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- Why Conservatives are green
10 March 2010, 23:30:26
0 comments | Author of this post: Peter Ainsworth MP
I struggle to understand why environmental politics are traditionally regarded as left-wing. They are not. The environment is the only place that we have. The place where we live matters to us; in our local communities and in the wider world. It is all about respect and stewardship.
Disputes about the science of manmade climate change may be rife, but they are entirely irrelevant. It might be suggested that only a brave or very foolish person (or a publicity-seeker) would take issue with the consensual opinion of the world’s leading scientists – but in the end this too is irrelevant.
The point is this: waste of any kind is a bad thing, so we must stop wasting energy, food and material resources. Fossil fuels are finite, so we must find ways of being less dependent upon them, and sooner rather than later. Natural resources are limited, not limitless as we in the West have implicitly regarded them for two-hundred years, so we must start trying to obey the laws of Nature. If Nature goes bust, there will be no bail out.
Conservative-minded people can embrace our current environmental challenges wholeheartedly, passionately and with every confidence in a right of centre political inheritance and vision.
We believe in the merits of order and security: two benefits of civilisation, which are threatened by environmental disruption and the pressure of global population growth.
We recognise the responsibility of stewardship. We respect the past, and hold the present in trust for future generations. As Margaret Thatcher said: “Mankind has no freehold on the Earth, only a full repairing lease.” We need to look after the place where we, and all other creatures, live; not just for ourselves but for those who will come after us.
We understand the need for global action and diplomacy in order to ensure advantages at home and around the world. In world affairs the conservative approach is pragmatic rather than ideological.
We believe that local actions, in our own communities, rather than Big Government initiatives, can help make changes for the better. The environment is both local and global, and a passion for local solutions can help build and strengthen our communities.
Finally, the conservative understands that whilst politicians have a vitally important role in shaping the framework for action on green issues, only the market can deliver the results. The paradox is inescapable; it was the power of the market which, through driving unsustainable growth, created the problems mankind now faces. But it now offers the only sure way out of them.
Meeting the various challenges presented by environmental pressures is already creating huge market opportunities for those with the vision, technology and access to capital to seize them. According to HSBC, global turnover in low carbon goods and services last year overtook the value of the defence and aerospace industries. This is no cottage industry.
An unhelpful tendency exists to lecture people on the need for “behavioural change”. Of course those who have made changes in the way that they live in order to reduce their impact on natural resources should be applauded; people who, for example, have determined to drive less, recycle more, buy ethically sourced products, install micro-renewable energy systems, or switch off the lights when leaving a room. I have tried most of these things myself; but we are part of a small minority which has, by and large, made a deliberate political or social choice.
Human behaviour will only naturally change on the massive scale required when change is cheaper or more convenient than sticking with the status quo. Most people don’t want to make deliberate political or social choices; and why should they? It’s what they elect politicians to do. If heroes are to emerge from the battle to manage and defeat environmental damage they will not be eco-warriors, but engineers, physicists, designers, inventors and entrepreneurs. The true friends of the Earth are gradually emerging, and they are not those who spend their time screaming at the capitalist system. They are those who respect our duty of stewardship over the natural environment we have inherited, and embrace capitalism as the most powerful tool for change on the planet.
You can visit the CEN’s website or join their Facebook group
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- Why the ‘Match of the Day’ approach might not be so silly for Brown
10 March 2010, 16:20:38
0 comments | Author of this post: Administrator
When I read this morning about Brown and his failed attempt to appear on Match of the Day I tried hard to feel the contempt for his cynical PR ploy that the newspapers suggested I feel. Instead I felt a strange kind of admiration for such blatant opportunism and the willingness of the PM and his PR team to grasp at anything to hitch a ride on the political zeitgeist of popular-cultural integration. As we all know, this is a technique pioneered by Blair and elevated by Cameron in his early years as leader of the Conservative party to a fine art. Despite the cynicism of parts of the media, it has been very successful in winning over the ordinary punter – something that both parties need to be doing to turn around a legacy of low turn-out in UK elections.
