The Sinister Soft Corporatism of the Lobbyists

For one definition of chaos, take a look at the state of relations between business and government in the United Kingdom. The last Government left behind a very strange state of affairs and the Coalition Government seems constantly on the hop as it tries to catch up.

What The Coalition Inherited

In essence, New Labour adopted a soft corporatist strategy where it encouraged 'creative' solutions to policy problems from business but under conditions where lobbyists could often run rings around civil servants and politicians with minimal experience of business and finance.

Some of what happened during those years was downright outrageous - interventions in society took place that were palpably linked to the special interests of technocrats floating between favoured parts of the business world and the State.

Philip Snape of PSA Communications, in PR Week, neatly let the cat out of the bag. Moaning that the Government 'has no money to fund new and interesting policy ideas', he then added:

This was not a problem before 2010 when Labour seemingly put money into every idea it was presented with ... Lobbyists now have to be far more creative - proposing policy solutions that do not have price tags attached to them.

Ahem! The role of the lobbyist is self-evidently to divert cash or regulation in their favour. But who, at any time, is able to assess the effects on ordinary people or the costs to the interests of those who are not represented? We hope Government does this for us but it seems to have been merely collusive.

The State of the Nation

One of the most sinister cases under New Labour involved the quadrupling of innocent children on an official DNA database as a result of a change in the law which resulted ultimately from collusion between the State and special interests.

The mess inside the Ministery of Defence could be replicated across Government with big IT projects inside the NHS only the tip of an iceberg but this particular case encapsulated the dangers of opaque 'sofa' dealings between lobbyists, the State and rather dim politicians.

Nor were these issues just a cost to the taxpayer (an obsession of the petit-bourgeois Right), they were systematic distortions of the market and they allowed special interests to promote the worst sort of social engineering on the population at the expense of the most innocent and vulnerable.

The case of Liam Fox expresses neatly the tragedy of modern politics in this area. The man was undoubtedly clearing up the mess left behind by the previous Government but he simply forgot that the latter had put in 'rules' (the Ministerial Code) designed to restrain their own instincts.

Now the lobbying industry is in near panic. They present its very highly priced services as in the public interest (and sometimes they are) but they are also a distortion of the market in many cases, ones where a player with cash and contacts can drive a policy at the expense of competitors and public.

It should, in terms of common justice, be outrageous that people have to pay to bring any idea that is in the public interest to the attention of decision-makers and it is remarkable but very predictable that neither State nor political class have not reformed public access in that direction.

The Geoffrey Norris Problem

Back in September, the Government announced that it would be setting up a 'partnerships unit' to co-ordinate relations between Whitehall and some of the nation's 'big brands' in order to promote 'new marketing and PR tie-ups' (PR week).

The head of that unit is close to Steve Hilton who, of course, has his links to the new economy stable via Google. This interest in the new economy is a serious commitment within Cameron's modernising Tory circle.

At the time of the Government's announcement of the 'partnership unit', Google confirmed that a close Cameron aide, Tim Chatwin, who worked closely with Hilton whose wife is VP of Google's Global Communications would be taking a top strategic communications role in the US.

The claimed long term objective (though perhaps rather that of the top end of the lobby industry) was to find a 'fixer' for State-business relations equivalent to the remarkable Geoffrey Norris. It is not conspiratorial to think that the 'old economy' might be getting a tad nervous about its own access.

Peter Bingle of Bell Pottinger revealed a great deal of the nexus between State and Big Business when he complained: "If you are the Chief Executive of a FTSE 100 company, there is nobody at Number 10 you can pick up the phone and talk to."

The Lobbyists Get Nervous

The gut left-wing reaction to this is horror but this is half-baked. The FTSE-100 and the 'big brands' are absolutely essential to the well-being of our late-capitalist economy in troubled times. Their contribution to the tax base and employment requires that they be understood by the State.

Understood, yes. Listened to in order to be understood, yes. Kow-towed too and given special treatment under cloak of privilege, almost certainly not. We will have more to say on direct relations between State and Big Business below.

The big lobbyists were getting antsy because Cameron's new boys looked like amateurs at fixing things for the 'boyos'. They were looking back at Blair's approach to private-public partnership with undoubted nostalgia. Mr. Fox's amateurism might be rather useful in the case for an Ancien Regime Restoration.

