Boosters, Doomsters and all that jazz

The Big Idea in politics currently galvanising our thinking classes is the idea that Britain needs a lot more growth. (Or, at least, that was the Big Idea prior to the mini-budget, but that's a story for another day.) So, for example, you might have seen Sam Bowman distinguishing the Boosters (who believe that the UK's dire economic condition can be remedied) from the Doomsters (who are resigned to decline). Or perhaps you saw Janan Ganesh in the FT telling us that "At each turn, Britain’s economy seems to run into a growth-blocking wall of past-worship". And you will surely have seen The Economist telling us, week after week, that Britain is all gummed up and needs to grow (see, for example, this edition). 

What should we think about all this?

I'll lay my cards on the table. As I said when I wrote about YIMBYs (who are generally the same people as Bowman's Boosters), I'm pretty receptive to the idea that it would be a good thing if Britain were to build more stuff. Equally, given the uphill struggle that YIMBY-Boosters face, I think we can overlook a certain amount of hyperbole in the way they put their case, both as to how bad the UK's situation is and how much better it could get. But - and of course there's a but - I'm far from convinced that the situation is as dire as the Boosters say it is. In fact, it seems to me that the so-called Boosters are the real Doomsters.

Amia Srinivasan's contribution to conservative thought

I ought to give you a couple of warnings about this post: it’s a long one, and it’s about political philosophy. If you’re still interested despite those warnings then please read on below the break.

Liz Truss: yet more betting success, and how she can succeed too

Here we go again: Liz Truss' victory means yet another political betting success for me. Indeed, at 14/1, the Truss Triumph equals what was hitherto my best ever political win, the Macron Massacre.

I'll level with you: Truss was not the only bet I placed last November. Macron was simply someone who seemed wrongly priced to me, but I had a different strategy for the PM. As I said back in January, I was pretty confident that Johnson was not going to be in power for much longer. That meant that his potential successor was probably already identifiable. So I picked the most likely candidates and spread my (modest) stake around such that I was bound to come out ahead if any of them won. The net effect of that as things turned out is that I have had a 7/4 winner (i.e., after taking into account the money I lost on the likes of Sunak and Starmer). But a win is a win.

By way of thanking Ms Truss for her contribution to my retirement fund, here are three (or four) suggested policies for her. They are not 14/1 longshots - although I would recommend that she have a few such policies in her portfolio - but more like 7/4 sensible bets, designed to fit in the Venn diagram intersection of 'popular', 'feasible' and 'beneficial'.

(1) Establish a National Strategic Infrastructure Commission, i.e. an expert-driven, technocratic quango tasked with identifying and procuring strategic civil infrastructure for the UK (or perhaps just England and Wales, assuming Sturgeon would be difficult). I am not in principle a fan of "taking the politics out it": the allocation of limited resources extracted from the public by compulsory taxation and the exercise of compulsory purchase powers - and those are two key aspects of building infrastructure - are inherently political activities, and it is only right that they be subject to democratic oversight. But needs must. For the foreseeable future - the next generation or so - there is no real ideological divide as to what kinds of infrastructure the UK needs, but there are various technocratic decisions that need to be made about the details of where, when and what, and the present combination of judicial review and opportunistic political objection to any particular proposal mean that these decisions don't get taken in a reasonable timeframe. We will need appropriate amounts of energy infrastructure, with an appropriate balance between the 'available but dirty' and the 'unreliable but clean'; we will need reservoirs, flood defences, train lines, roads, tunnels; perhaps we need more airports or seaports; covid surely shows us that we need more vaccine infrastructure; perhaps we need better asteroid defences too - who know? these are all questions for experts. Just as NICE successfully de-politicised NHS drug offerings and Bank of England independence de-politicised interest rate changes, my proposed commission would de-politicise infrastructure. Also, the Commission should be based in Birmingham as that way the London classes will ignore it and it can get on with doing its job.

(2) New colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge - but ones that focus on STEM. This hits a policy sweet spot. It's a good idea: we need to build up our science research and education strength, and how better than by expanding our premier universities? The size of Oxbridge has not really kept pace with the fact that they are now global universities, educating large numbers of foreign students: that's a good thing in itself, but it means that a number of British students who would be suited to and benefit from an Oxbridge education are being edged out at the margin, and the parents of people at the margins of Oxbridge acceptance are the kinds of pointy-elbowed middle class people who have been drifting away from the Conservative Party. STEM subjects tend to favour state school pupils, so there is a social mobility angle that can be played. Moreover, the Conservative Party has been gaining a bit of an anti-elitist, 'had enough of experts' reputation and this would be a good counterbalance. It's an opportunity for good politics too. What should we call the colleges? I'd go with "Elizabeth" (for the Queen) for the Oxford one and "Turing" for the Cambridge one, although some combination of "Nightingale", "Seacole" and "Lovelace" seems inevitable, but the papers will love to talk about it, and people will want to vote for College-y McCollegeface or whatever. And can Labour oppose it? On what basis? Too expensive? Maybe, but it's investing in the future. It'll be funded by government borrowing, of course, but in the form of an exciting new National Savings product: the Science Investment Bond, which will feature in all the best buy tables, and allow people with savings (i.e. pensioners) to gain a competitive rate of interest while investing in their grandchildren's future. Oh and if you want to make everyone's head explode then why not make Boris Johnson the first Warden of the Oxford college? He would actually be quite well-suited to an Oxford Head of House role.

