a, in Yemen— leaden metropolis into a sustainable, robust ropes hanging off to both sides. As work- had buildings over five storeys high; within utopia? C orbis Ag ency/ P ho t o Kim/Topic Joon g Gwoan © Songdo in South Korea: “this type of city is no longer a static collection of places but ‘a computer in open air’” 62 intelligent cities prospect july 2013

What does a city these problems. A community that success- of cities and create a successful future when gain by becoming fully applies technology in this way is what it is used in well-designed products and IBM calls a “smarter city.” One project in services that offer value to people, commu- intelligent? the West Midlands uses textual analytics to nities and businesses. As a consequence, Rick Robinson help its members win contracts worth bil- whilst some smarter city initiatives are lions of pounds in new markets each year. large-scale investments in intelligent infra- Smart meters and an information-sharing structure on behalf of city authorities, many Cities are the engines of economic growth portal in Dubuque, Iowa, are helping citi- more are community initiatives or arise but they face acute challenges. As the zens and businesses to use water and energy from entrepreneurial private enterprise. world’s population grows, urbanises and more efficiently. And real-time traffic- mon Throughout history, technology has becomes wealthier and better educated, itoring schemes in Singapore, Stockholm driven economic and social growth. The competition for finite resources is intensi- and Brisbane are reducing congestion and juxtaposition today is of the opportunity fying. Against this backdrop, cities in the improving the environment. provided by digital technology’s ability to UK are seeking to improve their economic However technology is not a panacea. connect us immediately to anyone, any- performance and access to opportunity for Smartphones and wearable computers are where in the world, and the huge challenge residents. Some show a difference in life blurring the distinction between public and created by the fastest growing, most urban- expectancy of more than 10 or even 20 years private behaviour and between information ised population the world has ever seen. between their wealthiest and most deprived and privacy online and in the physical world. Intelligent cities are what we need to bal- areas. That’s a grave difference in the life The recent emergence of guns that can be ance those forces to create a healthy, suc- opportunity of children born in different 3D-printed from digital designs shows how cessful future for everyone. places. seriously we should take this convergence. Rick Robinson is Executive Architect of Smarter Technology can play a role in addressing Technology can address the challenges Cities, IBM

For some urban thinkers, the solution to Is this an efficiency dream? Or a con- high profile push has raised the interna- all our current problems is to start again, trol nightmare? It’s hard to decide. The tional standing of the project. For big tech from scratch. Songdo, in South Korea, is an modernist era saw planned cities such as companies looking for a place to site their example of the next generation of metropo- Brasília, Canberra and Chandrigarh, built European office, the publicity drive has lis: a smart city, built according to the new from the dirt, as well as the more local worked. However, local start-ups have lost rules of the Information Age. Built from post-war new town plans of Peterlee, Wel- out, and with them has gone an important reclaimed land 40 miles southwest of Seoul, wyn Garden City and Washington. Each source of innovation. According to Eliza- it is a connected city, in which information was created as an expression of hope for beth Varley, founder of TechHub, a hugely is gathered and used to regulate the urban the future—so what do smart cities tell us successful community workspace close by fabric. Buildings, objects, traffic lights are about ourselves? Old Street roundabout, the top-down ini- both sensors and activators. This type of In addition to Songdo, new cities are tiative needs to be questioned. Around city is no longer a static collection of places appearing everywhere. Masdar City has the roundabout itself there has been lit- but “a computer in open air.” It is a sen- been created outside Abu Dhabi by Nor- tle investment: the tube station, one of the tient place—a living and connected matrix man Foster as the first carbon-free city. In least attractive in the city, has not been in which buildings, signs, users and vehicles China there are numerous plans for eco- improved. There has not even been an communicate with each other in real time. cities that harness information technology upgrade to the neighbourhood’s broad- Songdo’s promotional brochure notes to make more sustainable environments. band capacity. There are fears that the main that the city appropriates the canals of Often the techno-utopian claims made effect of government cheerleading will be to Venice, Hong Kong’s skyline, the park for such cities need to taken with a pinch raise rents. areas from Savanna Georgia and Napole- of salt. Most of us will never live in cities According to Varley, the most urgent on’s sense of street planning, and mixes it created out of the desert. The prospective matter was the lack of government invest- all up together. Beneath this architectural populations of these cities are minute com- ment—but in the people rather than the melee the city is wired with Cisco’s proprie- pared to the majority of the global popu- place, with small grants “so that a young tory U.City infrastructural software, mean- lation that already lives within the dense, entrepreneur can eat for six months.” A ing that Songdo can be run from a hub complex, and often straining-at-the-limits 2012 report by the Centre for London put that functions as the city’s “brain stem,” cities built from bricks, stones, steel and the case for development from the ground- gathering data from the sensors scattered lives of the pre-Information Age. These cit- up rather than a policy to attract outside throughout the city. ies face the challenge of adapting as best investment. The report concluded: “It has Street cameras watch the human flow as possible to advances in technology even been evolving for years under the policy to brighten the energy-saving street lamps though they are poorly positioned to do so. radar, and only now—as it reaches criti- that shut down when no one is around. In November 2010, David Cameron cal mass, and becomes the figurehead of Sensors surveil street traffic, collecting announced the launch of Tech City, an ini- London’s digital economy—is it receiving registration plate data to monitor conges- tiative that hoped to turn a stretch of east much public attention... Tech City should tion. Buildings, bridges and infrastructure London—from Shoreditch to Stratford— be about taking what inner East London are connected to avoid unexpected works into the technology capital of Europe. The already has and helping it get even better.” or delays. On top of buildings, mini sta- dilapidated post-industrial East End was to Other British cities are adapting to new tions predict the weather, sending warn- be transformed into a new gleaming smart technology. In November 2012 Birming- ings when temperatures drop to a level hub: Silicon Roundabout, named after the ham announced its Smart City Vision, that might cause a surge in energy use for Old Street roundabout. So did it work? which confronted precisely this challenge. heating. All waste, rubbish, energy use and Within a year of Cameron’s announce- Despite having the youngest population water is metered and measured, offering ment, Tech City had attracted huge atten- in the UK, 18.5 per cent of Birmingham’s potential ways to reduce inefficiencies. tion from international companies. The adult population still has no access to the Widescreen viewing inside

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MIA_Full_Page_210x275mm_V1.indd 1 07/06/2013 17:45 64 intelligent cities prospect july 2013 internet. Overcoming this is the first step. technology installed in London in advance ades; the use of information technology Second, local government should become of the 2012 Olympic was astounding. In will make this easier, faster and bigger. But more efficient and find new ways to deliver Rio de Janeiro, in preparation for the 2014 who owns this information? In 2009 Mayor services and share more between depart- World Cup, the city has worked with IBM Michael Bloomberg opened the New York ments. There will also be a commitment to to create an all-seeing information hub that City Open Data archive that made copious smart energy use, intelligent architecture collects data and could be the nerve centre amounts of city data public. In 2010 Mayor and infrastructure planning—out with the during an emergency. It can also be used Boris Johnson did the same in London; and old Victorian systems, in with the new. to watch and monitor the city from every since then has been followed by numerous The promise made by Birmingham’s angle. cities around the world. Smart City Vision was that: “Technology Most of the major software companies The datastore is not just a mechanism will be seamlessly interwoven into the fab- have developed the proprietary code to for transparency. While it is important that ric of our city life to provide better informa- make and market the future metropolis. the city government proves itself to be open tion, more choice, more convenience and Big players such as IBM, Cisco, Siemens, and accountable, establishing a sense of less waste for our citizens, businesses, com- Phillips, and GE are entering the debate trust between the city and city hall, the vari- munities and public services.” on the intelligent city. These big companies ety of information being offered to general The optimism and sense of ambition is are talking to city halls, offering end-to-end scrutiny has a far more valuable potential laudable, as was the Victorian mission to solutions, the complete package to retrofit in engaging the active citizen. Once data provide clean water, sewers, and fresh air. the everyday city for the 21st century. is made available, city hall loses control on But these plans are expensive. The instal- Some of the most interesting ideas are how that information is used, and by whom: lation of meters to measure energy and coming from the MIT SENSEable Lab, run hackers, activists, website designers, coders water usage has a price; there is no guar- by the architect and designer Carlo Ratti. or app entrepreneurs. It can be utilised to antee that “ultra fast digital connectivity” Ratti’s team at MIT has looked at a number start a political campaign or launch a new will attract “inward investment, create jobs of projects that help the gathering together business. and drive innovation.” This “joined up, inte- of huge sources of information that allow us This donation of the control of informa- grated and citizen-centric approach across to understand the city—not how we think it tion by the traditional government powers city systems and processes, using and shar- might work but how it actually, empirically to whoever has a broadband connection and ing real time data and intelligence” might functions. One project used small GPS a special interest is perhaps the start of the lead to better decision making. But this monitors to find out where our trash ended real intelligent city. is dependent on the quality of the people up. Starting in Seattle, the team discovered Leo Hollis is an urbanist and historian. His making the decisions, not just the size of that parts of the city’s trash travelled thou- latest book is “Cities Are Good For You: the the data set. sands of miles, some items even crossing Genius of the Metropolis” (Bloomsbury) Amsterdam Smart City, launched in borders before being discarded. 2009. Like Birmingham, it is looking to Elsewhere, the Copenhagen Wheel, an upgrade its infrastructure. One lesson con- attractively designed add-on to the back cerned the willingness of residents to take wheel of an ordinary bike, works both as in the technological developments that a miniature engine that stores energy for were occurring around them. The lesson of those moments when you need a little help, Amsterdam is that citizens’ tolerance for and a multi-sensor that gathers data on high-tech lectures from city officials is low. your performance, traffic and air pollution. Big schemes like this have to come from Simple devices like this could have as large city hall, but they must be promoted with an impact as the massive city-wide public caution; both Birmingham and Amsterdam infrastructure projects. propose widespread top-down schemes that However, in the hope of developing the risk promising too much. intelligent city, perhaps the most radical In addition, the intelligent city must gesture is also the cheapest. City govern- “I kind of regret objecting so strongly to the not become a cage. The amount of security ments have been gathering data for dec- wind farm they originally had planned”

Most intelligent city This kind of technology is the new infra- omy on high-tech parks. The advantages structure of the global economy, and cit- of the city have been rolled out to rural and Transforming the ies that lead in it are increasingly economic tribal areas—90 per cent of the surrounding Mechanical leaders as well. county now has 4G coverage. ICF gathers information on how suc- ICF has repeatedly seen stagnant econ- Kingdom cessful communities turn the tools of the omies, often reeling from economic and Robert Bell broadband economy to their advantage, social crisis, shift gears and prosper using generating local economic value. They offer such strategies. Candidates for the award case studies in developing knowledge-based are judged on an in-depth questionnaire, On 7th June, Taichung City in Taiwan economies and share strategies for acceler- evaluated by an independent research firm, was named Intelligent Community of the ating innovation among businesses and gov- and a site inspection. An international jury Year—an international award that has been ernment. But economic success alone is not then casts its vote. All of the data, available running for 14 years, and is given after a year- enough. Intelligent communities also fight online at www.intelligentcommunity.org, long evaluation by the Intelligent Commu- the marginalisation of those without dig- flowed into the decision to name Taichung nity Forum (ICF). ital-age skills. In Taichung—nicknamed as Intelligent Community of the Year. ICF studies cities and regions that use the Mechanical Kingdom because of its reli- Robert Bell is a co-founder of the Intelligent information and communications technol- ance on manufacturing—there has been a Community Forum, a think tank and social ogy for more than playing computer games. long-term strategy to redevelop the econ- enterprise based in New York City New Prospect Ad_Layout 1 09/10/2012 15:43 Page 2

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Tel: 020 8917 8443 Email: [email protected] 66 prospect july 2013 Arts & books The objective historian? 66 Clive James: Dan Brown’s Inferno 70 The genius of Richard Rogers 71 Save the NHS 74 Books in brief 75

Poet of postwar Britain Modern history has never been more popular, but the scale and detail of David Kynaston’s work puts him in a league of his own, says Jonathan Coe