Feeling against lobbyists only hit the headlines because of Fox (just as the expenses scandal focused a more general distrust of politicians and the hacking scandal on an underlying suspicion of journalists). What insiders always knew was now entering the thick skulls of the middle classes.

The consequent mood for 'reform' is inchoate. It is not that someone is blocking it deliberately but that all those who could reform have too much to lose from it. They have no easy alternative plan to mollify the cynical public. It is tough enough trying to be credible about reforming bankers.

Whether big business lobbyists, Parliamentarians, print journalists or bankers, the entire system has been set up on the assumption of the value of intermediaries. Any reform almost inevitably threatens to break apart the very system on which a whole political and economic culture depends.

This is not just a British problem. Many Americans remain aghast at the fact that Wall Street has scarcely been touched by reform as they would understand it. In the European Parliament, the vote against reducing very high expenses at a time of serious crisis was derisory.

It is as if an entire system of beneficiaries of the three decades before the 2008 Crash are simply burying their heads in the sand and hoping that all the protest and anger will just simply evaporate if they can only hang on for the next two or three years. They may be right. They may not.

On Revolt

The Occupy Movement is probably not as significant as it likes to think it is but draconian and often unjust magisterial sentencing and PR campaigns in the Evening Standard about rioters and students may not deter Greek-style revolt in the coming years.

At least two investigative operations that were highly marginal or did not exist before the current crisis have played a major role in getting the lobbyist issue up there alongside the other scandals. Spinwatch and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have diligently provided what data there is to be had.

It has to be said that a) what they expose is often rather small-scale stuff compared to the massive machinery to be found in Washington and increasingly in Brussels and b) they are still not exposing the precise methodologies of influence and their actual effects on policies that affect the population.

These rather conventional activists and journalists still tend to prefer to be outraged and then assume that we will be outraged in turn by the 'facts' but what we really lack, in the long term, is a cogent explanation of how our lives are changed by the actions of this curious industry.

Revolts against the elite are usually crushed on the State's reasonable assumption that the middle classes would rather have a bad Government than the mob but there is reason to believe that the closed 'meritocratic' elite that has emerged in the last three decades is seriously trying public patience.

The danger here is that the transition from an old economy to a new economy might mean that the old ruling elite (those being marked out by degrees in successive scandals) will be regarded as eminently sacrificeable by those in the middle class with a stake in the future.

The Problem of New Labour

The lobbyists' attempt to restore pre-2008 Blairite corporatism has to be seen in this context - as part of a more general attempt by those who made their pile before 2008 and who are still doing rather well to hold on to the commanding heights of the State.

New Labour, still rather lack-lustre under its decent but uncharismatic makeweight Leader, made great political capital out of the Fox case but it still does not have a viable 'reform' agenda that would take it out of this establishment nexus that increasingly troubles the voter. Cameron has everything to play for.

While the lobbyists moaned about the lack of a Geoffrey Norris and as the latest stage in the soft-shoe shuffle between Google and Number 10 was taking place, Milliband (E.) was 'encouraging' Parliamentary candidates to divulge details of their meetings with lobbyists.

At that time (September 2011), New Labour candidates were being 'asked' to provide details of meetings with lobbyists, expenses and voting records on their web sites. This was faintly ridiculous - asking and encouraging looked weak. Demanding would have looked stronger.

But, as PR Week pointed out in its report of September 9th, many New Labour MPs come from a lobbying background. The worst kept secret in British politics is just how few MPs under a certain age have had any life outside the political class and the political caste in business, the NGOs and the trades unions.

And Now ...

Fast forward to this month and the wake of the Fox scandal. The lobby industry goes into over drive to distance itself from Mr. Werritty, probably correctly. Its criticism, however, increasingly looks like a trades union sending a scab to Coventry.

A promised Statutory Register of Lobbyists might rather suit the industry because only a community with the resources to comply will be able to get access to its protections yet, until now, they have been fighting it because the costs will have outweighed the closed shop benefits.

That position has changed with the recent scandal. The Register had looked, before then, as if, it might not so much be kicked into the long grass as be quietly manipulated into an exclusive closed shop arrangement by the professionals.

