Extreme domestic bias?

The announcement yesterday that Gordon Brown will miss Obama’s nuclear summit is yet another indication of how domestic is trumping foreign policy in this election.

A domestic bias isn’t really surprising of course. In the scrabble for votes politicians focus – naturally – on obvious vote winners; and the electorate focus – naturally – on what happens in their own backyards.

But this concentration on the domestic feels extreme compared even to past electoral battles. Whereas in the past Iraq, the Gleneagles commitments or the need for an ‘ethical foreign policy’ figured large, in 2010 only two ‘foreign’ policy issues are attracting even a marginal degree of attention – Trident and Afghanistan. And crucially, though each encompasses a set of complex considerations, they have been reduced in electoral sloganeering to a simple domestic core, ‘can we afford it?’ (Trident), and ‘how many Brits will die?’ (Afghanistan). (Indeed, the extent to which Afghanistan is now being seen solely through the lens of soldiers’ deaths – ignoring issues of British security, Afghan security, cost, the future of international cooperation, the ‘war on drugs’ and numerous other issues – has become so extreme that even the Army is complaining).

There are two worrying aspects to this trend. First, it seems likely that we are focusing so much on the domestic because things here in the UK seem so bad. When the economy has looked rosy, when we have felt confident about our place in the world – indeed, at times of ‘Cool Britainnia’ – it has been easy to consider events beyond our borders. But when things look rough, when we have to cut a deficit, find jobs for our young people and try to find a way to make our banks work for us, there is a tendency to hunker down. In other words, this isn’t just an electoral trend. Dealing with the deficit and reorganising our economy is a major task which seems likely to preoccupy the next government, whoever is in power.

Even if we have our fingers in our ears, the tree falling in Afghanistan, or the US, or Europe, or China, still makes a sound. In fact, as ippr’s National Security Commission made clear it’s a sound we can less and less afford to ignore. President Obama is calling a summit to try to limit the growing spread of nuclear weapons – a terrifying prospect for the UK. Why do we not see it as a priority? And this is just one of many challenges (including climate change, poverty, terrorism and banking regulation) in our interdependent world that require us all to act together. Let’s start by listening.

Laura Chappell

How fair is Brown’s recovery?

In his speech on the economy yesterday the Prime Minister underlined the need for a fair economy, with growth that will ‘preserve and expand the jobs – and lift the standards of life – of the British people.’

But a fair economy is not simply about restoring growth. Brown’s progressive goals are dependent on how the rewards of growth are distributed. Several high profile reports have recently revealed that strong growth in the decade before the financial crisis failed to address the acute inequality – geographic, social and economic – embedded in British society.

So, after the bust, how will Brown’s recovery fare on fairness?

Efforts to tackle inequality have typically focused on reducing poverty – a noble aim, but it offers limited mileage without parallel endeavours to redistribute the vast wealth at the top. Brown is therefore right to limit top earners with wage freezes for senior public sector workers – a measure first advocated by the Conservative Party.

But while the public sector may hope to set an example, Brown remains silent on wage inequality in the private sector – an indication, perhaps, of the persistent belief that high wages drive entrepreneurialism.

Over a fifth of UK workers are low paid – and millions more are stuck in poor quality, insecure jobs. The rewards of the boom years passed these workers by. The rise of the knowledge economy led to new highly skilled and highly paid jobs, while the low skilled sector consisted increasingly of poor quality jobs in the service economy. Social mobility has remained stagnant for decades, partly as a consequence of this polarisation between lovely and lousy jobs.

Yet the strategy announced yesterday does not rise to this challenge. It reiterates promises from January’s growth strategy to invest in high quality infrastructure and scientific innovation. These measures may well create jobs of the future, and high skill industries will surely secure UK growth and a strong position in global trade. But the Government has offered no policies to improve the quality of employment at the bottom or tackle the low pay that persists in many industries.

Tess Lanning, Researcher, ippr