Modernity Britain: Opening the Box, number as yet unspecified—calledTales of a opinions of Rigsby from Rising Damp and 1957-59 New Jerusalem, covering the period of 1945 Alf Garnett from Till Death Us Do Part are by David Kynaston (Bloomsbury, £25) to 1979. “These dates,” he wrote in the pref- analysed in detail to see how far they reflect ace to the first volume, “are justly iconic.” the attitudes of their audience. It’s a fruitful In the acknowledgments to Never Had It So The year of 1945 marked a landslide Labour form of historical analysis, but it also does Good (2005), his history of Britain in the victory which enabled “the implementa- no harm at all to the books’ popular appeal: late 1950s, Dominic Sandbrook recalls how tion over the next three years of a broadly a pre-purchase flick through the index offers a senior academic colleague at Sheffield socialist, egalitarian programme of reforms, a comforting rollcall of familiar pop culture University “solemnly advised me to cancel epitomised by the creation of the National landmarks to draw in middle-aged readers. the contract for what he liked to call my ‘cof- Health Service and extensive nationalisa- Kynaston performs just as assiduous a fee-table book,’ and to devote myself instead tion.” (The same historical moment was trawl of old newspapers, often making lists to writing a serious scholarly article.” The recently memorialised in Ken Loach’s doc- of consumer goods and pop culture refer- anecdote is told with a kind of rueful pride, umentary film, The Spirit of ’45.) In 1979, ences rather than subjecting them to anal- because Sandbrook’s tome was, as it turned “Margaret Thatcher came to power with a ysis. These lists are sometimes so extensive out, rather more than a coffee-table book: it fierce determination to...dismantle much and artfully arranged that they acquire was the first weighty instalment in a sweep- of the postwar settlement.” To Kynaston, a kind of lyrical beauty in their own right: ing narrative of recent British history, a then, it is clear that “the years 1945 to 1979 “Galaxy, Picnic, Caramac... Knorr Instant project which now extends to four volumes, have become a period—a story—in their own Cubes, Bettaloaf, Nimble,” begins one typ- covering the period from Suez to the elec- right,” and “it is this story that Tales of a New ical section. The guiding principle of this tion of Margaret Thatcher. Jerusalem is intended to tell.” His choice of method is not postmodern relativism but a Not only have Sandbrook’s books been the words “story” and “tales” is revealing. generous and open-minded inclusiveness. commercially successful—spawning a TV It’s as if Kynaston does not see his series The point is not that Hotpoint Pacemakers tie-in series—but they have become part of a as being a conventional, argument-driven were as important as Heathcoat-Amory’s larger trend. There is almost a surfeit, these work of historical analysis, but something 1959 budget speech, but that both were part days, of historians combing over the same more in the nature of a roman fleuve: one of the fabric of life in late 1950s Britain, so ground, putting their own spin on it, and which seems likely to have a downbeat, bit- both have their part in a history of the times. parcelling it up for the high-end commer- ter-sweet ending, telling of hopes gone sour; As Kynaston wrote in Austerity Britain, the cial market. Alongside Sandbrook, chron- of fine, idealistic schemes unravelling and story he wants to tell is “a story of ordinary iclers of the 1970s include Andy Beckett coming to nothing. citizens as well as ministers and mandarins, (When The Lights Went Out), Francis Wheen While the scale and detail of Kynas- of consumers as well as producers, of the (Strange Days Indeed) and Alwyn W Turner ton’s enterprise may put him in a league of provinces as well as London, of the every- (Crisis? What Crisis?), to name just the most his own (not that Sandbrook’s volumes are day as well as the seismic, of the mute and celebrated handful. Moving on to the 1980s, exactly featherweights), his work shares a inarticulate as well as the all too fluent opin- we already have Turner’s Rejoice! Rejoice!, number of characteristics with that of his ion-formers.” In support of this approach he Richard Vinen’s Thatcher’s Britain, Andy contemporaries. A distinguishing feature quoted Hardy’s Preface to Poems of the Past McSmith’s No Such Thing As Society and, of most of these histories is the seriousness and Present: “Unadjusted impressions have most recently, Graham Stewart’s Bang!. And with which they approach popular culture. their value, and the road to a true philoso- Sandbrook is no doubt beavering away at his Sandbrook and Turner, when discussing the phy of life seems to lie in humbly recording 1980s volume even as I write this. 1970s, both write at length about the sitcoms diverse readings of its phenomena as they And there is yet another historian, of of the period. ITV’s Love Thy Neighbour is an are forced upon us by chance and change.” course, mining a similar vein—David Kynas- obvious choice: this naive, crudely ironic The idea of the historian confining him- ton: of all the ones I’ve mentioned, he is series about bigoted white Britons who find self to “humbly recording” diverse phe- perhaps the most ambitious and the most themselves next-door neighbours to an aspi- nomena is an admirable one. Nonetheless, diligent. Modernity Britain: Opening the Box, rational black family has long been a locus it would take a writer of superhuman self- 1957-59 is his latest, keenly-awaited offer- classicus for any examination of British race discipline to do that and nothing more. ing, and we should begin by reminding our- relations. Whatever Happened to the Likely As a rule Kynaston shows enormous self- selves of the Olympian nature of his project. Lads is also plumbed for quotations illu- restraint: he assembles and presents his Kynaston is at work on a series of books—the minating social change, while the political material with such studied neutrality prospect july 2013 arts & books 67 y image s y/ge tt y h a rd b e rt © Young people dancing to Lonnie Donegan in March 1958: the new historians of modern Britain look seriously at pop culture 68 arts & books prospect july 2013 that it’s not obvious, at first, where his own This same democratic spirit extends ingly large proportion of them… ‘It’s sort loyalties lie. This means that his very occa- to his chapter titles, which are frequently of corrupt.’ ‘They’re too dogmatic.’ ‘It’s all sional explicit value judgements have a pow- culled either from pop culture (“Stone Me,” fixed.’ T ‘ hey’re just keeping to the party erful impact, like a trump card held back one of them is called, in an echo of Tony line.’ At the back of it seemed to be the feel- until the last moment. When he describes Hancock’s bemused despair) or from poli- ing that... they didn’t honestly believe what the critical mauling handed out to John ticians’ most celebrated utterances, such as they [the politicians] said… and that discus- Osborne’s 1959 musical The World of Paul “Beastly Things, Elections” or “Never Had sion between, say, Labour and Conservative Slickey, for instance, it’s quite a shock to It So Good.” The latter phrase, of course, was pointless since neither was open to per- hear him say that “the conceited Osborne also furnished the title of the first volume suasion by the other.” had had it coming,” and referring to the by Dominic Sandbrook, whose own chap- Does this not equally, and exactly, encap- work as “second-rate (or worse).” ter titles are not so different: “I’m AllR ight, sulate our conviction that young voters Such moments provide tantalising Jack,” “Anarchy in the UK” and “Money, today have become detached from main- glimpses of the historian’s human face, Money, Money,” for instance. Meanwhile stream politics, and are already numbed by but sometimes the mere organisation Turner’s book about the 1980s, Rejoice! a weary cynicism about political discourse? of Kynaston’s material is itself almost as Rejoice!, offers us “When Two Tribes go Again and again, reading Modernity Britain, revealing. Perhaps the best, most thought- to War,” “Let’s Make Lots of Money” and you come upon these spectral echoes of the provoking (and, tellingly, the longest) “Walls Come Tumbling Down.” present day: the sense of “’twas ever thus” chapter in Modernity Britain is “Parity of The choice of recognisable phrases from grows inescapable, and helps to dismantle, Esteem,” which concerns the tangle Labour piece by piece, one of the most pervasive and got itself into while formulating its educa- “Kynaston’s writing is not misleading fictions about our current situa- tion policy in the late 1950s. All the obvious tion: that it is somehow unique. and familiar participants are here—Hugh as apolitical as it appears: For the other, more deep-rooted explana- Gaitskell, Richard Crossman, Raymond it is underpinned by a tion of why this new breed of historian has Williams—but Kynaston gives equal if not struck such a resonant chord, we need only greater weight to the words of more for- profound scepticism of look at one recent, much-reported event: the gotten figures: the literary critic Graham authority, including that death of Thatcher, and the barrage of con- Hough, for instance, whose “caustic” (and tradictory responses it provoked in print and accurate) prediction was that “there will of historians” online. The election of Thatcher as Prime remain to the Labour party the glory of Minister in 1979 provides either the fulcrum messing up the grammar schools... and of pop songs and sitcoms, rather than more around which these books revolve, or (in continuing the 19th-century public school drily descriptive chapter titles, signals an the case of Kynaston) their future climax. system for the very few who can afford to eagerness to reach out to readerships which Thatcher, so divisive while in office, remains pay for it”; and Richard Acland, the former might otherwise shy away from social his- such a contentious, polarising figure in Brit- Liberal and Labour MP whose review of tory. And clearly the gesture is working: ish mythology that even now, more than Michael Young’s book The Rise of the Meri- the popularity of Kynaston, Sandbrook, et 30 years later, there remains a profound tocracy Kynaston ends by quoting at consid- al is impressive and in some ways hearten- fracture running through the body politic. erable length: ing. Does it signify anything, however, apart Cameron’s line to the effect that “we are all “This is the reason why the Labour party, from the fact that they are good writers with Thatcherites now” will either strike you as in the present temper of the nation, does not a knack for traversing recent history in a a joyful affirmation or will send a shudder and dare not propose to end public schools. likeable, accessible way? Can we infer any- coursing through every fibre of your being: Putting it quite brutally, they know that thing more interesting from their success, either way, you have to recognise that it has against such an appalling invasion of priv- something which is peculiar to the times we a certain chilling truth. ilege and inequality, the rich would ‘go on are living through now? However strong most of us are, individu- strike’ in one way or another and bring the I can think of a couple of plausible ally, in our convictions on this subject, the economic life of the community to chaos.” interpretations. One is that these histo- country as a whole has still not, and can- It seems typical of Kynaston that he ries offer us an unexpected kind of con- not, make up its mind about 1979: still can’t should allow the final words on this critical solation. Marooned as we are in a state of decide whether it was the moment which topic to be extracted from an obscure book great political and economic uncertainty, saved the nation, or whether it marked a review by a less than well-remembered com- we have become prey to a habitual sense of disastrously wrong turn. And, as a nation, mentator, just as he makes a habit of quot- unease. However often we are told that his- we will probably never be “at ease with our- ing from Mass Observation sources and tory repeats itself, we never really believe it: selves” (to use perhaps the only memora- anonymous diarists as extensively as from we live in the moment, convinced that the ble phrase which Thatcher’s successor ever leading politicians. This is when you start problems we face are new and unprece- came up with) until we begin to under- to realise that his writing is not as apoliti- dented. Modernity Britain gives the lie to this stand that moment clearly and see it for cal as it appears: that underpinning the belief. It’s not just that it transports us back precisely what it was. If Kynaston’s Tales of whole procedure is a profound scepticism to an era when the cabinet was stuffed full of a New Jerusalem helps us to do that—if it of authority—the authority, that is, of those old Etonians comically unfamilar with the succeeds in its objective of showing us, on a in any kind of power, which by implication everyday anxieties of most British men and scale both panoramic and intimate, exactly includes historians themselves. Kynaston women. It shows us that in the very texture what the postwar governments struggled mistrusts “opinion-formers” and that mis- of life, in the moral temperature of the coun- to build, and which Thatcher, just as deter- trust extends to writers who seek to form try as a whole, things were not so different minedly, sought to dismantle—then it will their readers’ opinions. All his instincts, in back then. Here is Kynaston, for instance, surely come to be seen not just as one of other words, incline towards the freedom quoting a BBC report on the attitude of late- the present era’s most important histories, of ordinary people to have their own voice 1950s teenagers towards the political estab- but as one of its most illuminating works of and their own way of life. Both his politics lishment: “Teenagers are bored by politics,” literature. and his philosophy of history are radically it claimed. “This is rather a bald statement, Jonathan Coe’s new novel “Expo 58” (Viking) democratic. but it does seem to be true of an astonish- will be published in September THE ROYAL OPERA

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ROH_029699_Rondine_275x210_Prospect aw.indd 1 10/06/2013 14:41 70 arts & books prospect july 2013 The heroic absurdity of Dan Brown The less his talent, the more amazing his achievement, says Clive James