This is why the Fox scandal is particularly unwelcome. The Register is now not only back on the agenda but it has woken up liberal activists, small businesses and NGOs (and smaller and perfectly respectable lobby shops) that a Register fixed between the State and the Industry might weaken their position.

Instead of the Register creating formal protocols and transparency, it is, without a challenge, in danger of privileging the well capitalised, distancing the political class even further from political struggle and ensuring statutory backing for rules of confidentiality that undermine freedom of information.

What The Lobbyists Say

Here is Iain Anderson of the Cicero Group on October 20th:

... why was Adam Werritty allowed anywhere near the Secretary of State? Werritty was not part of the APCC or CIPR Public Affairs or any other group ... a recognised lobbyist he was not.

And here's Gavin Devine, COO of MHP Communications in the same spread:

A new structure will set us even further apart from the 'amateurs' who are almost always the cause of lobbying scandals ... Allowing some organisations, individuals and even professions to lobby unfettered while subjecting others to regulation would not simply be unjust. It would also be ineffective.

Anderson makes some reasonable points and he does call for the inclusion of unions and charities but the implication here is obvious - that regulation requires a soft corporatist compact where the lobbyists are recognised by a closed shop of institutions that coincidentally (?) can keep prices high.

Devine is more explicit that access to our political class should be entirely in the hands of professionals. The dangers of this to the functioning of liberal democracy where the professionals and the politicians are effectively the same people appears not to cross his mind.

The closed nature of this policy-making is not entirely down to the 'discretion' of the lobbyist. Government loathes communicating with its electorate as we shall see.

The Small Business Position

An editorial in the November Edition of South East Business (a magazine for small regional business) lambasts the conduct of Francis Maude in telling Mark Taylor, a Surrey businessman, advising in his own valuable time, that he cannot talk about meetings organised by the Cabinet Office.

Taylor is angry because he is being gagged about something of great importance to him and others - the exclusion of SMEs from government contracts (the sort of contracts where well paid lobbyists can have an influence). All he can say is:

I have heard enough stories to convince me that far from government procurement becoming more open to SMEs, it is going the other way.

Whether he is right or wrong (he has his own angle), his narrative tells us that the cosy world of the elite will still try to silence critics by bringing them into its consultative fold. It is an old trick and it often works but Mr. Taylor is clearly not 'sophisticated' enough to comply. He is not 'clubbable'.

I like small businessmen. They are feisty and operate outside the cosy world of the 'professionals' who thrive on secrecy. They are not 'politically correct'. Taylor says this conduct is undemocratic and South East Business goes into rhetorical editorial overdrive suggesting Maude reads Solzhenitsyn.

This may seem over the top to the sophisticated elite but it is telling us something about the weakening tolerance of Middle English businessmen under pressure from late paying big customers, regulations skewing the market against them (and adding costs) and a State that does nothing useful for them.

Coalition Responses

Nevertheless, the Coalition appears to be keeping its nerve. We are awaiting a consultation paper with a view to legislation next year. New Labour is mouthing platitudes and playing politics, rather pleased to have anything (in the Fox business) that will get it back on the front pages and appear 'outraged'.

There has also been recent talk about allowing the CEOs of the top 50 companies direct access to Government (perhaps to dish the lobbyists). Six Ministers from three Departments will be key points of contact for a select group of exporters and inward investors.

The TBIJ (which analysed this) was negative but I am not so sure. All the TBIJ criticisms are valid but we may be looking at the 'lesser evil' while the State considers how to unravel the dodgy half-baked corporatism of the last Government.

Perhaps direct access, in our current state of economic war, with the serious national commercial players without the intermediation of lobbyists is precisely what is needed. There is no criticism by TBIJ that could not be covered by subsequent legislation.

Tougher rules on transfers of political and state administrative personnel into the private sector, rules on engaging with competitive (especially small business) interests, clearer confidentiality and conflict of interest guidelines, and rules on party donations in a conflict of interest context are all feasible.

Prospects For Real Reform

The point is that direct access between various institutions and the representatives of the electorate, one that cuts out the intermediaries except in clearly defined circumstances, could be beneficial. It could certainly start to unravel the soft corporatism and embedded group think of the last Administration.

