The political malaise only politicians can treat

Though exit polls are notoriously unreliable, it seems the big winner in today’s historic referendum on the Alternative Vote was apathy.

Early estimates suggest that turnout may struggle to reach a paltry 30 per cent. In my own area, reports suggested that some stations in busy central London wards were receiving no more than 20 voters per hour.

Both the yes and no campaigns failed spectacularly to engage the electorate in what could have been an exciting debate about the political future of our country. There were major failures in both camps, from David Cameron’s patronising claim that all but a few Westminster politicos were far too thick to understand AV, to the yes campaign’s inability to rebut claims about the potential cost of implementing a new voting system.

The yes campaign had perhaps relied too heavily on the anticipated support of disgruntled voters angry about the MPs expenses scandal.   

My view is that the nationwide apathy witnessed today comes from a deeper disengagement with politics and the political process that starts in our schools. If, as David Cameron obviously believes, joe public feels that the business of Westminster is not only dull and potentially irrelevant but other something ‘other’, something beyond their understanding, then politicians have failed society more broadly.

Small steps have already been taken to address the lack of education about how politics works and its wider importance, with the introduction of citizenship classes and a series of (in my view) very successful television adverts tackling the “I don’t do politics” attitude that proliferates across the UK.

However the real responsibility lies with politicians to engage voters, not simply with their own agenda, but also with the purpose and possibilities of politics.

The childish mudslinging that characterised the campaign around AV is exactly the kind of politicking that turns off the wider public. Arguments over the dispatch box about Ed Miliband’s geekyness or ‘George’ Gideon Osborne’s poshness only serve to reinforce the unhelpful message that politics is irrelevant for the many, and the business of the few.

When votes cast for and against the Alternative Vote are counted tomorrow afternoon we will learn less about the real appetite for electoral change in the UK than we will about the kind of rhetoric that disappoints and disengages, inciting only a collective eye rolling. That, I hope, will be the real lesson for the progressive politics of tomorrow.

Sexist assumptions hold back science and society

Another piece of worrying news delivered courtesy of today’s Daily Mail. A study carried out by researchers at Anglia Ruskin University has revealed that the development of the male contraceptive pill is being held up by outdated and sexist attitudes towards gender relations.

Despite being touted as the latest innovation in contraception more than a decade ago, the male pill is currently still in the trial stage, though tests with human volunteers have so far been successful.

So what is preventing it from reaching the general population? The study sought to find out by understanding more about the social attitudes that surround the new form of birth control.

The research, led by senior lecturer in sexual health Susan Walker, found that half of women would not rely on their partner to take a pill because they don’t trust them to remember it.

More astonishingly, men told the researchers that taking a pill would challenge their masculinity. One in six of the men taking part in the study said the cultural association of the Pill with women would present a threat to their manhood if they decided to take it.

As Dr Walker explained: “I found that the cultural association between taking the Pill and femininity was also a concern.”

Social commentators, usually those leaning hard to the right, often condemn feminists for propagating a society which is anti-men. As I regularly explain, nothing could be further from the truth about a movement which at its core values only true equality of the sexes.

Here is yet another example of how, lazy and unguarded, the sexes are quick to condemn one another when it comes to the nitty gritty of sexual politics.

How disappointing that half of the (potentially self selecting) group of women surveyed felt they could not trust their partner to act responsibly when it came to preventing unwanted fatherhood. For five decades men have put their faith in women to remember to use the Pill carefully and properly, despite the fact that studies show that large numbers have knowingly abused their trust (the reasons for which are so complex they deserve a post of their own).

And though men are now facing the opportunity to take control themselves, a small proportion still dismiss the job as women’s work.

Just as we live in a society where childcare is socially and legally still deemed the role of the mother, so fatherhood (however aloof in practice) is still so highly esteemed that preventing it is also up to the opposite sex.