Inferno four languages. Best to keep it credible. But sin whose name is Vayentha. How can she by Dan Brown (Bantam, £20) how to register her beauty as an adult? Here be described, in view of the fact that all the goes: “Tall and lissom, Dr Brooks moved “tall and lissom” adjectives have already As a believer in the enjoyably awful, I would with the assertive gait of an athlete.” been lavished on Sienna? Langdon looks out recommend this book wholeheartedly if I Would that be the assertive gait of a Rus- of the window, and there she is: could. But it is mainly just awful. Neverthe- sian female weightlifter? Probably more “Outside his window, hidden in the shad- less it is still almost worth reading. In the like the assertive gait of the British pentath- ows of the Via Torregalli, a powerfully built publishing world they have a term, “pull lete Jessica Ennis. Anyway, as usual with a woman effortlessly unstraddled her BMW line,” which means the few words of appar- bad writer, the reader has to do most of the motorcycle and advanced with the inten- ent praise that you can sometimes pull out imagining. A canny bad writer keeps out of sity of a panther stalking its prey. Her gaze of a review however hostile. Let me supply the way so that the reader’s mind can get to was sharp. Her close-cropped hair—styled that pull line straight away, ready furnished work with its own stock of clichés, but Dan into spikes—stood out against the upturned with quotation marks: “The author of The Brown shows deadly signs of an ambition collar of her black leather riding suit. She Da Vinci Code has done it again.” to add poetry to his prose. Take, from quite checked her silenced weapon, and stared Once again, that is, he makes you want early in the book, his chilling portrait of the up at the window where Robert Langdon’s to turn the pages even though every page beautiful female assassin who is stalking the light had just gone out.” you turn demonstrates abundantly his com- heroic couple as they flee from one famous That counts as a long paragraph for Dan plete lack of talent as a writer. The narrative location in Florence to another. Later on Brown. Generally he believes that a short might be a bit less compulsive this time but they will flee from one famous location to paragraph will add pace, just as he believes you still want to follow it, if only to find out another in other famous cities, notably Ven- that an ellipsis will add thoughtfulness. whether the hero and the heroine will ever ice and Istanbul, but early Groups of three dots appear in innumera- get together. But to do that, they will first on they are stuck in the ble places, giving the impression that the have to stop running to escape the heavies. famous city of Flor- narrative … has measles. This impres- Discussing Dante even as they run, ence, being hunted sion is appropriate, because the famous they are a handsome couple, the hero and down by the beau- symbologist and the pretty, young the heroine, rather like Robert Donat and tiful female assas- woman are actually impelled by their Madeleine Carroll in The 39 Steps. The hero mission to save the world from plague. It we already know. He is Robert Langdon, Clash of the titans: isn’t just because the heavies are after them fresh from his activities as the “symbolo- Dan versus Dante that they are always in such a hurry. gist” who cracked the code associated with In fact the heavies turn out not to be so the famous painter whose surname was Da heavy after all. They, too, are out to save Vinci. (If Dan Brown’s all-time bestseller had the world, which must surely soon been about the Duke of Edinburgh, it would die unless its popu- have been called The Of Edinburgh Code.) lation is drastically Langdon, though an American, still reduced. How this can favours English tailoring. It must be easier be done is the cen- to run in. Running beside him is Dr Sienna tral question raised Brown, described as a “pretty, young by the book, unless woman”, in keeping with Dan Brown’s gift you think that the for inserting the fatal extra comma that central question he or one of his editors believes to be a raised by the book sign of literacy. And indeed I is how it ever got should perhaps have writ- published. Dan Brown and ten “the fatal, extra all his characters take it for comma”, but something granted that a Malthusian stopped me: an ear for interpretation of earthly exist- prose, I hope. ence must be correct. The fact Dan Brown has that Malthus turned out to be no ear for prose at all, a wrong doesn’t slow them down for handicap which paradoxically a moment. They just keep running, gives pathos, and even tender- always one step ahead of whichever

I mage s ness, to his attempts at evoking panther-like assassin is unstrad-

t io n Sienna’s charm. He has no trou- dling herself from her BMW just ble evoking her brains. She has behind them.

Ass o c ia an IQ of 208 and at the age of Eventually they get to where four she was reading in three they would never have thought of languages. You can picture running to if it had not been for

Wi r e/P e ss A the author at his desk, metic- Robert Langdon’s skills as a sym- ulously revising his original bologist. I had better not reveal sentence in which, at the age how it all comes out: there might We st /P I a n

© of three, she was reading in be a few readers of this review who prospect july 2013 arts & books 71 have not already read the book. But just in masterpiece from close up. (Some of them author of brain-teasing thrillers, but he has case you haven’t, let me suggest that it ends are probably hanging in his house by now; taken another course. the way it began, as a fizzer.Y our enjoyment he must have the purchasing power of the As for the author himself, he will prob- will eventually depend on how much you, in Metropolitan Museum.) He uses the word ably go on taking every course there is, in your role as a symbologist, can revel in the “masterpiece” when referring to Vasari, his heroically studious search for a new task of decoding the text to lay bare the full who never painted a masterpiece in his subject. Dante was a bad choice, I think. extent to which the author can’t write. entire career: even at the time, it was well Most of Brown’s huge audience won’t have The less he can write, of course, the known that Vasari’s gigantic pictures were a clue what he’s talking about. If they want more admirable his achievement. As well as mainly of use in order to cover walls. to find out, I recommend my new transla- the heroism of Robert Langdon, we must On the subject of Michelangelo, who tion of The Divine Comedy, which Brown think of the heroism of Dan Brown. This is really did create masterpieces, Dan Brown was mischievously shown by the Ameri- a man who started out with such a shaky has admirably taught himself every name can newspaper USA Today. The author of grasp of the English language that he still and date, but can still refer to “the sombre Inferno said of my translation that it was thinks “foreboding” is an adjective mean- “kind of clever.” I want you to know this ing “ominous.” I also relished “Sienna “Brown believes that an because if even a tiny percentage of the changed tacks.” Read aloud, these three audience of Inferno chooses my transla- words would suggest that the pretty, young ellipsis will add tion to find out more about Dante, I might woman had altered her arrangement with thoughtfulness. Groups come closer to being rewarded for years of the Internal Revenue Service. But Dan labour. Brown has never read one of his own sen- of three dots appear in So I have no reason to begrudge Dan tences aloud in all his life; and why, now, innumerable places, Brown his universal success. But I wouldn’t would he need to? He can buy and sell all giving the impression begrudge it anyway. I am an old man: old the pedants in the world. enough to find pretentious absurdity a On top of the shaky language are piled that the narrative… has diverting spectacle. There is not enough the solecisms. “Pandora is out of her box.” measles” of it in this book, but its author will return, (Dan, she was never in it.) Piled on top of undaunted. Meanwhile he leaves us with the solecisms there are the outright mis- phalanx of Michelangelo’s crude Prigioni.” a scene in which Robert Langdon puts on takes. The C-130 in which the World Actually the term “sombre phalanx” is Sienna’s wig—she’s bald, I forgot to say— Health Authority task force travels is called quite good, but the word “crude” won’t do and she helps him to secure it into place a “transport jet.” It should be a turboprop. at all, because the unfinished look of those with his tie. The scene comes about half In Istanbul, “the Bentley roared away from sculptures is the sculptor’s dearest effect. way into the book and it proves beyond the curb.” The last Bentley that ever roared Throughout the book, the reader will find question that Brown can’t picture what he was racing at Brooklands before World War evidence that the writer’s learning has himself is describing. Two. But at least he tried to tart up his text been hard won. It must have been hard Unfortunately, however, he also shows with the occasional everyday fact. won because it is so heavily worn. Langdon evidence that he is learning from his mis- More questionable is when the fact is will engage in private speculations about takes. We don’t want him to. We want him from a higher realm of experience and Dante while he is running flat out, the to give us everything he’s got, and in his comes accompanied by a judgement. pretty, young woman matching him stride case a kind of exalted stupidity is an essen- Brown has put prodigies of effort into for stride. tial part of it. Should you read this book? mugging up the scholarly background of Do they get together in the end? Alas, Of course you shouldn’t. Will you read this his story, but the laborious deployment of or perhaps hooray, he realises that he is too book? Of course you will. As Sienna puts it: learned lore is too often undermined by old for her. But hooray, or perhaps alas, she “The mathematics is indisputable.” signs that he can’t tell one painting or piece offers herself anyway. There is something Clive James’s translation of Dante’s “The of sculpture from another, even though he … irresistible about the tall symbologist. Divine Comedy” will be published by Picador knows all the names and has seen every He is a bit like a wildly successful American in July Humanism in steel and glass The big question that faces architects today is how to make buildings that are both modern and humane. Richard Rogers has the answers, says Adam Gopnik

Though Renaissance painting, the new Renaissance form with the organic architec- of empty architectural fat. Most of the fail- art historians insist, was only equivo- ture of Italian towns, made over centuries ures have been produced by the commercial cally humanist, Renaissance architecture by the people who live within them, creates cynicism that makes office blocks and face- remains unambiguously so—in the sense of what remains for us the ideal urban land- less towers, though some of the worst build- being rooted in the revival of classical form, scape. The quandary for modern architec- ings were due to an absolutist, totalitarian and in the larger sense of creating places ture has been, since its beginnings, whether strain of modernist thought. How to make an where people can feel most fully themselves. one could remove those classical elements— architecture that neither descends towards We feel palatial within Palladio, big-hearted so easily degraded into pastiche, so extrane- pastiche, nor becomes oppressive and over- standing outside Brunelleschi’s hospital. It ous to steel and glass construction—and still whelming? That remains the big question is no accident that we continue to make pil- save human scale and human concern. now, as it was a century ago. grimages to Italy in the virtual, pixelled 21st This enterprise has been an equivocal suc- And, in a symmetrical fashion, it is no century just as we did in the brick and iron, cess at best, with moments of rapture lodged accident that we turn to an architect who materialist 19th. Even today, the overlay of like lean bits of pancetta inside great epochs has Italy in his bones (though London in 72 arts & books prospect july 2013 a/F O T E C A a Ki d ts u h i s a , © Ka © c o rb i s , © Above from left: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The National Assembly for Wales, Cardiff, public viewing gallery

