Politics
If Brown does show courage, will anyone notice any more?
Published 22 November 2007
In the course of the last Labour party conference, senior NS editorial figures were berated by several members of the cabinet. The crime we had committed was the cover of our special issue. It carried the headline "Trouble ahead - the crises facing Gordon Brown". We set out our concerns about how a government that appeared fearful of setting a progressive agenda and wanted itself judged on competence alone was taking a huge risk, particularly at a time when the Northern Rock fiasco was kicking off. Our cover coincided with a sharp upturn in Labour's opinion poll ratings. We predicted that its popularity was fragile, and that Brown needed to do much more to convince. Our advice was apparently ignored as ministers indulged in their month of hubris about a snap election.
Two months on, Brown's government has endured a truly terrible autumn. The Rock begat the flawed immigration figures, begat a row over security officials, begat ministerial infighting. And now the revelations that the private financial information of half the population has gone walkabout have presented this not-so-new administration with its worst crisis yet.
Confidence - public and ministerial - is in short supply. Brown has a Herculean task to pick himself and his ministers up. What makes matters worse is that, for all the stumbles and the mutterings from inside Whitehall, the Prime Minister has begun, tentatively, to do exactly what progressives wished of him - to forge a new direction in a number of policy areas. First came a speech on human rights, then another on foreign policy and, on 19 November, a third, on the environment.
These speeches share two features - an apparent mismatch between heartening rhetoric and disheartening practice, and the drowning out of the message by events.
Brown will have been particularly frustrated by the scant coverage given to his apparent policy shift on green issues. As Brian Cathcart illustrates (page 30), much of the UK media fails lamentably to enlighten its readers about climate change, the recent important conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change being a case in point. With the exception of one or two papers, the most anyone read about Brown's change of tack on green matters was his determination to remove disposable plastic bags from shoppers - a not unimportant step, but one that will not change the world.
It is worth recalling that, over the past decade, both Tony Blair and Brown have overseen falling petrol taxes, tax breaks for air travel and a lucrative market for second homes - as well as an actual rise in emissions. Only in the past few years has the debate changed, putting politicians under pressure to demonstrate a real commitment to deal with what, in 2004, the government's chief scientist described as (and was chastised for doing so) the biggest threat to mankind, bigger than terrorism. Last year, in his report to government, Nicholas Stern, another senior adviser, called global warming "the greatest market failure the world has ever seen".
Has Brown, who was lukewarm about Stern, done a volte-face? With talks starting soon in Bali for a post-2012 climate-change treaty, the PM accepted EU targets to increase renewables to 20 per cent of total energy output, from the UK's present, derisory 2 per cent. He also conceded that, in order to keep the global temperature increase to below 2° Centigrade, emissions may have to be cut by as much as 80 per cent by 2050.
Most intriguingly, Brown hinted that he may be coming round to the view that economic growth is not the ultimate determinant of a nation's health. Managing demand of our resources, and moving the debate beyond wealth acquisition, will be a test of the intellectual and political strength of any future government.
Brown could have done more, such as halting or cutting back airport expansion plans. But given where he is coming from, it was a good start. Will he act, or will he backtrack, as is his wont, for fear of antagonising crucial interest groups? And equally, given the other, more immediate crises that his government faces, if he does show courage, will anyone notice?
Music, roots and segregation
Is contemporary rock music, to borrow the words of Greg Dyke, "hideously white"? It is a question that has been haunting the Canadian band Arcade Fire, who played three nights at London's Alexandra Palace this month. In an article in the New Yorker, the music critic Sasha Frere-Jones recently used the band as an illustration of how rock'n'roll has turned its back on its black roots: "If there is a trace of soul, blues, reggae, or funk in Arcade Fire, it must be philosophical; it certainly isn't audible."Arcade Fire vociferously rejected his comments, sparking a flurry of debate on internet blogs. But a quick glance around the 8,000-strong crowd at one of their shows was enough to confirm just how segregated contemporary popular music has become. There was barely a brown face in the house.
This is, in part, a product of changes in the way popular music is disseminated. Acts that do not fall into the commercial pop category are confined to specialist TV and radio channels, dedicated to either black - or, as it is euphemistically known, "urban" - music, or to white rock. The rapper Dizzee Rascal has complained that it is increasingly difficult to get his music out to a mainstream audience.
Part of the responsibility, however, lies with the artists themselves. Acts such as the Clash, the Specials and Massive Attack helped to define multicultural Britain by reaching across racial boundaries. Where are their successors?
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