Last year I attended a Fabian Society seminar, hosted by the Swedish Embassy in London, at which delegates debated the lessons the UK could learn from Sweden about gender equality. The country boasts a suite of exciting and progressive family-friendly policies including 16 months maternity/paternity leave attached to the child and split between the two parents as they see fit.

To my surprise, the ambassador explained that if a man in Sweden took less than three months paternity leave following the birth of his child he would be considered strange, and could face being ostracised by colleagues. He was downcast to learn that the reverse is true in the UK.

For too long in this country, legislative change has been a case of closing the door after the fast-bolting horse. By the time laws came into force to ensure services could not be withheld from gay, bisexual or transgender people on the grounds of ‘morality’, very few UK businesses still practised any form of outright discrimination against their customers.

But enforcing progressive legislation can change society for the better more quickly than the slow drip drip of modernisation.

A bold set of policies on childcare rights, ensuring men and women share the burden from the off and are supported equally for doing so, could sound the death knell for the outdated views about conception and contraception that have in turn stymied the development of the male Pill.

And while women are arguing for equality in the workplace, it is up to them to practice what they preach in the home and trust their partners to play an equal role in family planning.

Australia’s dirty secret

I am currently taking an extended and (if I do say so myself) well deserved break to visit a good friend who has been living for the last 18 months in Melbourne, Australia. Before putting myself at her mercy next week I am spending some time travelling around the country, just me and my backpack, starting in Sydney.

One particular privilege afforded to those who travel alone is the time to stop, observe and to think. I have spent much of the last three days simply wandering the backstreets and listening to snippets of conversations, many of them illuminating as they are incomprehensible and – out of context – ridiculous.

I have also observed what I can only imagine cannot be seen by those blindingly familiar with their surroundings.

My hostel is based in the King’s Cross area of Sydney, a strange, heady suburb of the city centre fuelled by the profits of just two concerns – budget travel and the sex industry. A meeting place for the frugal and the desperate, it is also clearly host to many of the city’s key social problems.

Alcoholism and gambling – a peculiarly Australian vice – are all here, but also a very visible homelessness problem. And most arresting to the visiting eye is the simple fact that the vast majority of those sleeping on the streets of King’s Cross are of indigenous heritage.

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald contains an interesting story which casts some light on the issue.

According the Australian Reconcilliation Barometer 2010, published today, there is a big gap between Australians’ hopes for racial harmony and the level of distrust that the two populations harbour towards one another.

The statistics show that seven in 10 of those surveyed rated the prejudice held by the two groups towards each other as “high” or “very high”. Moreover, indigenous respondents were much more likely to see themselves as welcoming, respectful and hard working than others saw them. The study also found that, compared to the last survey carried out in 2008, there is a deepening cynicism among the “general population” (I am using the SMH’s terminology).

Mick Dodson of Reconcilliation Australia said the economic downturn had a visible impact on attitudes, but this cannot be the whole story.

The lazy racism that still exists towards Australia’s indigenous population is startling and shows Brits how far we actually have come in creating a multicultural society, whatever David Cameron might have to say on the matter.

The problem is a profoundly complicated one and I will not belittle it by attempting to offer a simple solution, but a clear first step would to ensure that racism towards the indigenous Australian population becomes as publicly unacceptable as any form of racism in today’s Britain. And like in Britain today, many will still harbour unwelcome sentiments but they would also understand that their views are contrary to the prevailing attitude and would not be tolerated in the public sphere.

Until this basic level of tolerance is found in Australia, racism will continue to find its way into public policy and the social imbalance will be laid bare on the streets of Sydney each night.

Posh and posher

The conclusion of Andrew Neil’s documentary Posh and Posher, an investigation into the decline of social mobility among the political classes, leant much to his own personal experience.

A Scottish grammar school boy, he crawled his way up into the corridors of power and made his name as a leading broadcaster and journalist despite being born into a working class household and brought up on a tough estate.

