My Influencers of the Year

This time last year I wrote an essay on my Brexit experiences that was retweeted by a couple of famous folk, and read nearly 2000 times. I captured what happened subsequently on ‘my Brexit journey’ a couple of posts ago, and have no intention of repeating any of that. Indeed, I’m going to largely – but not completely – avoid current politics. So many words have been written in the last few weeks it would be amazing if I had anything original to offer.

I don't think I have, so instead, I’m going to introduce you to a selection of the people who have given me pause for thought this year across a range of subjects, explain why I like them and their ideas, and make recommendations for you to discover them too if you’re not already familiar with their oeuvre. Interestingly, given my politics, three of the five describe themselves as ‘liberal’ or ‘left of centre’, one’s an apolitical figure, and the last one is, well, the last one is [spoiler alert], James Delingpole. So, in no particular order:

•           Paul Embery – Paul is a firefighter and trade unionist, and was on the executive council of the Fire Brigades Union until he was thrown off it earlier this year. I’m sure the FBU would quote some technical breach of an obscure union rule as the reason for that, but the truth is he was removed after expressing his pro-Brexit views.  Paul now writes for Unherd.com, and tweets prodigiously too (@PaulEmbery). On podcasts, he’s eloquent, balanced and sensible. I suspect Paul’s views differ from mine on just about everything bar Brexit (and the importance of upholding democracy), but he comes across as that modern rarity – someone of the left with whom you could have a proper discussion in good faith, without getting the impression they think you’re beyond the pale or morally reprehensible for disagreeing with them. An honourable and decent opponent in other words. With a Labour Party of a different time, he’d be on course for a Cabinet position if that’s what he wanted.

•           The Triggernometry podcast, featuring Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster – both are now comedians (Francis is a former teacher), Konstantin arguably the more famous one. But their podcasts are largely serious, albeit interspersed with humour. The format is roughly the same each week – about an hour interviewing people generally on the fringes of public consciousness, but nevertheless interesting and quite frequently experts in their field. The questioning style is gentle, but probing, and elicits great, insightful conversations of the type that just aren’t found in more mainstream media these days. I highly recommend it. And the final question they always ask (“what is the one thing we should be talking about that we’re not?”) is genius when it comes to eliciting some unexpected responses.

•            Rory Sutherland – I confess to a bit of both bias and pride here. Rory was a couple of years ahead of me at Christ’s, Cambridge in the mid-80s, and I remember his mop of curly hair well, as I’m pretty sure we lived on adjoining staircases in 3^rd Court. Anyway, Rory is vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group, the ad agency, and has become something of a star in recent years due to his fortnightly column in The Spectator, and his brilliant TED talks and other YouTube appearances.  He’s fascinating and insightful on many subjects, but if I had to be totally banal and extract just one thing I’ve taken from his work, it’s this: considering how to address lots of apparent problems/challenges should be considered from a psychological point of view, not just a logical, economic or engineering point of view. That way, the solutions can often prove cheaper, easier to implement and more effective.  He wouldn’t have spent £6bn on building the HS1 network from London to the coast, he’d have “spent £1bn, by putting great wifi on the trains, then paying some of the world’s finest male and female supermodels to walk up and down them handing out free Chateau Petrus; passengers would have been begging for the trains to be slowed down rather speeded up”. He has more prosaic, but equally interesting examples, some of which can be found in his book: Alchemy: the surprising power of ideas that don’t make sense.  Highly recommended.

•            Jonathan Haidt – Jon is an American social psychologist and academic. He’s a gently spoken, mild, self-described liberal (in the US sense of that term). But he, his books and lectures pack a common sense punch, explaining and exposing many of the Woke and mental health madnesses of the modern, English-speaking world. I recommend The Coddling of the American Mind, written by Jon and Greg Lukianoff.

•          The Delingpod, with James Delingpole – I couldn’t complete my list without including one rabid right-winger, and James and his podcast are my choice. I’m a Special Friend (podcast in-joke). If you know James’ work as a journalist, commentator, TV reviewer or from his occasional TV appearances, you’ll have made your mind up about him. Your opinion will, I suspect, be determined by your political leanings. That said, by no means all his podcast guests are ‘political’ (a recent conversation was with Trinny Woodall), which is one of the reasons it’s so listenable. The others are James’ slightly effete and butter-wouldn’t-melt manner, and the fact his obvious (and admitted) lack of research counterintuitively leads to some natural-feeling and fascinating conversations. Try it.

There we are. I could have included many others, and so I’ll mention a few in despatches: Douglas Murray, Andrew Doyle, Helen Dale and Claire Lehmann (and Quillette in general). If you need a bit of mental stimulation over Christmas, look any of them up.