The fact is, I admire Brown in this case because, rather than seeing it as a desperate stunt, I believe that in politics the counter-intuitive often works. Sarah Brown’s stewardship of London Fashion Week was completely unexpected when it first took place a couple of years ago. But in the opinions of many it has turned her into Brown’s greatest asset. If Samantha had done the same thing, it would have made no impact at all on David Cameron’s reputation. Although the Match of the Day attempt may not have worked, more broadly this approach is where Brown might have the edge over Cameron. Brown is perceived as impersonal and awkward, but what if Brown’s faltering style and capacity for PR blunders make him the perfect candidate to build a campaign around his ‘everyday life’? I wouldn’t be surprised if we see at some point during the campaign another Match of the Day style PR attempt for Brown suddenly strike the right chord and have a real impact on his hither-to un-glittering profile as a figure of public empathy.
Based on the counter-intuitive premise, it follows that Cameron’s excellence at using this technique in the past might make the public more cynical about any carefully choreographed PR moments he is planning in the next six weeks. The air-brushing accusations and the android connotations all make this ground trickier for him in the future and my feeling is that Cameron should be careful that he is not seen as trying to emulate his success of a few years ago when he was seen as a star-in-waiting rather than as the possible Prime Minister in a few weeks time. Cameron may well therefore be sensible to steer away from a very ‘lifestyle’ focused campaign and concentrate on winning over the doubters with a serious straight campaign that delivers some really meaty policies – and indeed recognises the public as having the intellectual metal to deal with these.
Posted by Administrator on behalf of Isabella Sharp
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- A post-bureaucratic manifesto
9 March 2010, 16:57:36
1 comments | Author of this post: Fiona Melville
Part of the discussion I had with David Cameron (results available in Company magazine, March issue, on sale at all good newsagents from 13 March) revolved around the Tories’ publication of draft manifesto chapters.
He said:
“We’ve launched it draft chapter by draft chapter, on the internet, with people then coming up with their ideas and their questions. I’ve done online public meetings, the first one I think 40 000 people took part and voted on which questions they wanted answered on their particular subject. So we’ve got a long way to go but I think it’s a world away from what we used to do. And the exciting thing is is it’s totally interactive – it’s driven by what people want to say rather than just being pushed stuff by the politicians.”
I asked him if this was a bit of a cop-out, maybe even played into (unfounded, by the way) accusations that the Conservatives are entirely focus-group driven. He replied (unsurprisingly…) that he disagreed, because: “The draft manifesto is what we want to do, it’s what we believe in but I think in the modern world of Wikipedia and crowd sourcing and interacvtity it’s only right when you’re asking people and you want to be their government, look here’s our draft manifesto what do you think, what have we left out, what do you most think is your priority? I think it’s a very good and modern way of doing politics.”
At the time, I was a bit sceptical. After all, four years of research, policy work, review and discussion – surely they are ready to make the argument for the policies they believe in? But actually, the more I think about it, and the more I hear about just how fed up of politics as usual voters are, the more I think that if this process is seen to be making a difference, then it can only be a good thing.
After all, we are a representative democracy. Our politicians are supposed to be answerable to us. They are supposed to represent us – not just pass laws from on high. I do want politicians to listen, and react to what we say.
Remember when Tony Blair was attacked on Newsnight about the 48 hour GP targets – he had absolutely no idea what was going on. He assumed that because his government’s 48 hour target was being met, everything was ticking over nicely. But he was very wrong. Politicians need to work out a way to get the real facts – targets being met did not tell them that the GPs’ surgeries just disconnected the phone once two days’ of appointments had been made.
Gordon Brown is right on one thing: politics is all about choices. But you can’t make an informed choice unless you have enough information, and politicians need to make sure that they can access enough information from sufficiently diverse sources to inform the choices they make in our name.