his sights) for a sign of how a new human- effect, the city centre turned genially upside site of what Rogers offers?T hat is the view of ism could rise from an embrace of new tech- down. It is no accident that the piazza outside many who are still hostage to the idea that nology. An exhibition at the Royal Academy, the Pompidou Centre remains a central play- only buildings that look old will inspire the “Richard Rogers: Inside Out,” which begins space in Paris. It was really due to the intelli- feelings that the old buildings inspired. Rog- in July, provides an opportunity to con- gence of its underlying plan. ers’s point is that the designs of the past won’t sider how that kind of humanism could be The genius of the museum lay in two “sys- work nowadays, not because we are different reflected in an architecture devoted to mod- tem decisions,” easily missed by the contro- people—we’re the same; that’s the humanist ern materials and modernist style. versialists. The first was to use half the space bit—but because our circumstances are so I saw Richard Rogers’s work for the first allocated to the museum for the piazza, cre- different. T ( he new circumstances include time in 1977, on a trip to Paris, where the ating a civic space otherwise absent in cen- our perhaps excessive historical self-con- newly built Beaubourg (as the Pompidou tral Paris. The second was to push the front sciousness. If there’s a difference between Centre is still called by Parisians) wowed my façade of the building right into the street Renaissance humanism and the liberal kind, newly wooed girlfriend, then on her first trip line, making an indisputably city museum it lies there: Renaissance humanism reflected to Paris. At that time I was an old Paris hand for a great city. These two choices, both part their aspirations; liberal humanism, our anx- of 19 or so, and before seeing the building of the quiet grammar rather than the colour- ieties.) To reproduce the old styles will leave itself I had already formed the sniffy suspi- ful adjectives of building, made the Pompi- us with an unintegrated architecture: expen- cion that it would be the kind of bad pastiche, dou a museum you wanted to be near, and sive pastiche for the rich, cheap utilitarian Jacques Tati modernism, that inflicts the one that looked better the closer you were. minimalism for the poor, and all of us shar- Parisian business district, La Défense. As a stroke of luck, Rogers, one of the ing an impoverished, schizoid public life. (A But it was a transporting experience. The two creators of that exuberant building, fact painfully evident in the suburb-dictated extrusion of the inner works of the building, became in the years that followed a close life so frequent in America, where one pro- its pipes and ducts, onto the outside, far from friend. Indeed, he became one of my few true ceeds from the monolithic office tower to the having the depressing effect that many pre- heroes—a contemporary whose work puts imitation manor-with-a-lawn, while actually dicted—the writer Julien Green sneered at a into practice the principles of liberal human- living in one’s car, a cramped simulacra of the building that “showed its own tripe, like an ism that the rest of us can only prattle about. old hearth.) infant” (an eviscerated infant, apparently)— Liberal humanism? The words die on the One should not look at a Rogers building had the opposite result. It had a carnival lips, or threaten to. Isn’t humanism the oppo- to get his work, but rather through it, at the prospect july 2013 arts & books 73 G ill n e t Ja © Above right: the interior of Lloyd’s of London, an example of Rogers’s “feeling for light and, a rare element in modern building, colour” approach to the city that the building embod- Reading through his Reith lectures from that the Prince claims to want for modern ies. Much of his work’s appeal, its charm—to 1995, one finds the same emphasis and faith: building—those of the small gesture, the safe use a word not often associated with 50-sto- not on a style or form, much less a flashy place, of a building that puts people before rey towers—rises from the perfection of its façade, but on the underlying human gram- technology or profit—are the same thatR og- detailing, his feeling for light, and, a rare ele- mar of our experience. He is always for the ers evangelises for. The question is whether it ment in modern building, its colour. Yet to compact, the integrated, the urbane, for is necessary to have traditional form to sus- focus on these details is to miss the systems using brown land to grow on, while sparing tain those enduring values. Richard Rogers that make them. For the truth is that they rise the green lands to remain as countryside. insists that we don’t. After 40 years of looking from a humane vision of the city. Though his forms are always contemporary, at his work, and a quarter century of talking I will never forget Rogers’s performance his language is organic, with cities seen as with him about our lives, I agree. at a conference at the Museum of Modern breathing and living things. When he talks Adam Gopnik is a writer for the New Yorker Art in the months right after 9/11, when the about London, he talks first about the river. and author of “The Table Comes First: Family, future of New York seemed—however hyster- The question for the city is not what might France, and the Meaning of Food” (Quercus) ical this may be in retrospect—dubious. Some be mounted on platforms, but what can be of us city-folk made rhetorical noises about done to reunite the Thames with its embank- the necessities of rebuilding and what the ments. A naïf coming to his writings might city means, while a starchitect or two talked be startled to find that he produced build- about the shells and shapes of their own ings of the scale, or the festive magnificence, work, eager to apply it to the wound. Rogers of those that bear his name. (Including that did not talk about buildings, least of all his controversial Dome, which now seems to be own, but about cities, about brown land and settling into a good city role as a venue for green land and neighbourhood renewal and rock concerts.) the eternal, necessary fight against the car. Over the course of his career, Rogers has It is no accident that Rogers’s most endur- butted heads with Prince Charles, who has ing work may be his domestic housing, for it repeatedly intervened to prevent some of demonstrates that an industrial vocabulary Rogers’s designs from being built. The sad “That’s the book Jack Kerouac wrote after need be no barrier to human warmth. paradox of this conflict is that the values his breakdown” 74 arts & books prospect july 2013 The great divide We must resist the government’s efforts to turn the NHS into a market, argues David Owen

NHS SOS Nor does he challenge “the social solidarity of GP contracts to work only office hours. ed. Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis that comes from agreeing to pool our finan- “The scale of the opt-out from out-of-hours (Oneworld, £8.99) cial resources in order to provide medical provision was something the government God Bless the NHS services” to those in need. The NHS of the fully anticipated and wanted,” writes Stew- by Roger Taylor (Faber, £9.99) future will still require that financial contri- art Player in his chapter “Ready for Market.” bution, he believes, but it will require more “Out-of-hours provision also proved to be a Roger Taylor, author of God Bless the NHS: the from us as patients. “In addition to paying useful entry point into primary care for pri- Truth Behind the Current Crisis, is a journalist our taxes, we will be asked to contribute two vate companies, an opening soon exploited… who works on the annual Dr Foster Hospital further things—time and information.” That by such companies as Serco and Harmoni.” Guide. The heart of this guide is its analysis means much more pooling of data and infor- In another chapter, “The Silence of the of hospital safety and outcomes. In 2009, this mation, and new mechanisms for achieving Lambs,” Jacky Davis and David Wrigley survey became the centre of a controversy more informed choices from patients. forensically dissect the British Medical Asso- that revealed the ineptitude of the govern- I have long believed that the essence of the ciation and the Royal Colleges, while in “Hid- ment’s Care Quality Commission. popularity of the NHS, even after much pub- den in Plain Sight” Oliver Huitson carefully The Commission—with its 2,000 staff and licised scandals, is that people know only too sets out the shameful failure of the BBC and £150m budget—had given a five out of five well that the demand for increasingly expen- other media sources to report the origins and rating to Basildon Hospital, despite evidence sive healthcare cannot be met. They, unlike potential consequences of the Health and that mortality rates had indicated for some some politicians, do not see it as a mere util- Social Care Act. time that there were problems in the hospi- ity—yet they understand that there has to be This Act is 457 pages long, with 309 tal. “It is hard to know which is more shock- financial discipline.T hey value the NHS as a clauses and 23 schedules. It introduces com- ing—the care provided by the hospital or the democratically-rationed healthcare system. plex structures borrowed from the Ameri- high rating it has received,” said Evan Davis, They are ready to pay increasing taxes for can medical insurance industry, it abdicates the BBC journalist. this but their contribution must be set aside ministerial responsibility and removes essen- After the scandal broke, the public and to help fund healthcare. tial legal principles about providing for an the media wanted to know which hospitals The public likes the NHS because it offers equitable and comprehensive healthcare were safe and which were not. The prob- fair and comprehensive care. People may system in England. This Act, which has cost lem is, there is no definitive answer. As Tay- complain, they may get angry but most fam- us millions of pounds already—money that lor explains in his book, the fact is that “for ilies have deep-seated memories where they could have been spent on patient care— much of the healthcare we deliver, we really do literally bless the NHS. They fear that must be changed but without another dis- don’t know whether it is safe or effective.” once the health service becomes privatised ruptive “top down” reorganisation. A mere This state of unknowing dramatically and quango-driven, once market princi- 11-clause emergency bill is already before the demonstrates the problem that many poli- ples dominate, their care will become frag- House of Lords: the National Health Service ticians and journalists face when they need mented, more remote and they will sense (amended duties and powers) bill. to make quick evaluations or prescriptions their doctor’s advice is subject to competitive The bill accepts the organisational for the National Health Service. “Is it a good pressures and profit-based private interests. changes but reinstates the democratic idea to let more private organisations deliver They are right in their apprehensions. nature of the NHS. It will be subject to healthcare?” asks Taylor. “Yes, if it means It is in NHS SOS: How the NHS was extensive consultation and adaptation we get better services more cheaply. But if Betrayed—And How We Can Save It that one over the next two years. All MPs and can- we cannot tell the difference between a good finds the soul of a healthcare system that didates—Conservatives, Liberal Demo- service and a bad service, all we will get is the public is not prepared to see destroyed. crats and Labour—will be systematically cheap services.” He goes on: “Is it a good idea This book is written mostly by professionals challenged before the next election to say to make doctors more responsible for how who work in the NHS, many of whom I know whether they will support this emergency the money is spent? Yes, if it means they can well and support. It does not make com- legislation. There are millions of voters identify better ways to use the money. But fortable reading. What Winston Church- linked to the NHS and they will be given a if we can’t tell where it is being spent effec- ill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec focus for political protest by Open Democra- tively, they will be better off spending more Douglas-Home and John Major did not want cy’s “Our NHS” website. Voters in Scotland, time with their patients.” to do, and Margaret Thatcher’s government Wales and Northern Ireland, in particular, The reality is that healthcare is a learn- deemed too “politically toxic” to proceed will want some reassurance that their health ing curve. There are few certainties, which with, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, with services, so far largely untouched, will not be goes some way to explain what Taylor calls no democratic mandate whatsoever, have pressurised to follow the English pattern in an “astonishing divide” between the politi- blithely forced through. Charles West’s chap- the next parliament. cians and the people. He writes that for “the ter, “A Failure of Politics,” will make heart- The battle to save the soul of the NHS is past 20 years the corridors of the Depart- rending reading for Liberal Democrats. West not over and it will be led by patients and pro- ment of Health have thronged with people is a party activist and his descriptions of how fessionals. People who are not for the status who believe that greater private provision is successive policy conferences were manipu- quo, but determined to improve the quality what the NHS needs, yet if one steps outside lated must be a bitter pill to swallow. of care, ready to champion cultural change, and starts to poll the public, one struggles to Other chapters in NHS SOS deal with the pursue greater efficiency and increase find people who express any degree of enthu- way in which the Labour party from 2000, informed choice for patients. siasm for that idea.” despite increasing the health service budget, David Owen co-founded and went on to lead Taylor’s own prescriptions are refresh- paved the way for the Health and Social Care the Social Democratic party, and is now a ing. He does not think the NHS is too big. Act 2012. This included accepting a revision cross-bench peer in the House of Lords prospect july 2013 arts & books 75 Books in brief

