My Day

A couple of days ago I enrolled for the “Progressive Governance Digital Summit 2020”  and watched the first few hours of the event which is supported by the usual leftist suspects – the New Statesman, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Heinrish Boll Stiftung, ESP et al .

This is the first such virtual conference in which I have taken part – its Zoom facility (which is new for me) gives the opportunity not only of viewing but of fixing chats. It’s very much the younger generation on show - starting with a guy for whom I have a very healthy dislike Yasha Mounk, ex-Director of the Tony Blair Foundation and author of the very slick “The People v Democracy – why our freedom is in danger and how to save it” (2018)

The Conference strategy paper was sent only in the first hour after some confusing references to it by the introductory speaker - and is actually a very good read. It focuses on the present pandemic and explores six different scenarios – named as  

1. New Golden Age

2. Varieties of Localism

3. Radical Individualism

4. Welfare Technocracy

5. National Populism

6. School Trip (by which is meant a minor irritant)

But the subsequent presentations annoyed for their superficiality and for the sheer impertinence of youngsters barely out of their nappies daring to lecture us all. There was not even a pretence of putting up a token wrinklie.

Jeremy Cliffe of New Statesman was a typical example – with a wiste of a moustache and using Robert Unger to impress us with talk of “high-energy politics”.
With that one exception so far, the speakers are mostly academics - exuding the confidence that comes from being tenured and speaking mainly to students  - and clearly fail to understand how counterproductive they are. 
They turn the rest of us into proponents of defunding university social science!! (see update below)

Apart from that, my day was occupied in taking an axe to the text I have been labouring on for the past few weeks and coming up with a different structure for what is effectively a taster for the full version of “Dispatches for the Next Generation – a bibliograph’s notes on the past half-century”. I was helped in this by this table I found myself doodling…..

Thrust of chapter arguments	Why do I feel strongly about this?	Supporting theories
1.Trespassing encouraged	Most senior execs are in the grip of groupthink	AO Hirschman Chas Handy’s “The Second Curve”
2. Critical junctures identified	History is written by the victors. Events were often finely balanced. There’s too much fatalism around	Covid 19 as a Critical Juncture
3. Economics relegated	Basic model is badly flawed and needs urgent reinvention	Daly, Raworth,
4. The Elephant probed	Talk of capitalism and post-capitalism is too loose. Are we really clear what the core and marginal aspects of the system are – and can the beast be reformed?	Ronald Douthwaite, Credo – economic beliefs in a world of crisis
5. A new social goal is sought for the commercial company	Shareholder value ignores other dimensions Cooperative and social enterprises employ more people than we think – but have to struggle for legitimacy	Paul Hirst Ed Mayo
6. Lessons of change explored	So much protest fails and few social enterprises have a multiplier effect. How do we ensure that there is real learning?	Robert Quinn
7. Change agents and coalitions sought	Progressives are good at sounding off – and bad at seeking common ground	??
8. Conclusion

update on Progressive Governance virtual conference; in fact things improved from Wednesday evening with the arrival of Germany's ex-Green Minister J Fischer - and Thursday's discussion were quite excellent with the Leader of the Netherland's Labour party, Adam Tooze, Dani Rodrik and Paul Mason.