While it does have to actually make a difference (in my experience, fake concern is worse than no concern at all), I have become a fan of wiki-writing the manifesto. It’s all part of the post-bureaucratic way of doing things…
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- Policy Exchange: Specialising in special needs
9 March 2010, 07:50:46
0 comments | Author of this post: Policy Exchange
On Friday, Ed Balls announced the Government’s response to the ‘Salt Review’ into the supply of teachers for pupils with severe and complex learning difficulties. Balls argued, and rightly so, that the Government needs to attract and incentivise graduates to specialise in teaching children with some of the most challenging needs.
However, children with severe and complex learning difficulties only made up 2.3% of all children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in 2009. There are 1.7 million children in England with SEN, 21% of all pupils, and the majority are taught in mainstream settings. Therefore, all teachers are working with SEN children but there is a shocking lack of focus on building the relevant skills and expertise, both at the initial teacher training stage and in ongoing training throughout teachers’ careers.
Despite this, buried within the Government’s 2004 SEN strategy (which probably remains the most comprehensive look the Government has taken at the area in recent years) is an eminently sensible approach to providing teachers with the appropriate expertise. According to this model allteachers would develop the core skills needed to deal with all children with SEN; some teachers, inall schools, would develop advanced skills; and there would be teachers with highly specialist skills, in some schools but available, where appropriate, to all.
Progress in implementing such a vision has been inadequate. Another recent Government report (the Lamb Inquiry) stated the case clearly, there is an urgent need:
“to build a better understanding of SEN and disability into every aspect of training; at every level of the system; in subjects and curriculum development; and for teachers with a range of different responsibilities.”
This should be the focus of any strategy concerning teacher training for SEN, putting its own model into practice, and thereby providing over a fifth of our children with the education they really deserve.
Ralph Hartley is a research fellow in Policy Exchange’s Education Unit
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- Policy Exchange: Auntie under the spotlight
8 March 2010, 17:48:04
2 comments | Author of this post: Policy Exchange
The BBC’s latest strategy report - leaked in the Times ten days ago and released last week as a result – suggests that with a General Election looming ever nearer Auntie is at last waking up and smelling the coffee.
In January this year Policy Exchange published a major report on the future of broadcasting,Changing the Channel, which argued that the BBC had become an organisation obsessed with ratings first and quality second. In many ways this is understandable – though not acceptable. In theory everyone with a television pays the licence fee, so the BBC feels it has to prove that it is delivering something for everyone to justify its existence.
As a result we see the BBC forking out huge wodges of licence fee cash to do things that fall more naturally to its commercial rivals and their audiences, and which those rivals could almost certainly deliver more cheaply. Thus it splashes out on the FA Cup and Formula 1, which attract an under 40 C1C2 audience that doesn’t naturally flick to the BBC, despite the fact that these sports would end up on ITV or Five in much the same form if the Beeb weren’t to bid. Meanwhile it ignores test match cricket – because it has enough professional older men watching already.
And it reportedly spent £5.6 million a year on hiring Jonathan Ross in competition with Channel 4 and ITV, because where Jonathan goes, the younger audiences follow. The problem here is not so much what the BBC paid, or even how loathsome you might find Jonathan Ross as an individual. The problem is the fact that the BBC was bidding in the first place.
So we should be whooping with relief that two months after our much-publicised report, the BBC appears to have taken a long hard look at its own behaviour. Its new strategy focuses on the need for the BBC to be “significantly and demonstrably more distinctive” with services like Radio 2. It will scrap two digital teen services, and allow Channel 4 to take the lead in this area. It will axe half its websites and BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network.
Yet leopards don’t change their spots overnight. The Telegraph reported last week that the Beeb plans to ramp up its spending on Strictly Come Dancing, which it runs head to head on a Saturday night with ITV’s X-Factor. And of course it’s all about ratings, ratings, ratings. The BBC is making some of the right noises in a bid to protect itself if the Government changes. But we need a little more than noise.
Anna Fazackerley is Head of Policy Exchange’s Arts and Culture Unit
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