(3) Both of the policy ideas above are long term ones. That's good in itself and also good for the Truss government, which needs to look big, sensible and long-term to distinguish itself from its predecessors: Brexit was not May's fault, and covid was not Johnson's fault, so they each had premierships defined by short-term priorities that were not their own. Truss has the chance to be different and better. But she will need short term policies too, and preferably distinctly Tory ones that Labour has to oppose and look bad for doing so. The economy is tricky and there are no easy answers: I'll leave Truss and Kwarteng to think about energy prices, but the most that can be hoped for is damage control. Immigration and culture war issues are always tempting, but those can be left for the moment. Rather than look opportunistic by raising them now, wait: at some point, someone on the Left is bound to accuse the government of being racist and/or use a racist epithet against the government (in fact the latter has already happened: google "coconut cabinet" for details), and that is only going to help the current Cabinet. That leaves crime. There is a lot of it about, noticeably low level but unpleasant crime in London, and I detect a widespread feeling of Something Must Be Done But Won't Be. The kind of anti-crime measures that people notice and like are ones that involve visible police presence on the streets. That's expensive. But how about trialling giving the power of arrest to Community Support Officers, in certain cases and with certain safeguards? Just a trial - surely it's worth seeing if it can reduce low-level anti-social behaviour? It's the sort of thing that will annoy the right people too. Another anti-crime topic is cameras: there are now lots of cameras around that can play a role in crime prevention and detection, not just CCTV but mobile phones, Ring doorbells and so on. A new Use of Cameras in the Prevention and Detection of Crime Bill that would 'put the anti-crime use of these devices on a sound and modern statutory basis', i.e. making it clear that people can use these things sensibly without infringing the GDPR or privacy laws or whatever, would be popular. It would also have a potential 'benefit of Brexit' angle that could be helpful and, again, it would annoy all the right kind of people from the point of view of a Conservative Party facing a Labour Party headed by a human rights lawyer.

So there you have it. Truss has helped me and I've done my bit to repay the favour. I'll wait to see if she follows my advice before placing my bets for the next General Election. 

Normal People by Sally Rooney - some thoughts

This post is about Sally Rooney's book Normal People and it's in two parts. I'll start with a no-spoiler review, but after the break I will be setting out some longer thoughts arising out the book and in doing so I will give, if not exactly spoilers (it's a will-they, won't-they get together? book), then at least so much of the flavour of the book as might ruin it for people who haven't yet read it. If you haven't read it and think you might want to then please stop at the break.

I came to Normal People with few preconceptions. I have not seen the TV adaptation, for example, and if I read the reviews when it came out then I have forgotten doing so. But I was aware of the book as a cultural event - the kind of thing that features in Books of the Year lists - and there is a vestigial impulse in me to keep abreast of modern literary fiction, a feeling that being oblivious to the latest 'serious' books is akin to being unaware of who the Prime Minister is. Why do I mention this? Because Rooney makes fun of people like me at one point in the book (when a character attends a literary reading) and I feel it only fair to mention that perhaps Rooney is indicating that her book is not aimed at me. But here goes anyway.

My copy of the book is festooned with the kind of excessive praise that appears only on literary fiction that has caught the zeitgeist: The Guardian describes it as a "future classic", for example, while The Times' reviewer apparently "finished the book determined to look at the world differently", whatever that means. It has won more prizes than you did at the end of primary school. Unsurprisingly, it is over-rated and over-hyped: there's no smoke without at least a hint of fire, true, but in my view the book is ultimately a minor one. 

The strengths of the book are twofold. First, its story-telling is well-paced and direct. It proceeds in chronological order from beginning to end, with chapters that have nice clear headings of the kind "Three Months Later (July 2012)", but it does so in an interesting way, with the characters (or a free indirect narrator) going back over episodes and looking at them a little differently from time to time. Nothing tricksy - no radical re-casting of past events of the kind that (for example) Sarah Walters might do - but just a nicely done adding of depth and texture by gently circling back.

The other strength is the descriptions of the characters' thoughts and their appreciation of their relationships with others. Rooney has put a lot of work into this and I thought it 'came off'. 

Any notable reasons why you might want to avoid it? Sadly, yes. 

- It's depressing. The main characters - and most of the minor characters - are depressed and depressing. The world it depicts is atomistic, anomic and sad.

- The dialogue is disappointing. I'll say more about that below.

- No speech marks. It might not bother you, but I didn't like it. I think it's a pointless affectation - like writing a menu in pence - and I don't see why it was done: it's always clear when someone is talking and when they're not if you read to the end of the sentence or paragraph, so why not use the conventional punctuation marks that help us get there more quickly?

Anything else to mention? Well, there is a lot of sex in it. Mostly rather depressing, I thought, although I suppose, as the characters in the book perhaps show us, tastes can vary. At any rate, Rooney was probably right to think that the book is not for me.