China’s War With Japan colleagues’ suspicions. For example, in another face, but why?” one short note to his wife sent from New Green is an elegant writer, the book a by Rana Mitter (Allen Lane, £25) Delhi, where he was attending a conference, fine, extended prose-poem, and her text is China’s conflict with Japan Berlin says that he’d met the conductor also broken up by pages of complex allu- seems never-ending. Its George Solti on the plane and had “invited sive images—collages of cancelled postage modern phase began in 1895 him vaguely to lunch” (one savours that stamps, found phrases, words for different when an ailing China was “vaguely”). In another, he sends gushing colours—that serve as an alternate peep- soundly beaten by a modern- thanks, from his suite at the Ritz-Carlton hole into her universe. The combined effect ised and expansionist Japan in Boston, to Jacqueline Kennedy for an is enormously powerful, and in taking in text in the contest for dominance invitation to the White House (“the most and image side-by-side you can’t help but be in Korea. War in Manchu- memorable evening I have spent in the reminded of your own various times of griev- ria and the Japanese occupation of much of United States”). ing and their unsatisfactory endings. Green China followed in the 20th century. Other letters, though, show a different writes: “Ultimately, the loss becomes immor- This new book by Rana Mitter, the broad- side to Berlin: not the social gadfly or peripa- tal and hole is more familiar than tooth.” caster and Oxford historian, focuses on the tetic star lecturer (much of this correspond- Hardly consolation. Second Sino-Japanese War, which began ence appears to have been composed in the DT Max in 1937 and lasted until 1945. This is a story air, as he flew from one visiting professor- told mainly from the Chinese perspective, ship to another), but the conscientious com- The Flamethrowers in all its horror. Drawing on a wide range mittee man (the title of this volume refers by Rachel Kushner (Harvill Secker, £16.99) of sources, Mitter pulls together a rich and to the central role that Berlin played in the complex narrative without losing the drama establishment of Wolfson College, Oxford). The second novel by the of China’s fight for survival and the individu- Students of his thought will find much of American writer Rachel als who played a part in it. interest, too—especially the deepening Kushner comes wrapped The contemporary interest of Mitter’s of his interest in the thinkers of the Ger- in praise from people who story lies in Japan’s role in shaping mod- man romantic counter-Enlightenment. “I know what they’re talk- ern China. In the 19th century, Japan was have decided,” he writes to the philosopher ing about. “Thrilling” says a model of rapid and effective industrial- Charles Taylor, “that Hamann is the man…” Jonathan Franzen; “ambi- isation, while in the 20th century it was an Jonathan Derbyshire tious and serious,” says Colm enemy, which focused nationalist feeling Tóibín. Being told too often and too intently in a fragmented post-imperial China. The Bough Down that you ought to like something invites outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war by Karen Green (Siglio Press, £27) a backlash. Happily, The Flamethrowers is saved the Chinese Communists from possible worth the adjectives. annihilation at the hands of their National- Grief, in the popular imag- The novel’s narrator is Reno, a young ist rivals, and today Japan is cast as the most ination, has a reliable tra- woman who comes to New York in 1977. She resented of China’s old enemies, its wartime jectory. It’s supposed to soon falls in with a crowd of artists and hang- atrocities commemorated in dozens of muse- begin with unbearable ers-on, including Sandro Valera, an older ums. These tensions still flare up in sporadic pain and end with some Italian artist who becomes Reno’s lover. The anti-Japanese demonstrations and provoca- sort of acceptance. “Mem- story of Sandro’s wealthy family, who own tions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the ories are meant to fade,” a famous motorcycle company, becomes East China Sea. This rivalry is key to the con- as a character says in a fully entwined with Reno’s when she travels temporary environment in east Asia and Mit- Hollywood film. T“ hey’re designed that way to Italy with him to pursue her art and gets ter’s lively account is a comprehensive guide for a reason” (go ahead and Google it; you mixed up with the violent left-wing actions to its origins. know you’re curious). But in her brave, mov- that rocked that country in the late 70s. Isabel Hilton ing and painfully funny book, Bough Down, There is an exhilarating freedom to Kush- Karen Green shows how much less predict- ner’s writing. The novel skips from the front- Building: Letters 1960-1975 able the process really is. Green, a noted vis- line of the First World War to the Salt Flats by Isaiah Berlin (Chatto & Windus, £40) ual artist, was married to the novelist David of Utah, from a rubber plantation in Brazil to Foster Wallace, who committed suicide on anti-capitalist demonstrations in Italy. One In a 1967 letter to Arthur 12th September 2008. In these 188 pages she chapter consists entirely of titles that a char- Schlesinger, Isaiah Ber- circles around, touches on, bounces off key acter is considering for his autobiography. If lin describes the “looks” moments from that day and the days since, The Flamethrowers tails off in its final third, directed towards him at a following what one doctor tells her is the the novel remains a pleasure throughout lunch in Oxford when the “non-linear, inelegant progress” of her griev- thanks to Kushner’s taut, vividly intelligent visiting Robert Kennedy ing. She herself goes to a therapist, moves to prose. Every page bursts with ideas—on art, had conveyed greetings a new home, tries to find space for her being sex, technology, radicalism—and inventive from a mutual friend. “My when it is no longer with his. Sometimes it phrases, from the character who “said ‘cops’ colleagues…had always suspected that I works, but “the laws of contagion,” she notes, with a tough, flattened New York accent, as moved in some social world not wholly iden- “affirm that once two objects have been in if he were beheading the word” to a pair of tical with theirs.” contact they continue to tease each other men, “faces barbecued by sun and wind, sus- Many of the letters collected in this vol- even after the contact is severed.” And: “The penders framing regal paunches.” ume (the third of four) tend to confirm his outline of him lulls and stings…I could love David Wolf 76 prospect JULY 2013 Fiction Sam Lipsyte

The novelist Sam Lipsyte has been afloat,” says Lipsyte. “I didn’t want to described by Time magazine as “the most poke fun from a distance. I wanted to consistently funny fiction writer working inhabit the terror a little bit. But the main today.” The story below comes from his reason I wrote the story is because people latest collection, The Fun Parts. “I imagined in America always tell you that you should someone who had become ensnared in a never write about writers—one of those cycle of downfall and uplift just to survive silly fiction rules you should take every

© ceridwen morris ceridwen © commercially, to keep his memoir business opportunity to break.”

Nate’s pain is now

obody wanted my woe. Nobody craved my dis- voice spear down from the balcony. ease. The smack, the crack, the punch-outs and “Enough already!” lockdowns, all those gun-to-my-temple whimpers “Excuse me?” I said. about my dead mother and scabby cat—nobody “I said enough,” said the man. He leaned past the rail, a fattish cared anymore. The world had worthier victims. fellow with lovely corn-blond hair. “So you almost died and hurt a SNlavers pimped out war orphans in hovels hung with rat-chewed lot of people along the way. You got your medal. Go home.” velveteen. Babies starved on the desert floor. It was true about the medal. I’d recently won an award for crea- Once, my gigs at the big-box bookshops teemed with the angry tive nonfiction from a major credit card company. and ex-decadent, the loading-bay anarchists and hackers on “Maybe some others here want me to finish,” I said, hearing my parole, the meth mules, psych majors. voice strain now against some sissified collapse. Goth girls, coke ghosted, rehabbed at twelve and stripping “Freaking sheep,” said the man. sober, begged for my sagas of degradation, epiphany. They “Leave him be!” called a voice. It sounded like Nate, my pro- pressed in with their inks, their dyes, their labial metals and scar- tégé. He’d been a homeless gay punk. Now he was my homeless ified montes, cheered their favorite passages, the famous ones, gay punk protégé. Other voices rose to join him. My minions were where I ate some sadistic dealer’s turd on a Portuguese sweet roll protecting me. How humiliating. I felt like that bullied boy I’d for the promise of a bindle, or broke into a funeral parlor and slit a described in Spoon for the Misbegotten, the one who ran home to corpse open for the formaldehyde. My fans would stomp and hol- weep and quaff his mother’s cooking sherry—not that my mother ler for my sorrows, my sins, sway in stony reverence as I mapped ever cooked, let alone with sherry. my steps back to sanity (the stint on a garbage truck, the first “Yeah, back off. He’s been through a lot.” clean screw), or whatever semblance of sanity was possible in a “He’s fragile!” world gone berserk with misery, plague, affinity marketing. “He’s a fraud!” called the man, who I saw now wore heavy cov- I had what some guy at an Utica book café called arc. You can’t eralls splotched darkly in places with what could have been berry teach arc, he said. Nobody’s born with it, either. I stood for some- juice, or blood. thing. My finger lingered on the somehow still-flickering pulse. “He’s our friend!” somebody said. I had a good run. Bang the Dope Slowly and its follow-up, I Shoot “Thanks,” I said. “But I can take care of myself.” Horse, Don’t I?, sold big. I bought a loft, married Diana, who’d stood There were murmurs now, mutters, maybe. by in the darkness, my “research” years. My old man, the feckless “We’ve got your back!” prick, even he broke down and vowed his love. But as a lady at a “We’re here for you, and we . . .” somebody trailed off. coffee bar inP hoenix put it, what goes up can’t stay up indefinitely “Don’t you get it?” said the man in coveralls. “This guy betrayed because what’s under it, supporting it, anyway? his friends and family, he’s contributed untold thousands to the There are wise women in Arizona. drug economy, which has probably helped get others hooked, and now he blabs about it for cash. And don’t start in about his philos- It was here in New York City that I first noticed signs of my ophy. It’s half-baked nonsense. He teaches us nothing. You really decline. Standing at the lectern under those harsh chain store need this guy to tell you capitalism poisons our bodies and corrupts kliegs, regaling the crowd with the particulars of a scam I used to our souls? Are you that dim you can’t figure it out for yourselves?” run on Alzheimer’s patients from a clinic near my squat, I heard a Nobody spoke. I was sensing a strange mood in the crowd © Sam Lipsyte. This story appears in his latest collection, “The Fun Parts” tonight, a balkiness I had never encountered. They were maybe (Granta, £12.99) beginning to be done with me. prospect JULY 2013 Fiction 77 © nata metlukh nata ©

“I think you’re the dim one,” I said. “Why don’t you drink a pint of lye and get it over with?” my “Weak meat,” boomed my butcher. father said. “Why don’t you have yourself a nice little lye-and- hantavirus smoothie? That’ll fix you up good, you piece of shit.” It was a slow, luxuriant slide, like a dollop of half-fried mayon- My father flung himself across the table, flapped his hand naise slinking down the lean, freckled back of a teen. The teen’s in my face. It’s true he never hit me. A father need not hit. His name was Freida, she’d designed one of my websites, but those coughs, his smirks, are blows. Even a father’s embrace confers a ecstasies were over. Diana had departed. Nate had disappeared. kind of violence. Or so I once pronounced on public radio. Only my father’s faxes sustained me: “This meat loaf is terrible,” I said now. It’s supposed to be terri- ble,” said my father. “This isn’t meant to be a pleasant experience. Dear Disappointment, Not dead yet? Keep at it, kid. You had all those This is an intervention.” sad suckers fooled, but not me. How long did you think it would last? “An intervention? Where is everybody?” The money, the women, the talks at the Y? The Y is for some vigorous “Who everybody? It’s just me. Nobody else cares whether you cardio and steaming your nuts free of deadly nut toxins, not for listen- live or die. And I’m on the fence.” ing to some junkie freak moan about his generation. Don’t you know “Okay,” I told him. “Intervene.” there’s real suffering in the world? Slavers pimp out war orphans in “I just did.” hovels hung with rat-chewed velveteen. I saw it on the news! Didn’t you “You did?” learn anything when I was promoted to vice president of sales in dis- “Just then.” trict seven and then got fired with everyone else the next day? When life “So, what’s the plan, Bigtime? I figure you’re almost out of knocks you down, don’t bother getting up. Because life will punish you money. Welcome back. Maybe you could land some menial job, for getting up. Life will bite your eyes out. night janitor, say, but who’s going to hire you, especially with your Call Me, background as a self-aggrandizing scumrag.” Your Progenitor “Bag?” P.S. Dinner? “Rag. Is how we said it.” “I’ve got to go,” I said. “Thanks for the intervention.” I’d pace my loft, smoke Egyptian cigarettes, drink vodka cock- “Anytime.” tails, snort any pill I could crush. Such binges once primed me for another recovery, another memoir, but I couldn’t feel the I rode back to the city, spotted this damaged-looking beauty a few magic anymore, that rush of becoming. All was murk and a sort seats away. The damage wasn’t just the tortoiseshell tattooed over of moister, muddier murk. Out my window was traffic, suffering, the entirety of her shaved skull, or the stern tortoise head glaring euphoria, pretzel carts. Inside was the petty spiral. I couldn’t stop out from between her eyes. The damage, in fact, was everything thinking about the fat dude, his wonderful hair. not the tortoise, not the tattoo. I picked up my father’s latest fax. Maybe a few hours in the “I know who you are,” she said. vicinity of his rot could put me back on track. Also, I could teach “That makes one of us,” I said. him about the Internet. I caught a bus across the river. “You mattered to me once.” My father was semiretired, a freelance consultant. He drove “What happened?” around begging alms from men and women he’d once commanded. “You mattered to me less and less. Can you introduce me to He got by, as many widowers do, on peanut butter and hate. Nate?” “Any booze around here?” I said. “Forget Nate,” I said. “You’ve had struggles, yes? Lay them 78 Fiction prospect july 2013 on me, sister.” “It’s Nate’s time.” The tortoise woman told me her story. She’d been a ward of the state, a runaway, a medievalist, a personal anal sex trainer, a junior The bookstore was packed with Nate’s people. They’d been my Olympic sprinter, the estranged wife of an ex–French legionnaire. people once. I knew their faces, their fears. The tortoise woman Her story had heart havoc and threat, but no self-annihilation. was there in something skimpy, predatory. She’d been stymied but always summoned the nerve to perdure. Nate vaulted to the lectern in parachute pants, a fluorescent She was the opposite of me. I resented her and wanted to serve her. dickey. The crowd cheered as he picked a scab near his nipple, I wanted the world to pledge itself to her example. flicked it. “My God,” I said. “‘I was a homeless gay punk,’” Nate began. “‘I was a self-hating “You have one?” sick fuck, too. I beat up gay people. I set homeless people on fire. “Please,” I said. “Let me write your story.” Maybe it was because of my uncle, Pete. We lived in Levittown, I pictured us together in my loft, me with spiral-bound pads and when I was nine…’” Nate read on. I noticed Diana leaning and designer pencils worn to their nubs by her inspirational tale. against the remainder table, her eyes rolled up under her Greek Critics would applaud my decision to invest my talent in this inked fisherman’s cap, her hand frig-deep in her jeans. Behind her were slut’s plight. My fans would swoon at the way I’d reached out to stacks of my last book, going for a dollar a pop. another wounded human. I’d get off drugs and drink for good, “Every time I looked up into the dirty night sky,” Nate read raise chickens upstate, produce some independent cinema. now, “I thought of each star as one more glittering taunt I had to “No way,” she said. “You’re a slimy, evil sellout hack.” endure—” “Sure, but will you consider it?” “This guy’s got nothing!” I shouted. “This isn’t suffering!” The bus pulled into Port Authority. The tortoise woman Benches scraped the hardwood. Nate’s people whispered, slipped away. strained to look. “He was a homeless gay punk!” somebody called. Diana lived in a building near the river. Somebody buzzed me “He set homeless people on fire!” I said. up. A man stood in the doorway, shirtless, bleeding, words freshly “It’s more complicated than that,” said another. “He was a self- carved into his chest. PEEPS PLEEZER, the gashes read. confessed self-hating sick fuck!” “Nate.” “But gay!” somebody shouted. “Diana’s not here,” said Nate. “Do you want to come in? You “The two are not related!” look like hell.” “In a sense they are, but only in a metaphorical sense!” “Hell is where I’m crashing these days, Nate. But what about “He’s not metaphorically gay,” said a woman in the back. you? You’re the mutilated interlocutor here.” “Leave Nate be,” called the tortoise woman. “I’m purging my defects via ritual.” “He’s poking my wife,” I said. “And I have no idea why he qual- “Is that why you’re poking my wife?” ifies as punk.” “I don’t poke her. We’ve got something more evolved than that. “I don’t poke her,” said Nate. Besides, you know I’m gay.” “He doesn’t,” said Diana. “I only need to hear his voice to “You used to be homeless, too. Written any more bad versions come.” of my books?” “Don’t you get it?” I said. “There are babies turning tricks on “I no longer cite you as an influence.” velveteen!” “I can live with that.” “Those babies are homeless punks, too!” somebody shouted. “I’m having a hard time believing you can live with anything.” “Nate speaks for all of us!” “Nate abandoned and betrayed me,” I said. “Nate’s got arc!” “I’m right here,” said Nate. Now I felt them, the great arms bunching me up, the wisps of “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to God. God is my witness. soft hair grazing my cheek. Next thing, I’m out on the sidewalk, Tell Diana I forgive her.” staring up at that face, the one I’d never shaken from my dreams. “Tell her yourself,” said Nate. “I’m reading downtown tonight.” He flashed an enormous steak knife. “Where?” “Why?” I said. “It’s listed in most free weeklies. Diana will be there.” “Nate’s pain is now,” said the man in coveralls. “Are you inviting me?” “But I have more I need to say.” “I’m sharing public information. Free weekly information.” “That couldn’t possibly be true.” “Who are you to decide?” I walked along the river for a while, wove through the queer skat- “I’m the guy.” ers, the club kids, the breeding units with their remote-control- “What guy?” led strollers. I hated them, the gays, the straights. The races. The “That guy. The guy out there. The guy with the pulse. When genders and ages. None of them loved me. I was feeling that for- you put your finger on the pulse, it’s my pulse. It’s my heart. I’m lorn hum. Maybe another memoir was burbling up. the guy with the heart.” Home, I called Jenkins, my agent. “What are those stains?” I said, pointed at his coveralls. “Nate stole my style,” I told him. “My wife.” “That’s the blood of my heart. And other hearts. Various hearts. “Your agent, too,” said Jenkins. Also, I had some berries for lunch.” “I feel the forlorn hum coming on,” I said. “It’s going to be the “You should tell your story. Write a memoir. If you let me live, best book yet. I’ve really suffered this time.” I’d be happy to help.” “It’s over.” “I respect the genre too much,” said the man, and took some “What do you mean it’s over?” practice swipes with his knife.

© SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages 80 huggers” fan: “there are men who are natural Barack Obama receives a hug from a The psychology of the man hug Sam Leith Leith on life were able to greet each otherwitheachgreet to wereable we before mid-twenties our until us took that—it of because haps, Despite—or, 13. werewe per when together school ing wewentboys’a to board since have known I men of handful a are friends morecomplicated. My best on “relatively.” straightforward, only emphasis it’ssaidmoment.therelativelyI dinosaur? But, leave all that door-opening,alone for port-passing chauvinist tinctfrom men: does that make one a a standard approach for women as dis thekite-tail—as towhy onewould on have fluttering question—a plementary viceversa. Andof course there’s the sup or hug, a into peck the here!), or(come shakepeckshake,turnedgetsa into aor when I go for the peck and she goes for the awfulpeckers,feelanwallyproneto and tle. I’m discomfited by the first-time cheek-litcheekyouonceknowothereachona straightforward. relativelyHandshake firston encounter; is peck procedure the all.Withat adult women, gaystraight,or behaviour and, really, I don’t understand menit insociala context? observeI my own thetailkite—howaof mendogreet other whole trail of others behind it, like bows on scale. A strict no-physical-contactthe of endone atman.was subject. theHe on according to “ touch.” don’t please And ofpeople around me/ But don’t kiss hello/ hair’ssilver like a “My skin’s as pale as the outdoor moon/ My O pen House,” was Andy Warhol’s position ih e, ts much it’s men, With But the question arises—and it carries a L ou R T eed and iffany watch/ I like lots - J ohn T - a, t least at hat, C ale’s song - - - - Life of the mind: the truth of body language DI t ugss icmotad h closer the discomfort—and suggests It something“Manlyjocularclasp!”as:such accompaniedbothyouoroneofsayingby Gun T come a loved friend into my personal rather wel baby than giant space. a burp to ing on the back of the sort that suggest I’m try hug a man there’s normally a series of claps we’d all be happier with a handshake.at our general lack of emotional intelligencenot wives or girlfriends looking on hugs;in despair and the feeling persists that were there M his is a cousin, perhaps, of the famous Y Leith on life: a handshake or a hug? atters of taste: Brooklyn’s foodie fetish investment: who shrank my pension? My own wife observes that when I go in to clenched-fist hug. It’s also occasionally Wine: a revolution in Puglia Life

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Or is me. Rationally, I know I am safe, but my it possible I am massively over-thinking the body is screaming at me to run. “Once you Matters of whole damn thing and my gay friends sim- start speaking you are back in the adult ply smell better? world,” my analyst says. This is true. The taste Final point. Who do I kiss on the lips? My acts of thinking and talking squash the Wendell Steavenson wife, my children, my mother and my father. infantile anxieties expressed by my body. The last one revolts and surprises quite a lot Keep talking and it might be OK. Made in Brooklyn of people, but I don’t think it’s odd at all. There’s a section very early in A Portrait of the “Most of us are aware that Brooklyn foodism: artisanal, locavore, for- Artist as a Young Man when short-trousered aged, seasonal, small-batch, single-origin, Dedalus is being bullied, first for saying he we pick at our fingers or hand-crafted, ethical, authentic, sustain- does kiss his mother and then for saying that chew our lips when able, farm-to-table, nose-to-tail. Back to he doesn’t: “What was the right answer to basics, conscientious bearded hipster young the question?” anxious, but in therapy it 20- 30- somethings wearing flannel-in-the- What is the right answer to the question? is surprising just how city and bicycle clips are inventing new Andy? Anyone? literally problems are careers pickling and jamming, foraging for Sam Leith is an associate editor of Prospect and wild cress between concrete flagstones and author of “You Talkin’ To Me? Rhetoric from Aristo- expressed by the body” using their roofs for chicken coops, grow- tle to Obama” (Profile) ing collard greens and evaporating seawa- Early on in her treatment, my patient ter into locally harvested salt. arrived with a livid gash across her fore- It’s hard to get a coffee without the back- head. She’d been taking drugs with friends, ground construction noise of beans being and had fallen in the kitchen and needed roasted and milled on site. It’s hard to walk stitches. It was a violent and explicit demon- through the Brooklyn Flea or the carefully Life of stration of how chaotic and dangerous she curated street art murals of Bushwick with- felt, but also how obviously injured she is. out being distracted by various carefully the mind “Look!” she was saying. “Can’t you see how packaged delights of a foodie fetishism gone Anna Blundy bad it is? It’s right in the middle of my face!” slightly silly: make-your-own kimchi kits, A member of my family has been men- beer and pretzel caramels, righteous raisin Tying herself in knots tally ill for years and everyone has strug- cookies (a percentage of the price is donated gled to cope, not least himself. Recently to animal rescue), espresso dulce de leche My patient came into the room and threw he was in a car accident and was seriously brownies, and the ubiquitous kale chips. herself into the seat by the customary box injured in a clearly visible way. “Finally peo- Food shops have gone micro speciality. of tissues. “I think there’s something wrong ple are sending me get well cards,” he said, One makes chocolate bars with cocoa nibs with my legs,” she said. She stretched her wistfully. that have been sailed up from the Domin- legs out in front of her so I had to look at We know how to react to a physical man- ican Republic, another focuses on mayon- them. “There isn’t,” I wanted to say, but ifestation of injury—it gives a clarity that naise in various flavours—bacon, preserved didn’t. “Sometimes they feel tingly and everyone, including psychotherapists, find lemon, black garlic. Across the river in Man- numb. But it might be in my head,” she said. useful. It might be obvious that a patient hattan there is a boutique that sells only salt I have been seeing her for more than a finds it excruciating to sit in the room with and another that sells only water. Recently, year now as part of my two-year training me, but actually moving her legs in a run- a New York Magazine cover story asked: “Is to become a psychotherapist. In our early ning motion allows me to point it out. artisanal Brooklyn a step forward or a sign sessions she used to stamp her feet up and Freud famously noted that shell shock of the apocalypse?” down, as though desperately trying to run was more prevalent in the returning First Peter and Kristin invited me for din- away but unfortunately finding herself tied World War soldiers who had not suffered ner one perfect New York spring afternoon to the chair. Later she began to cross her highly visible wounds. It seems impor- when the magnolia blooms turn Brooklyn legs and twist one foot behind the other. tant that our bodies communicate what we Heights more beautiful than Paris. Their “She is tying herself in knots,” my supervi- cannot. If we are agonisingly injured emo- friend Jérôme Waag—a chef at America’s sor said when I presented her to the clini- tionally, we might express this by doing our- first and original local seasonal restaurant, cal seminar. (Every session with a patient is selves violence (unconsciously on purpose) Alice Water’s famed Chez Panisse in Berke- written up and discussed). as a way of communicating that, of making ley—was staying with them and cooking. Most of us are aware that we pick at our sense of it. I deliberately arrived three hours fingers, chew our lips or eat too much or too I first saw a therapist after my father was early. Jérôme—French, sexy, stubbled— little when we are anxious or unhappy; that killed when I was 19. I told her I just wanted spends six months a year devising a new we fidget when uncomfortable and need to to go to some sanatorium and lie still in a menu every day and the rest of the time leave the room when the tension is unbear- white hospital room. fashioning food as experiments in art, able, but it is always surprising in therapy “Be careful,” she said, understanding installation and participation. He described just how literally problems are expressed by that I might effect it. I didn’t do it. I bit my a collaborative ravioli project he had done the body. fingers and drank wine instead. with a friend in Japan. The pictures on his When I lie down on the couch myself, as Anna Blundy is a writer in training to be a mobile phone showed a several-metre long I do for 50 minutes every weekday morning, psychotherapist. “Life of the mind” is her new tongue of fresh pasta heaped with multivar- I find myself suddenly unable to breathe regular column. The situation described above ied mounds of filling waiting to be sealed until I start talking. I’ve wondered if it’s the is composite and confidentiality has not been and cut and cooked; asparagus, raw tuna, climb up the stairs, too much coffee, anxiety breached boiled quails’ eggs, tomato confit. “I don’t 82 LIFE prospect july 2013