Do we trust the Coalition to manage this well? Well, that is another matter. But there is no reason to believe that Cameron is not aware of the issues. Back in February 2010, this is what he said:

We don't know who is meeting whom. We don't know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don't know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence ... I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandals, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics ... I believe it's time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country.

Was this just a bit of electioneering at a vulnerable opponent? Was he lying? I don't think so. I think it does concern him but he is not finding it easy to turn round what amounts to a system of self interest and special interest. The speech is worth reading in full.

The Balance of Interests

There is a fine balance here. All interests in society, without exception, including private individuals, should be able to put their case on the effects of legislation and regulation and offer ideas for the betterment of the commonweal to their elected representatives.

All commercial approaches to the State and the State's responses, subject to national economic security, should be conducted openly without spurious appeals to confidentiality that generally provide the edge that one special interest thinks they are paying for by hiring a 'professional'.

There is also a space for informed specialists between State and public who can act as barristers in presenting the case of special interests to the State. And there are people who genuinely (rightly or wrongly) feel that that what they have to say is in the national interest.

But what there should not be is a professional closed shop that is designed to create a mystique around political access, raise prices and stop elected representatives from talking to anyone who is not like themselves.

A wider closed shop of collusive sub-elites is treading on thin ice if it thinks that it can busk its way through the current crisis towards a cosy European-style regulatory state where costs are shunted down the line or on to future generations. These people are under scrutiny from both Left and Right.

In Praise of Mr. Seddon ...

I recently got hold of a copy of a new memoir by Mark Seddon, former Editor of Tribune, past elected member of New Labour's National Executive Committee, UN correspondent for Al-Jazeera and now back in London as Director of the People's Pledge.

The fact that he says some really, really nice things about me on pages 153-154 and 186 (we have worked together on this or that project since the mid-1990s) should not cause doubt about my thoroughly straight assessment that this book is very good indeed.

But this is not a book review. I can simply say that anyone who really wants to know what life was like for an honest man in a dishonest political party will find this book entertaining and informative. The cartoons by Martin Rowson, an old Seddon mucker, add some tasty icing to the cake.

This is not the only public reference to my work in the Labour Movement in the mid-1990s. I wrote background pieces for Lobster some years ago, just to have it on the record, and NEC slate candidate Liz Davies also gave a good mention some years ago that was not entirely accurate but well-meaning.

Even Mark (for lack of space) over-eggs my guru status in the formation and running of the internal Grassroots Alliance in 1995/1996. Andy Howell, Trevor Fisher and Ann Black (still on the NEC and working hard) are owed equal billing for constructing the core centre-right element of it, Labour Reform.

Similarly, the project, though firmly under my pragmatic strategic direction, would have been impossible without the immense subtlety and organisational talents of my Left counterpart Redmond O'Neill who was to play a central role in Ken Livingstone's return to the centre stage in London.

What interests me more are the two small vignettes surrounding my entry in Mark's story, both of which tell us a great deal about why New Labour failed - and fail it did, in terms of both core economic competence and ability to provide a sustainable commonweal for the most vulnerable.

The first has a prominent political journalist 'cautioning' Mark against becoming involved in our pitch to get independent grassroots members elected to the NEC because he had 'heard' that the Blairites would 'probably succeed in stopping us'. I have to assume that Mark is reporting him correctly.

The second has Gordon Brown calling Mark in to say that he was pleased that he was running (thus the tensions with the Blairites were clearly very early in their making) but that he should be careful in allying with 'Trots' (the internal party term for the very tiny band of 'revolutionary socialists' in the Party).

What do these two stories tell us about the British political establishment in 1995/6? It tells us two things. The first was that journalists were already ceasing to report in a detached way and were engaged in the construction of a group-think about what was appropriate behaviour.

Yes, this was just the friendly tip of one journalist to another but it was also a piece of advice that did the political classes' leaderships' job for it. It tried to persuade a moderate and sensible person not to join a sincere group of grassroots radicals because it might be bad (we presume) for his career.

This was clearly not intended by the journalist. He was just trying to be helpful. But a journalist who ceases to be detached and gives advice on a political matter is slipping over a line - and the British Establishment has long since slipped over a line that separates it from the mass of the population.