A letter to Labour: you can win next time...

....but only by changing. Radically. It probably won't happen, given the stranglehold Momentum seems to have on the party, but here's my recipe for avoiding becoming a minor party for years to come.

1. Stop the insults. It's just bad basic psychology to call people who disagree with you stupid, uncaring, selfish, racist, and so on - do you really think that's going to convert them to your side? You'd have thought that would have been obvious from the 2016 referendum, but apparently not. And don't just stop the insults about your potential electors, stop them about the Tories too. Then people may believe you when you talk about 'kinder, gentler' politics.
   
   I can't over-emphasise this point. I've just seen on TV a Labour supporter in her early 20s ask what needs to change next time. She said the electorate needs to examine its collective conscience. The hashtag #notmygovernment is trending on Twitter. There's no trace of humility or wanting to understand people's motivations. Let me help you along - most people care just as much as you do about the less well-off in society, they just think/thought that the people and policies presented would make things worse, not better. It seems to astound some people that alternate viewpoints and analyses to theirs can exist; you need to get over the fact that they do, and that the people who hold them aren't bad people.
   
2. Find a decent leader. Tricky one, this. From what I've seen you've no-one with an ounce of Boris's charisma, so you'll have to settle for someone who at least seems competent. Keir Starmer or John Ashworth probably come closest. If you pick Jess, Rebecca or Angela, you've no chance.
   
3. Get more constructive on the NHS. Ok, so we don't spend quite as much of our GDP as some of our near neighbours on it, but our outcomes are frequently dramatically worse. That's because it's a producer-interest dominated terrible delivery system. You have a unique opportunity here not open to the Tories. They can't tinker with the current model without opening themselves up to all sorts of accusations, and ones that might be believable next time (sell the NHS to the US? I'm crying here). You, however, can quite plausibly propose changes that would move the NHS to an insurance-based, better funded model operated by most of the western European social democratic governments, without any electoral consequences. In fact, it would bear fruit; you'd be seen as developing Bevan's legacy.
   
4. Don't fight the creation of free schools. They're working, as England's march up the PISA international education standards table, and Scotland's march down it, prove. Go with it, embrace it, much as it'll hurt.
   
5. Put forward plausible plans to build lots of housing. And I don't just mean public sector housing, though that has a big part to play. Get to grips with the vagaries, inequities and weird incentives in the planning laws, rules and regulations, and demonstrate that enough can be built to dramatically increase the possibility of people under 35 being able to afford their own place. This is a long term problem, and if the Tories don't grasp the mettle on this in the next 12 months they're going to really vulnerable next time round.
   
6. Properly think about the things that affect people's day-to-day lives. Including:
   
   Transport: it's just not credible to say you'll both slash fares and nationalise the network; people didn't believe you. Instead, show where targeted investment is needed, and the benefits it'll bring. Come across as pragmatic rather than ideological. And don't be anti-car for purely Green reasons - lots of people in the northern places you lost rely on their vehicles to get to work and to exist; they don't have the public transport networks of the big cities. Clobbering the motorist is foolish; incentivise better behaviours instead, like promising to provide a bigger network of e-car charging points for example.
   
   Law and order: yes, you had a point about 'Tory cuts' to the police force, but rather than just make that point, why weren't you as vocal as the Tories about recruitment this time round? Next time, and you'll hate me for saying this, you need to take seriously the first part of Blair's "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" mantra.
   
   And here's a less obvious example of the kind of thinking you need to do: people love being able to sign up to new things on the internet; it's quick and easy. But ever tried to stop a Sky subscription? I hear it's hell. So make it compulsory that if it's possible to sign-up for something online, it's equally possible to de-subscribe online. Create regulatory standards for customer service provided by call centres for all firms of greater than 500 employees, so that folk aren't hanging on the line for 40 minutes merely trying to alter a direct debit amount.  An idea you can steal from the Tories - introduce portable rental deposits between houses (rather than the insane idea of rent controls). Make people feel you're trying to make their lives less hasslesome.
   
   I say it again: be less ideological, and more psychological.
7. Don't go any further down the Social Justice road. Your metropolitan voter base will stay with you if you never again mention, for example, LGBT or trans rights; they're going nowhere. But you'll continue to alienate a large part of the rest of your natural support, because subliminally it sends a message that care more about a comfortable middle class person who happens to be gay, rather than a poor 25 year old with few qualifications who works in Tesco in Middlesbrough. 

So there we are - Seven Super Strategies. Turning around a Tory majority of 78 will be tough, but adopt some of the above, and you might have a chance. Oh, and don't talk about "the many, not the few". The many have spoken - you should listen.