know what they were putting in there! And of Brooklyn-distilled Dorothy Parker gin, ordered a bee sting made with gin distilled they were all adding to each others’. There which had a pronounced floral juniper scent in Brooklyn, lemon, honey and cayenne. was such a spirit of sharing!” he smiled. but went down much smoother than I imag- The rim of the glass was dusted with spiced Jérôme set Peter and me to painstakingly ine the lady herself did. raw sugar. “Bartenders in locavore restau- picking the leaves from herbs and chop- It is easy enough to poke fun, easy rants,” said Nina, grinning at the lip-licking ping a combination of mint, coriander and enough to have fun too when you are eat- suggestiveness. “You can’t beat ’em.” oregano into a green dust for a thick salsa. ing so deliciously well. But it is also plenty Wendell Steavenson is an associate editor of “Is this fine enough?” “No!” “Is this fine expensive to buy heirloom tomatoes and the Prospect enough?” “Nearly!” Meanwhile he made entrepreneurial efforts of college-educated harissa with rose petals and wondered about craftsmen. Wealthy societies will always a strange bitterness from the fresh ground throw up trends and waves of aspiration, but cumin, seared the new spring ramps (a kind does the cult of “real food” signal some kind of garlicky spring onion) that he had found of Decline and Fall? A few years ago in New at the Union Square farmers’ market that York, before the recession, I was confronted morning, marinated squid and scallops for with a plate of toro tuna belly topped with a the grill and spent an hour or two carefully mound of caviar and sprinkled with edible Wine stirring, steaming and fluffing couscous. gold leaf and I thought: Rome. This spring, Barry Smith The guests were also locally sourced: breaking the crust of wood-fired sourdough, Nathan was a marketing maven for several elbows on the table, forks in each others Can Puglia deliver? new foodie start-ups and came with two plates, I couldn’t help but feel we were play- bottles of Henry Farm varietal chilli extract ing, like Marie Antoinette, at rusticity. In the heel of Italy, a small revolution in for Jérôme to try. “Check this out,” he said A few days later I went to the book wine is taking place: a shift from mass mar- pointing to the bottle of red Naga Jolokia launch of Cooked, by Michael Pollan, who ket to small production. The flight to qual- Ghost Chilli of India. “One drop will melt has become the narrator of the real food ity has already begun in Puglia. The brilliant your face off! It’s over a million scovills!” movement after his best-selling The Omni- light, the olive trees, the white stone and the Jérôme put a tiny dab on his tongue and vore’s Dilemma articulated a generation’s iron-rich soil have always given this fertile coughed violently. misgivings with the industrial processing of plain an abundance of grapes. At times, per- Amelia—young, smart, pretty—had supermarket fare. Hemmed by the crowd, haps, too great an abundance, for Puglia spent her day as an intern at a butcher’s, I reached for a nettle crostini between was known as a region that produced large breaking down “two whole cows,” and her Michael J Fox and a nun who made goat’s volumes of wine, very little of which spoke arms were aching. She brought with her a cheese and chatted to the new head of the with any distinction of what the soils could packet of Brooklyn cured prosciutto, dense American Slow Food Movement. do. There were exceptions, like the dry rosé and purple and funky, and a pot of creamy Afterwards, my old friend NinaP lanck— wines: the first to be bottled locally. chicken liver parfait. who started the London Farmers’ Markets The changes in Puglia have come quickly, We ate very well, and talked well, too. and is married to New York’s most famous owing to a recognition that care must be Jérôme sat back, effort expended, and lis- fancy cheesemonger—took me to the res- taken to cultivate the abundance wisely. tened as Nathan talked about his Food taurant Cookshop for dinner. We laughed Careful selection and improved technique Film Festival and a new app called Burger a little about the earnest excesses of it all, have led to this surge in quality, and the real- GPS—“if you have an iPhone, it will find reading through a menu that proclaimed, isation that fine wines can be made here has you a good burger anywhere in the coun- “socially responsible dining” and intro- led in turn to an influx of winemakers buy- S e t bou n/ Co r bis Mi ch el

© try.” Another guest had brought a bottle duced us to “our favourite farmers.” We ing land at affordable prices.P eople are call- munched happily through charred ramp ing Puglia the new California. “Hipster 20-somethings using their roofs pizza and honey-braised beets with pis- Vines have long grown in Puglia’s fer- for chicken coops and growing collard tachio and sage pesto and housemade tile soil, with the red clay producing the greens” yoghurt. Nina had a sore throat and riches and the limestone draining the prospect july 2013 LIFE 83 vines to promise wines with good acidity and produces powerful reds with tannic struc- now have, of course) for the entire remain- grip. And now, with the help of careful win- ture but in rosé gives extra bite. These are der of my working life results in this lam- emakers, advanced techniques and much food wines that combine the heady perfume entable car crash. What is one to conclude shared knowledge, we are beginning to see of fruit with flavours of cherry, spice and from this disconcerting experience? the essence of the region and its wines. orange rind. First, actuaries have been wrong-footed Expectations are high. But expectations, At their best, they are fully satisfying and by increasing life expectancy for many like the vines, must be carefully managed. complete wines. Puglia will need them to years and have been far too slow to adjust. Growing wines that are well made but that assert the reputation of the region but also Consequently, their past forecasts have show nothing of their origin will do nothing to change people’s perceptions of rosé. We turned out to be a long way adrift. to perpetuate a region and its wine culture. should have such wines at our tables, and Second, models that try to predict out- So, as usual in good winemaking, there is the not just during the summer. Expectations comes decades into the future are hugely need to balance tradition with innovation. are high, but Puglia may just deliver. sensitive to even small changes in the num- Tradition resides both in human practice Barry Smith is director of the Institute of bers you feed into them. This episode is a and in the materials fashioned into wines. Philosophy and editor of “Questions of Taste: classic example—if the present assump- These include the soils, the vines and the The Philosophy of Wine” (OUP) tions are wrong by fractions of a percentage varietals, and in Puglia, as in so many parts point, the outcome will be different again. of Italy, a wide range of grape varietals is Third, and most important, we should kept alive to express difference and distinc- remember that forecasts are often unrelia- tion. In this region, negroamaro, primitivo ble. Experience repeatedly shows that every (the progenitor of zinfandel), aglianico, forecaster from the Bank of England down- bombino nero and many more varietals DIY wards must be taken with a pinch of salt. thrive. What you find in these grapes, grown The truth is that any figure they do offer in this place, will express difference. Not investment today assumes that nothing will change all the wines will be great, but their vari- Andy Davis between now and 2032, which is clearly not ety will challenge us as tasters to exercise going to hold good our powers of discrimination and revise our Who shrank my pension? So from now on I will view the numbers expectations. they send me in a whole new light. This is Expectations shape what we taste, what Until recently, I had thought that only those liberating. They might be right, of course, we like and find palatable. If our expecta- on the point of retirement had been truly but more likely they will keep making revi- tions are neutral, we can feel surprise and clobbered in the rout of our pension system sions as their early estimates prove off sometimes delight when we taste a new dish caused by ultra-low interest rates. Then I course. Whether they’ll turn out to be too or a new wine. But if expectations are set opened my latest pension statement. optimistic or pessimistic is anybody’s guess. they can greatly influence how we rate what I have paid “additional voluntary contri- The government might hope that a col- we are tasting. butions” into a fund under a “defined con- lapse in projected annuity income such as The challenge for Puglia is to change tribution” scheme. That means the amount the one I’ve just received will induce me to people’s expectations of the region while I paid in was fixed, but what I will even- save more and make up lost ground. But the preserving traditional winemaking, includ- tually get out is not. This fund, entirely threat of such sudden jolts to expectations ing the tradition of producing very fine, invested in equities, did rather well over the might make people decide that locking up perfumed, dry rosé wines. To enhance the course of 2012, its value rising by 11.7 per more resources in a pension is not for them. reputation of the region Puglia has to con- cent. But when I turned to look at the Stat- It’s important that people save for their front people’s prejudices about rosé. Expec- utory Money Purchase Illustration, which old age but how they should best do so— tations for the region and expectations of tells me the income I can expect in 16 years, whether in pension schemes or other sav- rosé are bound up together. when I turn 62, things stopped making ings, which of course can bring their own The prejudice about rosé is that its pleas- sense. The projected figure had collapsed uncertainties—is an intricate calculation ures are entirely context driven. We imag- by just over 62 per cent in a year. How could that depends on their own circumstances. ine sitting at the shore, enjoying the sun, the the value of my fund increase by this much But if they pay into a pension, they need to sea, the salty mouthfuls of squid, offset by and yet the income I can expect from it be prepared to see the projections change. flavours of cherry and grenadine in the wine. crash by almost two thirds? Andy Davis is an associate editor of Prospect Surely, much of the pleasure comes from the Quite easily, it turns out. There are two setting and not the contents of the conden- parts. First, in April 2012, the scheme’s sation-frosted bottle in the ice bucket. Very actuaries increased their forecasts of mem- often that’s right, but not all rosé wines are bers’ average life expectancy. So the fund mere accompaniments to halcyon days. It I’ve built up must now last longer, which is a difficult wine to make. It takes skill and means spreading the same income over timing to leave the pressed grape juice in more years, leaving me with less per year. contact with the skins just long enough to Second, a key assumption that the gov- bleed colour and impart flavour. Views differ ernment insists they use to calculate the on how long skin contact should last, and so Statutory Money Purchase Illustration we see everything from the cherry pink and has changed. The statement I received in Campari-red of the Puglia rosati, to the pale 2012 assumed that interest rates would be salmon pink, or onion skin colour of Prov- 0.4 per cent a year above inflation for the ençal rosés. next 16 years. A year later, interest rates Colour is one thing, flavour is another, are expected to be 0.2 per cent a year below and what makes Puglia wines (like Bandol inflation. wines) so different from other rosé wines is So changing their assumption about how the use of firmer grapes like negroamaro— long I’m going to live, and factoring in neg- a grape which, like mourvedre in Bandol, ative interest rates after inflation (which we Then & Now 84 prospect july 2013

The generalist by Didymus Enigmas & puzzles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 One man and his dog 11 Ian Stewart

12 13 Farmer Suticle gazed at the scoreboard. Goat = 1; Sheep = 2; Pig = 3; Cow = 4; Kangaroo = 5. “Them be the points for each animal, right?” 14 15 “Correct,” said Lady Ariadne Thryce-Knightly, the judge at the annual animal-herding trials.

16 17 18 “And them fences be the pens?” Suticle asked, as his sheepdog Grunt looked speculatively at the kangaroos. “Correct. Sixteen pens in a 4×4 square. Now, I want 19 20 21 22 one animal—or none—in each pen. As many of each species as you wish, provided no two animals of the same species are in the same horizontal, vertical, or 23 24 25 26 27 diagonal line.” 28 “And whoever gets ’em there quickest wins?”

29 30 31 32 “No. Whoever gets the largest number of points, in total, wins.”

33 34 35 36 What is the largest possible total?