The caution was probably right - from a careerist perspective - but Mark decided to do what was right. The democratic vote was overwhelmingly for his position despite a hugely aggressive operation by the Party machine.

I am not particularly attacking one single journalist. He gave honest advice which was well meant but, whether politics or economics, the general habits of British journalism were already those, in the mid-1990s, of pragmatic group-think based on private briefings, 'things heard'.

Journalists are not wholly neutral in politics. Opinions become aligned with primary sources in State, Party and even Business, those who wield power - neutral between elements in the elite but not between elites and their subjects.

What was relatively trivial in our case (if rather non-democratic) became serious when no journalist until Peston was prepared to question the economic assumptions of that same elite. That failure to question meant that they were surprised and then we were surprised by a system breakdown.

Now we come to Mr. Brown. His opinion was no doubt a tactical one - the Grassroots Alliance would have crumbled quickly without two sensible proven mainstream Party players like Ann Black and Mark Seddon so it was sensible to try to frighten Mark into distancing himself.

If you know Mark, then such tactics are likely to flow over him like water off a duck's back. He will give that disarming smile of his, crack a self-deprecating joke and suggest lunch at the Gay Hussar. What is disturbing about Brown's advice is that he had more of a point than Mark credits.

The moderates, who actually ran the Campaign on a moderate and simple democratic platform, did have Trotskyists in their ranks in a junior capacity as engines for mobilising the vote (Trots may be a little mad but they work damn hard).

What Brown never asked because he is a surprisingly unsophisticated thinker is why Labour right-wing traditionalists, centre-left radicals and democrats were working with these people in the first place? Probably because they had nowhere else to go.

In a series of clumsy 'Stalinist' moves designed to crush dissent, Labour loyalists who believed in simple values such as consultation and democracy were pushed ever outwards by a combination of union self interest, a centralising party machine and competing kitchen cabinets in Parliament.

We return to group-think - a relatively small coterie of professional politicians and special interests were so determined on acquiring power that they did not consider that a small group of Party members might be speaking for the Party and that some compromise might have been a cheap and useful investment.

Far from revolutionary, the Alliance was conservative. It wanted a genuine partnership between members and elected representatives for the common weal. Its trajectory to the Left reminded one of nothing so much as that of the Russian liberals into the narodniki under the Tsar - mere desperation.

Be all that as it may, the Alliance won an outstanding victory that was meaningless. Elected members were a Potemkin village. Power was exercised entirely by a decidely dodgy Party civil service and then by an autocratic gang who drove the nation to petty warfare and, ultimately, economic ruination.

Do not misunderstand - our challenge to the elite was totally absurd, pure existentialism. It ruined political careers and changed nothing. And, yet, I cannot regret it for a moment ... because it was the right thing to do, something that was not mere pragmatism within a closed culture.

Today, I am largely de-politicised. I find myself unable to criticise the Conservative element within the Coalition with the force that I might once have done because I think of the alternative - an authoritarian, economically incompetent, war-mongering, centralised operation with a disdain for civil liberties.

England (which I see now as more meaningful than the UK) struggles to manage appalling levels of debt in a crumbling world economy and continues to blow a small fortune on foreign adventurism while 25% of the over-55s subsist on £24 per day and students pile up debt just to get an education.

Whatever will 'save' England, it won't be the corrupt 'official' Left within the existing system - not without precisely the democratic revolution inside it that we advocated fifteen years ago.

It will either be a steady pair of hands from its old Tory enemy or some revolutionary transformation of a Parliamentary and Party system that is way past its sell-by date and may not survive a second failure by another Great Party of State.

But do I get excited by all this? No, I do not. Good men and women once saw this coming and did what they thought was right. I learned a hard truth in the process. There are wise and good people across the political spectrum, rich and poor - but there are no wise or good political parties.

Psychology & Public Policy in the Modern West

It is very unusual for so long to pass between Postings on As It Happens. We can put this down to two developments.

First, the remarkable 'take off' of the Right2Link Campaign which has touched a nerve in the new economy and set the agenda far more quickly than we had all expected. Follow the Twitter account for the latest news which includes a news on a Clause put down by The Lord Lucas to the Digital Economy Bill.

