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Democracy in Britain Essays in Honour of James Cornford

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Democracy in Britain Essays in Honour of James Cornford ESSAYS DEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF JAMES CORNFORD Edited by Guy Lodge and Glenn Gottfried With contributions from Stuart White, Martin O’Neill, Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Colin Crouch, Mathew Lawrence, Jessica Asato, Jamie Bartlett, Sarah Birch, Mark Elliott, Alan Trench, Michael Kenny, Ed Cox, Vivien Schmidt and Lord Kenneth Macdonald February 2014 © IPPR 2014 Institute for Public Policy Research DEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF JAMES CORNFORD Edited by Guy Lodge and Glenn Gottfried 2014 i ABOUT THE EDITORS Guy Lodge is an associate director at IPPR. Glenn Gottfried is a research fellow at IPPR. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost we would like to thank Anthony Tomei, then at the Nuffield Foundation, and Nick Pearce at IPPR, who provided the initial spark for this edited collection as a way of celebrating the life and contribution of James Cornford. The book was then made possible with a generous grant from the Nuffield Foundation. We would also like to thank Sharon Witherspoon and Rocio Lale-Montes at the Nuffield Foundation and Sean Kippin at Democratic Audit for their help, as well as Graeme Cooke and Rebecca Hall at IPPR. Finally, and most of all, we would like to record our appreciation to all the authors for helping to produce such a stimulating and thoughtful collection. ABOUT IPPR IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research, is the UK’s leading progressive thinktank. We are an independent charitable organisation with more than 40 staff members, paid interns and visiting fellows. Our main office is in London, with IPPR North, IPPR’s dedicated thinktank for the North of England, operating out of offices in Newcastle and Manchester. The purpose of our work is to assist all those who want to create a society where every citizen lives a decent and fulfilled life, in reciprocal relationships with the people they care about. We believe that a society of this sort cannot be legislated for or guaranteed by the state. And it certainly won’t be achieved by markets alone. It requires people to act together and take responsibility for themselves and each other. IPPR 4th Floor 14 Buckingham Street London WC2N 6DF T: +44 (0)20 7470 6100 E: [email protected] www.ippr.org Registered charity no. 800065 This book was first published in February 2014. © 2014 The contents and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors only. ii IPPR | Democracy in Britain: Essays in honour of James Cornford CONTENTS Preface James Cornford, 1935–2011 ......................................................... 1 Garry Runciman, Trinity College, Cambridge Foreword Nick Pearce, director, IPPR .............................................................. 2 Foreword Sharon Witherspoon and Anthony Tomei, Nuffield Foundation ........... 3 About the authors ........................................................................... 5 1. Introduction ................................................................................... 7 Guy Lodge and Glenn Gottfried 2. What kind of democracy should we want? ................................. 17 Stuart White 3. The New Labour That Wasn’t: The lessons of what might have been ......................................... 31 Stuart White and Martin O’Neill 4. Tackling the power gap: A new constitutional reform agenda .... 41 Stuart Wilks-Heeg 5. Dealing with corporate political power ....................................... 55 Colin Crouch 6. Democratising the economy ....................................................... 67 Mathew Lawrence 7. Tomorrow’s political parties ........................................................ 79 Jessica Asato 8. Populism, social media and democratic strain .......................... 91 Jamie Bartlett iii 9. Citizens excluded ....................................................................... 97 Sarah Birch 10. Law, rights and constitutional politics ...................................... 107 Mark Elliott 11. Devolution and the future of the union ..................................... 119 Alan Trench 12. The English question: Identity, diversity and nationhood in England ........................... 133 Michael Kenny 13. Decentralisation and localism in England ................................. 145 Ed Cox 14. Dealing with Europe’s other deficit ........................................... 161 Vivien Schmidt 15. Democratising secrecy: Overseeing security and intelligence... 171 Lord Kenneth Macdonald iv IPPR | Democracy in Britain: Essays in honour of James Cornford PREFACE JAMES CORNFORD, 1935–2011 GARRY RUNCIMAN TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE James could easily have had a normal and successful academic career. As a young research fellow of his Cambridge college, he did work on Conservative politics which is still cited by historians today, and at the early age of 33 he was elected to the professorship of politics at the University of Edinburgh. Although he never wanted to be a career politician, he did always want to be a participant in, and not merely an observer of, the formulation, execution and evaluation of public policy. He was exceptionally well fitted for that on account of both his temperament and his talents. He was not just highly intelligent but quick-witted, independent-minded and scathingly contemptuous of pomposity and cant in all their forms. He was as critical of what he saw as the sanctimoniousness and self-deception on the political left as of any callousness and complacency on the right. He was shrewd but compassionate, radical but realistic. In the best sense of the term, he was no respecter of persons. He could also be very funny. He used to say to his would-be rebellious students at Edinburgh that he was grateful for the prospect of two weeks at home on full pay, but if they really wanted to close the university down then they must make sure to occupy and hold the telephone exchange as well as the library. And he had hilarious stories of attending SNP meetings at which Highland lairds and Clydesdale shop stewards shared the platform in a spirit of brotherly love sustained by nothing but an equally exuberant hatred of the English. He was, in consequence, entirely at home in the world of thinktanks, pressure groups and research institutes seeking to persuade the holders or prospective holders of political office to think what they wouldn’t otherwise think and perhaps, if they had the stomach, to do what they wouldn’t otherwise do. His achievements at IPPR, which are commemorated in this volume, were paralleled by his contributions to the other organisations he served successively with the same combination of original thought, diligent application and tactical good sense. The more people like him that there are in voluntary bodies directed to the improvement of the institutions and policies by which we are governed, the more grateful we all have reason to be. 1 FOREWORD NICK PEARCE DIRECTOR, IPPR James Cornford left an indelible mark on both the character and the concerns of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), stamping it with his own unique combination of intellectual rigour, restless creativity and an ability to tread the tricky line between insider and outsider status. He was a radical by temperament and conviction but pursued his ideas in the mainstream of British politics. ‘Put not your trust in princes’ he wrote to friends after finishing his stint as a special adviser in Whitehall, evincing the healthy scepticism of power that radicals throughout history have possessed. But he also led or founded a succession of institutions – IPPR, the Nuffield Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Constitution Unit – that have each, in their different ways, contributed to lasting social and political change in Britain. He was not a pamphleteer or scribbler at the margins of British democracy and public life, but a thinker and activist within it. His abiding concern with democratic and constitutional reform is the source of inspiration for this collection. At IPPR, he was the driving force behind the drafting of a written constitution, a formidable achievement for what was then a small and cash-strapped thinktank. It proved to be highly influential on progressive thinking in the 1990s and remains a landmark document for constitutional reformers. He had a lifelong commitment to freedom of information – which he took with him into Whitehall – and commissioned significant pieces of research at IPPR on regional government, civil service reform and human rights, all of which played their part in shaping the agenda of the Labour government in 1997. Democratic and constitutional reform in the UK has largely stalled since that initial burst of change between 1997 and 2001. At the same time, formal political participation has fallen and political inequality has risen. The pent-up energies for reform that James and his collaborators were able to harness in the early 1990s are now largely in abeyance. These are difficult times for radical democrats – some would even say they are ‘post-democratic’ times. The contributors to this collection have been asked to set out elements of a new democratic reform agenda for Britain, picking up on newly emergent issues and concerns, such as the rise of political Englishness, the imbalance of power within the economy, and the mounting disaffection of citizens with the political class. Our hope is that these essays will inform the ambitions and strategies of a new generation of reformers, inspired by the spirit and legacy of James Cornford, in whose honour this collection is published. 2 IPPR | Democracy
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