Last month’s solution

37 38 39

40 41

42 43

ACROSS thoroughfare! (5,6) “jink” leading to the fourth 1 Latvian composer of a 1998 35 Principal ferry port of (9) How to enter violin concerto entitled northern Spain and capital of 8 Newspaper titles in Distant Light (7,5) Cantabria (9) typographical form (9) 7 Shrubs with leaves 37 Nottinghamshire town with 9 At my house in Rouen (4,3) The generalist prize traditionally used in the a twin-towered collegiate 10 Devil-worshippers (9) The winner receives copies of three long out-of-print but tanning of Moroccan leather church, now a cathedral (9) recently-republished Anthony Burgess novels: 1985, One (7) 11 Latvian composer of Aqua, 38 Application of farming and first performed at the Hand Clapping and Tremor of Intent (Serpent’s Tail, £8.99 horticultural principles in 12 To make slightly sour (9) Barbican in February this industry (11) each). “One of the cleverest and most original writers of his 13 The most southerly year (5,9) 40 A gap in continuity (11) generation”—The Times. settlement on Skye (4,2,5) 17 Gin-based cocktail created by 14 Pseudonym—in wartime? 41 The last emperor of the Incas, bartender Ngiam Tong Boon (3,2,6) executed by the Spanish in (9,5) 1533 (9) 15 The most recently established 20 In Somerset, a ditch or distillery on Islay (9) 42 The pursuit of pleasure as a watercourse (5) matter of principle (8) 16 Politicians holding the middle 22 One of Montaigne’s writings ground (9) 43 A transverse beam to support (5) 18 Writ commanding a sheriff to a boat’s engines and boilers (5-7) 25 Area of London, designed by distrain a defendant’s goods John Nash, and the location (5,6) of the ZSL (7,4) 19 Italian city which flourished DOWN 26 Long-running BBC Radio as the 15th century centre 1 1A’s choral work with violin 4 comedy show hosted by Enigmas & puzzles prize for the Umbrian school of and cello inspired by the Nicholas Parsons (4,1,6) painters (7) One winner receives a copy of Seven Elements that have lowlands of Zemgale (11) 27 Dexterous trickery (11) 21 The state of being calm (13) Changed the World by John Browne (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2 The deficiency of which 28 Heavy pivoted tool used in causes beriberi (7) hardback, £20). Browne, former CEO of BP and chairman 23 Boffin’s domain? (7,3) forging (4,6) 3 Pursuivant of the Heralds’ of the Tate galleries, explores the science and history of 24 Dutch province, capital 29 Poem of ten lines (9) Zwolle (10) College established by Henry iron, carbon, gold, silver, uranium, titanium and silicon, VII (5,6) 30 One of the four houses 29 1980 erotic crime thriller and how they have shaped our social, economic and cultural 4 Fleshy coastal sandwort, at Hogwarts School of starring Michael Caine and Witchcraft and Wizardry (9) existence—for better and worse. Angie Dickinson (7,2,4) Arenaria peploides (3,8) 5 Title borne by certain Muslim 31 Plovers or stupid fellows (9) 32 Joanna ..., BBC News Rules presenter, married to David princes (5) 34 Moved energetically (7) Cameron’s Director of 6 Capital of Carinthia on the 36 The lovable rogues in Send your solution to [email protected] Communications, Craig river Glan (10) Emmerdale (7) or Crossword/Enigmas, Prospect, 5th Floor, 23 Savile Row, Oliver (7) 7 Card game in which a player 39 Partly sheltered anchorages London W1S 2ET. Include your email and postal address. 33 Bankrupt London winning three tricks may (5) All entries must be received by 8th July. Winners will be Last month’s solutions announced in our August issue. Solutions across: 1 Ronsard 4 Pe-tsai cabbage 12 Michael Angelo Titmarsh 13 Nicotiana 14 Out of kilter 15 Commissionaire 16 Conrad 18 Eutychian 20 Wooler 21 Taft 23 Encolpion 25 Rib-plough 30 Haaf 32 Last month’s winners Elodea 33 Bastinado 35 Gaggle 36 Paragrammatist 39 Carte du jour 40 Solitaire 41 Thomas Johnson Westropp 42 Champs Elysées 43 Exegete The generalist: Alan Stanton, Surrey Solutions down: 1 Roman à clef 2 Nick Compton 3 Alastair Cook 4 Dolmans 5 Pantaloon 6 The Royal “We” Enigmas & puzzles: Jonathan Sakula, London 7 A posteriori 8 Crieff 9 Bambinos 10 Acroteria 11 Exheredate 17 Tempus 19 Impala 22 Cosi fan tutte 24 Old Man of Hoy 26 Graminivore 27 Phagocytic 28 Maladresse 29 Boat people 31 Algarroba 33 Birdsongs 34 Blue Lamp 37 Molière 38 Bunjee Download a PDF of this page at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Our pick of the best public talks and events in July

Monday 1st Buxton Festival, Pavilion Arts House Terrace, SW1, 6pm, free, wayswithwords.co.uk Genes, genomes and the Centre, St John’s Rd, 4pm, £8.50, 020 7969 5246, www.britac.ac.uk future of medicine 0845 127 2190, www. Monday 15th Richard Lifton, academic buxtonfestival.co.uk Wednesday 10th The God argument University of Cambridge, School of Citizen science in the 21st AC Grayling, philosopher Clinical Medicine, Hills Rd, Sunday 7th century Buxton Festival, Pavilion Arts 5.15pm, free, 01223 336 700, Are earthquakes predictable? Adam Hart, academic Centre, St John’s Rd, 10.30am, www.medschl.cam.ac.uk Tim Wright, academic University of Gloucestershire, £8.50, 0845 127 2190, www. The Royal Society, Carlton House Elwes Reception, Park Campus, buxtonfestival.co.uk Terrace, SW1, 3pm, free, 020 7451 6.30pm, free, 01242 714 700, 2500, www.royalsociety.org www.glos.ac.uk Tuesday 16th Can technology serve social Childhood disability and Monday 8th justice? social disadvantage Secrets of Silicon Valley Virginia Eubanks, academic Colin Low, vice-president of the Deborah Perry Piscione, Lancaster University, RNIB entrepreneur Management School, Bailrigg, City University London, London School of Economics, 4.30pm, free, 01524 592 685, Northampton Sq, EC1, 1pm, free, Clement House, Lincoln’s Inn www.lancs.ac.uk 020 8992 4302, www.city.ac.uk Tuesday 2nd Fields, WC2, 6.30pm, free, 020 The divided brain 7955 6043, www.lse.ac.uk Thursday 11th Wednesday 17th Ian McGilchrist, psychiatrist Benjamin Britten: a life in the Chagall and Jewish ritual: The Everest story Primrose Hill Lectures, St Mary’s 20th century gallery talk led by Rabbi Tony Stephen Venables, mountaineer Church, Elsworthy Rd, NW3, Paul Kildea, conductor and Walker King’s Lynn Festival, King’s Lynn 7.30pm, £12, 020 7722 3238, writer Tony Walker, rabbi Arts Centre, King St, 7.30pm, £12, www.stmarysprimrosehill.com British Library, Euston Rd, NW1, Tate Liverpool, Albert Dock, 5pm, 01553 764 864, www. Girl trouble: panic and 6.30pm, £7.50, 0843 208 1144, £15, 0151 702 7400, www.tate.org. kingslynnfestival.org.uk progress in the history of www.bl.uk uk young women Gridlock: why global Carol Dyhouse, historian cooperation is failing when we University of Birmingham, School need it most of Education, Edgbaston, 2pm, Thomas Hale, David Held and free, 0121 4144 439, www. Kevin Young, academics birmingham.ac.uk London School of Economics, Clement House, Lincoln’s Inn Wednesday 3rd Fields, WC2, 6.30pm, free, 020 Migrant workers in Wales 7955 6043, www.lse.ac.uk Stephen Drinkwater, economist; Ideas for London Andy Thompson, sociologist Speakers include Charles University of Cardiff, Pierhead Leadbeater, government Building, Cardiff Bay, 5.45pm, strategist, and Sadiq Khan, MP Stephen Venables with ice axe © Ed Webster free, 02920 874 000, www.cardiff. The Exchange, London Bridge St, ac.uk SE1, 6pm, free, 020 3102 3767, Monday 22nd The battle for the global Tuesday 9th www.centreforlondon.co.uk Eduardo Paolozzi and science empire and the end of the Ending the party: a fiction ancient world practitioner’s perspective Friday 12th David Brittain, academic Tom Holland, historian Rachel Lomax, economist and Memoirs of a political Scottish National Gallery of Waterstones, Broad St, Oxford, former deputy governor of the survivor Modern Art, Belford Rd, 7pm £4, 01865 790 212, www. Bank of England; Tony Travers, Jack Straw, former cabinet Edinburgh, 12.45pm, free, 0131 waterstones.com academic and director of LSE minister 624 6200, www.nationalgalleries. London Dartington Hall, Devon, 7.30pm, org Thursday 4th The British Academy, Carlton £9, 01803 867 373, www. The power of vulnerability Brené Brown, academic Royal Society of Arts, John Adam St, WC2, 1pm, free, 020 7451 6868, www.thersa.org Friday 5th Explore it online, add your own event “Meanwhile, in Britain...”: women under the Roman Empire To see a wider list of events and add details Lindsay Allason-Jones, of your own, go to academic © david olivier British Museum, Great Russell St, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/listings WC1, 1.15pm, free, 020 7323 8181, www.britishmuseum.org Listings are free. We’ll print our pick of To attend events the best in the magazine each month and Always confirm details in advance Saturday 6th highlight recommended events online. and reserve a place if necessary. The Potter’s Hand Prices listed are standard; there AN Wilson, writer may be concessions 88 prospect july 2013 The way we were Western visitors to China Extracts from memoirs and diaries, chosen by Ian Irvine

Matteo Ricci was an Ital- nese had reached their high- ian Jesuit missionary who est pitch of civilisation, and travelled to China in 1583. no doubt they were then a He learnt the language and very civilised people in com- in 1601 was appointed an parison of their Tartar con- advisor to the emperor on querors, and their European account of his knowledge contemporaries, but not hav- of astronomy. He died in ing improved and advanced Beijing in 1610. He writes: forward, or having rather “Of all the great nations, gone back, at least for these the Chinese have had the 150 years past, since the last least commerce, indeed, one conquest by the northern or might say that they have had Manchu Tartars; whilst we practically no contact what- have been every day rising ever, with other nations, and in arts and sciences, they are consequently they are grossly actually become a semi-bar- ignorant of what the world in barous people in comparison general is like... Their uni- with the present nations of verse was limited to their Europe. Hence it is that they own 15 provinces, and in the retain the vanity, conceit, sea painted around it they and pretensions that are usu- had placed a few islands to ally the concomitants of half- which they gave the names of knowledge, and that, though different kingdoms they had during their intercourse with heard of. All of these islands the embassy they perceived put together would not be many of the advantages we as large as the smallest of had over them, they... some- the Chinese provinces. With George Macartney refuses to bow before Emperor Qianlong in 1792 times affected not to see what such a limited knowledge, it they could not avoid feeling. is evident why they boasted of their kingdom introduced, who strutted across the stage, In their address to strangers they... present as being the whole world, and why they call saying ‘Maskee can do! God damn!’ where- themselves with an easy confident air, as if it Thienhia, meaning everything under the upon a loud and universal laugh ensued, they considered themselves the superior.” heavens... the Chinese, quite in an ecstasy, crying out “Because of their ignorance of the size of ‘Truly have muchee like Englishman.’ Henry Kissinger, national security advi- the earth and the exaggerated opinion they “The second day, on the contrary, every- sor in President Nixon’s first administra- have of themselves... they look upon all other thing was Chinese, all the European guests tion who travelled to China in 1971 on a people not only as barbarous but as unrea- eating, or endeavouring to eat, with chop- secret diplomatic mission, recalls: soning animals... sticks, no knives or forks being at table... At “The early stages of the Sino-American dia- “The Chinese place absolutely no trust in night brilliant fireworks (in which they also logue focused primarily on the meshing of any foreign country, and thus allow no one at excel) were set off in a garden magnificently concepts and fundamental approaches. all to enter and reside here unless they under- lighted by coloured lamps, which we viewed Mao [Zedong], Zhou [Enlai] and later take never again to return home, as is the from a temporary building erected for the Deng [Xiaoping] were all extraordinary per- case with us.” occasion and wherein there was exhibited sonalities. Mao was the visionary, ruthless, sleight-of-hand tricks, tight- and slack-rope pitiless, occasionally murderous revolution- In 1769, William Hickey records his enter- dancing, followed by one of the cleverest ary; Zhou, the elegant, charming, brilliant tainment at a country house near Canton pantomimes I ever saw. This continued until administrator; and Deng, the reformer of by a Chinese merchant called Pankeequa: a late hour, when we returned in company elemental convictions... “These fêtes were given on 1st and 2nd Octo- with several of the supercargoes to our fac- “Their negotiating style was as differ- ber, the first of them being a dinner. Dressed tory, much gratified with the liberality and ent from that of their Soviet counterparts as and served à la mode anglaise, the China- taste displayed by our Chinese host.” was possible to be... Soviet diplomats almost men on that occasion using, and awkwardly never discussed conceptual issues. Their enough, knives and forks, and in every In 1792, the British government sent tactic was to select a problem of immediate respect conforming to the European fash- George Macartney as its first envoy to the concern to Moscow and batter away at its res- ion... In the evening a play was performed, Imperial Court in Peking, to expand trad- olution with a dogged persistence designed the subject warlike, where most capital ing links. The embassy failed through to wear down their interlocutors rather than fighting was exhibited, with better danc- mutual misunderstanding of culture. persuade them... Chinese leaders repre- ing and music than I could have expected. Macartney writes in his journal: sented an emotionally far more secure soci- In one of the scenes an English naval officer, “A little before that period [of Marco Polo’s ety. They were less interested in drafting

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