Second, although we remain cautious about 'recovery', our sister company, Pendry White (which is also handling much of the implementation for Right2Link), has been seeing a surge of activity and this has pulled the As It Happens editorial team into the new business fray.

So, apologies to regular followers, but ten more days of this and we should, with a fair wind, be back on stream ... in the meantime, here are some thoughts on psychology ...

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The picture of humanity that is emerging today from the fast-moving world of behaviourial psychology and from the new cognitive sciences is very different from the 'tabula rasa' model that so long impressed policy-makers, especially those of the Left, often against all the instincts of common folk.

As animals, we come out as a lot less flattering to ourselves than we might have liked but before we go any further, we must state our prejudice - a distrust of science-derived theory being applied too easily to social relations. We alluded to this in our climate change and anthropology postings.

Psychology & The Normal

There is a particular problem that arises out of psychology - the 'science' of psychology is solely a method since no human, let alone collection of humans, can be knowable in the way that inanimate matter or even animals can be known.

Psychology is thus only partially a science. It is a series of experimental probabilities and of 'norms' of highly variable reliability. In this, the science of normal perception seems to be far more reliable than the science of normal behaviour and this should be constantly borne 'in mind'.

The quintessential psychological tool is the Bell Curve. There is a danger that the centre of the Bell Curve is given a normative rather than a descriptive value - that the process of describing the Bell Curve both lessens the 'value' of the rims of the Bell and over-values the 'norm' at its centre.

The 'norm' of Victorian or German fascist or Soviet Communist thinking would horrify our contemporary liberal. The 'good person' in all of these societies would, by modern liberal standards, have been normalised out of existence as we try to normalise out prudes, racists and reds today.

But contemporary psychology, neuroscience and sociology are often funded by the public purse and so are part of the political process. Even contemporary liberalism has its totalitarian aspects. The association of these 'soft sciences' and power needs to be placed under permanent critical scrutiny.

The Psycho-Arms Race

Nevertheless, great strides in understanding the working of most brains in most circumstances have been made in the last two decades.

A picture is emerging of a sort of arms race between the normal person's instinct to take the easy way out in dealing with data, in order to process the vast amounts of it coming into the mind through perception, and organised attempts to manipulate that laziness for commercial or political reasons.

As psychologists uncover the tram-line aspects of most people's behaviour under most conditions, so some, in learning these truths, learn also to resist manipulation and to build relatively independent world-views.

The corporate and political manipulators, meanwhile, create ever-more sophisticated means to manage those who either cannot (for reasons of intelligence or access to information) or will not (for lack of will or excess of comfort) question their situation.

It could be argued that people in the advanced Western societies are falling into three broad classes of person in any one particular situation.

A large majority who are unaware of or uninterested in their own manipulation, a class of manipulators for profit, power or (increasingly 'security') and a minority who see what is happening and either fight it or seek to insulate themselves from the process ('fight or flight').

The last group which is far from small is made impotent by the sheer weight of numbers of the first group although, to be cynical, the weight of numbers depends on that weight being well fed and entertained.

It may be that this is just the normal condition of humanity - as applicable to the Roman Empire as the modern West: a struggling mass, a manipulative ruling class and those who cannot but see how the trick is performed.

Knowing Is Resisting

However, a new factor may be the degree to which an understanding of psychology itself arms the 'rebels' as much as the elites.

For example, the experimental work in the wake of the authoritarian fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, notably that of Stanley Milgram, caused horror rather than emulation and it drove ruling elites increasingly towards 'soft' forms of social management.

At the same time, Milgram's work is known to far more people than just the 'rebels' in society and this has helped them become more resistant to blind authority and command.

Ordinary soldiers are increasingly volunteers from the least well educated and poorest comunities and are less likely to be conscripts for good reason - better educated conscripts are no longer prepared to accept authoritarian claims to knowledge.

Perhaps some personality types pine for a simple world of command and control and military obedience but the cultural norm is (at least in the Anglo-Saxon world) one of a presumption of liberty and questioning to which ruling elites have now had to adjust.

Governments - as in the recent announcement that the British Government will be using military drones against its own population - are thrown back on intense surveillance and on the isolation and marginalisation of the people who are at the extremes of the political Bell Curve.

