IT’S time politicians stopped trying to do the wrong things better and did the right thing, writes Trevor Davies
Yo-Yo Ma is one of the world’s great cello players. He’s at the top of his profession because, although he is incredibly expert, he doesn’t worry too much about making mistakes. “If you are only worried about making a mistake, then you will communicate nothing,” he says. “You will have missed the point of making music, which is to make people feel something.”
Same with politics. The point of political leadership is to make people feel something, to rouse their imaginations, to dig deep into stories and values that matter to the nation. Feelings are what change people’s behaviour – including voting. That’s why the appointment of Jon Cruddas to Labour’s front bench in Westminster is to be welcomed.
Neal Lawson, who has worked closely with Cruddas in the left-of-centre Compass group, says: “Jon has a grasp of an emotive, some would say romantic, human sense of politics – not a dry, arid, mechanical approach. So why give him a dry policy thing? Because he will make it come alive. He will give some kind of narrative and framework on which we can eventually hang dusty policy.” He knows that policy is not about “to-do” lists for this or that department of government. Policy is about people’s places and stories; a light on the hill.
It’s a tough job and one that really needs doing. If the credibility of policy on the political right, the neo-liberal policy dominant for the past 40 years, has now been destroyed by the biggest economic crash since the end of the 19th century, so has policy on the political left. The left in the UK and throughout Europe are being proved right about the failings of austerity, but all are searching for the way to create and talk about the alternatives that will resonate both with economic reality and the feelings people have about their lives. The policies that do emerge will have to be illustrations of a deeper and real story about our country and our people.
The left in Scotland has an equal challenge. Devolution, 13 years old now, and established with great expectations it would engender a better life for Scottish people, has failed to live up to those expectations. Not because the Scottish Parliament doesn’t have sufficient powers – it does. But because our MSPs simply continue to do in Scotland the same things in the same way they’d been done previously through Westminster – and they didn’t work well then. They are trying to do the wrong things better.So we still have the worst health in Europe, near the worst education, lots of poverty and some dismal places to live.
Those dashed expectations are the reason why the dangerous notion of complete separation from the rest of the UK has become more attractive, even though, in reality, like Ireland and Greece, it would mean real power over the big things that matter sitting, uncontrolled, with rich and powerful neighbours, not with us.
So the left in Scotland has a big policy job to do. But is it learning the lessons of Yo-Yo Ma? Am I the only one to suspect that many MSPs worry too much about making small mistakes and miss the point of political talk which is to make people feel something? That there is too much worrying about details of their “to-do” lists of policy? That sometimes the right people don’t get into the right jobs because of worries about small differences in policy or outlook (aka their “mistakes”)?
Detailed policy certainly can be important. But perhaps not now. A “safe pair of hands” is always valuable, saving face or holding to a line sometimes necessary and watching your, or a colleague’s, back an occasional requisite for survival. But perhaps now is the time to tolerate mistakes, which largely go unnoticed anyway, and concentrate on making the people feel something, which is always noticed.
I moved to Scotland from London as an adult over 40 years ago. I’ve contributed to public life and the common good over those years. A (native) friend once said to me my blood runs tartan by now. But I have family in England as well as here and I really don’t want to live in another country from them, which is what Alex Salmond offers me, turning my grandsons into foreigners.
There must be many people who feel the same as me and that needs to be given a voice. I know for sure, in a time of great uncertainty in our world, a time when the forces of money are so big that we need strong democratic powers to oppose them, it’s the height of folly for Scotland to think it’s right to turn its back on England, Wales and Northern Ireland and attempt to row against that storm on its own. And I want that said with louder voices than mine.
And I want those voices to speak of everyday things too. I have a friend who once had important work in public service; but poor health lost her the job and for years she’s stayed at home. I read what medical experts told us just a few days ago, something my friend well knows, that our health service has for so long been so concentrated on fixing sick people in hospital that it fails to help people at home with chronic conditions get back to be part of the world again. What those experts want, and what I know we really need, is a transformed health service that is local, close to home, helping us all be healthy, not simply waiting for people to turn up in hospitals sagging under the weight of ill-health caused by alcohol, smoking and the wrong food. I want us to stop trying to do the wrong things, better – and start doing the right things.
I need our politicians, with a loud voice, to imagine that future with me, to make me feel that politics is not just about avoiding mistakes. That talking politics is like making music.
• Trevor Davies is honorary professor in urban studies at the University of Glasgow and was a Labour councillor in Edinburgh