Like many in his generation, he puts his success down to the opportunities afforded to him through a well funded, selective state education system that channelled academic talent and instilled aspiration.

To over-simplify his conclusions, Neil believes that a return to a form of selective education would provide a better start for today’s young people and stave off a dystopian future in which our political leaders are drawn from an increasingly small social group, educated at just a handful of elite institutions.

Yet Neil is also critical of the old ‘secondary modern’ system, which he believes wrote whole swathes of the population off at age 11. He advocates a new type of school which offers the best academic support to those who excel and exciting vocational alternatives to those who better suit a more practical route.

Has Neil visited a good state school recently, I wonder? I believe, where it works well, this is the education system we already have. To my best memory he is actually describing the school I went to, a single sex comprehensive in a large southern commuter town which saw me into a Russell Group university and on into journalism yet also offered a range of other types of opportunities to those attracted to them.

In fact my experience of school tells me that, when the state is performing at its best, it is not our education system that is failing on social mobility but the services (or lack of them) that wrap around schooling.

At school I had a close friend who for the purposes of this piece I’ll call Jessica. Jessica was from a working class home, with parents who though proud of her achievements at school in many ways found her success alien and considered it a threat. Jessica was a naturally intelligent pupil, excelled academically and despite a number of small setbacks still took away a clutch of excellent A’Level results and admission to a leading, research-intensive university to study Philosophy.

According to Neil’s ideal, that should have been the end of the story – Jessica should have gone up to university (the first in her family to do so), completed her degree with ease, found new confidence and personal strength before entering a graduate profession and completing her move into the ranks of the middle classes.

But that wasn’t Jessica’s story. Though she began university well, scoring first class marks from the off, the lack of student support available even ten years ago, before exorbitant tuition fees and truly frightening levels of debt, meant she struggled financially. By the Easter of her first year she was lonely and homesick, feeling isolated and increasingly out of place – not an uncommon sentiment for any young undergraduates away from home for the first time.

Then came the decision that changed her life. After calling her family in distress, she decided to withdraw from university. Her family drove up to collect her the same afternoon. “It wasn’t for someone like you,” her father told her. What he meant was, “it wasn’t for me”.

Even without academic selection the state education system did wonders for Jessica to age 18. It was the lack of support for the rest of her family, bewildered by the opportunities open to their daughter, that let her down.

Last year the coalition government announced it was withdrawing funding for the Aim Higher programme, which helped to introduce and normalise higher education for the many who assumed it was not for them. With every cut to these already sparse ‘wraparound’ services, the government is in danger of creating exactly the homogenous political class Neil fears.

Social mobility is not about an individual but their family, their community and the aspirations of all. Accepting this is financially expensive, but the alternative is socially exorbitant.

Bigotgate mark two

For every trend or movement there is a backlash. While last year saw a resurgence in British feminism – demonstrated by the simultaneous release of three excellent new books on gender and equality as well as the growing popularity of feminist events and websites – 2011 is already shaping up to be quite the opposite.

Today Sky Sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray found themselves in hot water after being caught on camera making foolish remarks about a female assistant referee, making the rather uninspired suggestion that, being a woman, she couldn’t possibly understand the offside rule. The pair now face potential dismissal.

Meanwhile, Tory MP Dominic Raab caused a minor storm by labelling feminists “obnoxious bigots” and claiming men in today’s Britain were getting a “raw deal”.

His comments provoked understandable anger among women working hard to address the growing equality gap. The Evening Standard reported that shadow business minister Nia Griffith called for Mr Raab to “get real”. “The reality is that women with very good qualifications time and again do not get the top jobs and opportunities,” she said.

Of course any suggestion that women fighting for basic equality in their lives are merely bigots seeking to marginalise men should be attacked head on. But what is Mr Raab really saying?

To quote him at length:

“Either you believe in equality or you don’t. If you buy into the whole Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus theory of gender difference – with all its pseudo science – you can’t then complain about inequalities of outcome that flow both ways from those essentially sexist distinctions.”