In addition, fuelled on the centre-left by the post-Marxist interpretations of thinkers like Gramsci, they are more intent than ever on guiding the centre of the social Bell Curve into territories of automatic self-willed compliance with an authority that presents itself as benign, inclusive and liberal.

One suspects that this master plan of social management will last only so long as the population does not grow hungry. It is designed for a world in which economic decline for large numbers of people is small, incremental and steady rather than precipitous or sudden.

Whether this system can remain both effective and benign with a large angry population on the streets is another matter.

The Problem Of The Sociopath

Fortunately, psychiatry and abnormal psychology (in the sense of conditions that cause serious distress to a person) have been de-politicised fairly effectively by the medical establishment's historic compromise with the anti-psychiatry movement.

But we should not be complacent - the sociopath (a biological reality) is in danger of being quasi-medicalised as complaints grow about a 'broken society'.

Sociopaths used to make up marginalised criminality and the highest ranks of the elite, with social order containing them in the levels between the two. Today, social order has partially collapsed leaving far freer rein for the sociopathic personality, especially in the lower ranks of business.

Similarly, sociopathic behaviour by one sexual predator at the expense of others is much easier in a liberal society. The problem of the sociopath preying on communities under pressure has become salient as case after case of child abuse, including by children on children, horrifies the British at least.

The solution - the systematic reintroduction of community and reversal of thirty years of radical liberalism - does not fit the time-scale of electoral politics so clumsy state intervention, weakening civil liberties and a form of 'liberal terror' against problem communities seem likely.

The irony that it is the sociopathic and authoritarian BNP that is emerging to defend beleagured poor communities from a sociopathic crisis is merely an indication of the depth of the failures of liberal governance.

The Rationality Of The Irrational

At the other end of the social is the personal. Contemporary psychology paints a fairly grim picture of our general inability to think or act rationally or altruistically. In fact, psychologists tend to exaggerate what this means.

Given their particular conditions of life, 'irrational' thought or conduct (including delusions and apparently self-destructive behaviour) amongst the disempowered may be wholly rational - a truly rational assessment of those conditions might well lead to despair.

Some of the most interesting recent research is into 'irrational' modes of thinking although the inherited positive value attributed to 'reason' makes us blind to its flaws and accidentally judges the 'rational-'irrational' behaviour of the masses, irrationally, as somehow 'bad'.

The existence of 'group think' as an observable phenomenon encapsulates why New Labour is consistently incompetent in its decision-making.

There is also useful research from the behavioural economists on why we make dumb decisions on investment and cannot seem to get out quickly from a failing situation. Such research should be required reading by anyone active in public life or in business.

Unfortunately, most of the people making the decisions that affect us do not read books like this and it may take a generation before some of this commonsensical material feeds through into the wider public domain.

The Construction Of Memory

Another area of interest is memory. We construct ourselves and our society on narratives of the past. Yet we forget and remember selectively even if different people have different tendencies in this area, whether towards repressing trauma or sensitising themselves through a talking repetition of trauma.

One can see how there would be a natural conflict of interest between these two main personality types amongst Jews in dealing with the Shoah. Some would want to put the horror behind them and create a new life. Others would want to tell the world and get them to understand and empathise.

This happens in families with child abuse histories, even if the 'talking' might be displaced onto other related subjects. In the case of the Shoah, the narrative required by Israel and European guilt forced the pace and gave the edge to the 'talkers'.

Positive Thinking

One powerful tool for transforming individuals has been Cognitive Behaviourial Therapy and we should also not be too dismissive of its happy-clappy cognate, Positive Philosophy.

Critics might say they merely create a better class of delusion but, if our aim is not to sink into the unproductive gloom of critical theory but to live long, prosper, love and be happy, then these practical applications of experimental psychology are wholly beneficial.

It is tough out there. If people can use the discoveries that the mind is malleable and that life can be made more tolerable and even be improved through thinking in a different way and positively, then psychology (so dangerous in the hands of governments and corporations) can be a liberating force.

Indeed, a mentality of positive thinking might, eventually, help direct the mind to thinking not only about how to improve one's own condition but why our rulers are so signally failing to assist in that process. In our current crisis, a 'positive politics' is sorely needed and can only come from below.

