Labour MPs might have broken up for the summer, but there is still a frenzied atmosphere as Gordon Brown clings on to power amid growing concerns about his leadership of the party and the country.
The Cabinet has remained publicly loyal so far, but events this week suggest that such support is hardly unstinting. Most worrying for Brown was David Miliband’s Guardian article.
As befits the intellectual foreign secretary, this was a reasoned call to arms. The government has to be more humble about its shortcomings and more compelling about its achievements, he said.
Press attention has centred on Miliband’s failure to mention the prime minister’s name, but what was also apparent was the lack of any big ideas. The article talked of a new ‘public service challenge’ to empower citizens, but any glimpse of what that might mean remained at the level of bland generalities.
In fact, the government is already taking some significant steps down this road, particularly in local government and the NHS. But, so far, these initiatives have singularly failed to inspire voters.
Perhaps the government needs to take a leaf out of the Tories’ book, and embrace the currently fashionable ideas on ‘nudging’ and influencing, expounded by US gurus Richard Thaler and Robert Cialdini.
Their focus on prompts, bribes and other measures to encourage an irrational public into making rational choices could not only pay dividends for recycling, energy consumption and public health problems. It could also send out a more positive message about a PM who doesn’t do the subliminal, emoting stuff well.
The public obstinately refuses to be impressed by the government’s ‘compelling achievements’. But maybe it can be seduced by payments for recycling, guidance on healthy eating, or meters that encourage you to turn out the lights.
‘Nudging’ owes more to the dark arts of advertising than to the great ideas of political philosophy. And it’s all a bit desperate, we know. But then so are the times.
Public Finance will be taking the first part of its summer break in the week ahead. Our next issue will be published on August 15