Cognitive behaviour therapy seems to be particularly useful for conditions where distress (such as depression) is caused by a negative narrative of life that has been built up in the past for good reason but has become increasingly dysfunctional over time.

Improvements in the treatment of mental illness in recent years have been considerable and are only be held back by lack of resources.

If the £8bn spent by the New Labour Government on the Iraq War had been directed into mental health services and improved community conditions, a great deal of human distress might have been avoided in two nations.

The Complexity Of Intelligence

Another positive development is in the increasing sophistication of psychological work on intelligence. This has two countervailing potential results. The first unnerves liberals but has to be faced - we are not all equal in general intelligence and general intelligence matters.

The 'tabula rasa' view is defunct and not only in relation to intellectual equality but in relation to gender difference. We can safely predict the imminent death of the extreme version of egalitarian ideology (though not that of the equal value of all persons regardless of intelligence).

The countervailing discovery (still uncertain in the detail) is of many different types of intelligence to be found in humanity, painting a picture of complexity of talent that no longer privileges people according to their place in a pecking order of general IQ.

This means that a simple stratified society is likely to be sclerotic. The dynamism of society depends on it being a society of all the talents. This opens up society once again to people who may not be formally highly intelligent but have massive advantages in particular types of intelligence, skills and aptitudes.

It also suggests a society of respect for the potential of everyone rather than obeisance to a privileged exam-passing few.

Respect For Difference

The shift from a stratified world of fixed roles to a tabula rasa world of forcing individuals into an egalitarian straitjacket (often under the malign influence of the behaviourists) is now becoming a further shift from the 'tabula rasa' to a respect for difference.

Nowhere is this clearer than in gender relations where the feminists of the 1970s school have found themselves on the run as society rediscovers the fact that boys and girls are fundamentally different even if you can get very boy-like girls and very girl-like boys where the Bell Curves overlap.

There may be an alchemical truth in the magical position of the hermaphrodite where the curves meet but the real message is that is no longer regarded as helpful for women to strive to become like men.

The model is one not of separate but equal (with all the apartheid implications) nor equal and not separate but of complementarity and difference yet equality in worth and access to resources.

This more sophisticated formulation has been seized upon by younger women (as sex-positive or 'lipstick' feminism) as far more truly liberatory than 'traditional' feminism.

Although the new could not have taken place without the struggle of the old, the new really is based on the science that we have in place so far.

Language too now looks as if it follows Chomsky's model of having innate characteristics even if one can dispute the detail.

Deep brain structures imply profound predispositions in learning, language, behaviour and gender difference - not to the extent of presenting any silly predestination arguments but as representing natural constraints on radical versions of existentialism.

Why Psychology Matters

Brain matter, in short, matters. Anyone who has been at the birth of his child knows that twenty years later aspects of personality present then are present now.

The history of psychology is full of half-baked nonsense - the Rorschach inkblot test, phrenology, simplistic Freudian and Behaviourist ideas, discredited left/right brain theories - and there may be half-baked nonsense in the new ideas but we are moving forward all the time.

Much past experimentation is redundant and even silly so that, as tools for understanding oneself, or for creating a dialogue about personal meaning, Tarot cards and dream interpretation are now as one with the ink blot (and that does not mean that they are not useful).

Freudianism increasingly looks daft in its potty theorising about repressed sexuality but it was a vital stepping stone in exploring the unconscious even if the path best taken was back into neuroscience and into imaginative cultural studies (Jung) and investigation of particular drives (Adler, Reich).

Behaviourism too seems more like an ideology than a considered exploration of the mind but its experimentation in conditioning has proved central to effective treatment of phobia as well as providing further proof in its findings that cruelty and conditioning can debase both child and man.

The new wave of research is taking us into fresh territory with real public policy implications. The tendency to enforce conformity, the use of psychology in the struggle between authority and freedom and the problem of the sociopath are all live issues in contemporary politics.

Of equal importance is a proper understanding of how individuals are pre-set to irrational decision-making, to selective memory and to their talents and gender. The ability to improve lives through behavioural therapies contain the seeds of liberation but also of political manipulation.