Well, quite. Few feminists would have any issue with such comments and many – myself included – had hoped that the publication of Cordelia Fine’s excellent Delusions of Gender: Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference had finally laid to rest unsubstantiated claims of some inherent biological difference between men and women and their capabilities.

Perhaps, like me, Mr Raab is also concerned about the fetishisation of domesticity that has sprung up among young professional women in recent years. As he says, you cannot have it both ways. Feminism is about genuine choice, it is not about proving ourselves to be one thing or another. It is not a competition.

But claiming that the fight for equality is in some way about penalising men is wrong headed and Mr Raab’s comments are lacking in supporting evidence. Only one statistic is needed to swiftly destroy the MP’s argument – women still earn on average between 17 and 20 per cent less than men for the same job.

Mr Raab’s call for family friendly public policy which offers men the space and support to run their private lives equally with their partners would be welcomed by feminists. Why undermine that support by creating enemies of his potential allies?

And by arguing that “from the cradle to the grave, men are getting a raw deal”, Mr Raab both ignores the reality of life for women today and acts to create exactly the public space in which the unacceptable misogyny demonstrated at Sky Sports – and in private homes up and down the country this week – proliferates.

Thank you Mr Cameron, but have you any evidence for that?

The coalition government this week unveiled plans to attach a minimum price to a unit of alcohol, pushing up the cost of cheap supermarket plonk and with it tackling an array of social problems.

Binge drinking, so-called ‘pre-loading’ (where young people save money by getting a skin full of bargain booze before descending on Britain’s town centres) and middle class excess are to be beaten with the same blunt stick as serious alcohol dependency and drink-related violent crime.

Critics of the scheme claim it unfairly penalises moderate, sensible drinkers but research suggests that, as blunt sticks go, it would be a successful one.

The policy first emerged after research carried out at the University of Sheffield found that significantly increasing the price of alcohol did affect the behaviour of drinkers – the more it cost, the less they purchased and, de facto, the less they drank.

A study first released by the university in December 2008, and shared with the then Labour government, indicated that setting a minimum price would significantly reduce the social problems that have come to be associated with cheap supermarket alcohol.

After much debate, Labour failed to take the bait. Now the Con-Lib coalition has picked up where the last government left off and enacted the policy.

But here’s the rub: the academics involved in the study recommended that politicians set the minimum price at 50 pence per unit, at least. The government in fact proposes to set it far lower, with a can of lager coming in at 38 pence, watering down the evidence-based policy and reducing it to an ideological instrument.

The case reminds me somewhat of Labour’s embarrassing foul up over drugs policy. When Professor David Nutt, the government’s chief advisor on drugs, warned Gordon Brown that alcohol was more dangerous than ecstasy he was promptly sacked. A number of his colleagues on the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned in protest.

Any government, when duly elected by a democratic majority, is free to legislate as they see fit. It is a set of core ideologies that hold political parties together, and any government should feel free to legislate based on that ideology, on its beliefs about what is right and what is wrong, what will hinder and what will harm.

Equally, governments should be at liberty to employ experts to point them, based on peer reviewed evidence, towards the best course of action.

To claim ideological decisions are rooted in evidence when they are not, or to accept part of an academic study’s conclusions – the part you like – but not the rest makes a mockery of the legislative system.

If the government wishes set a minimum price for alcohol it should do so, but to cite the very evidence it has failed to heed to support it is disrespectful at best, and shallow political spin doctoring at worst.

A healthy appetite for art

So popular was the Tate’s blockbuster exhibition of the work Gauguin that art critic William Feaver (yet another remarkable example of ‘nomodeterminism’?) described experiencing “gallery rage” after his visit.

 I must confess that despite being a regular visitor, family commitments towards the end of last year prevented me from attending this specific show. But the emotion Feaver describes is a recognisible one.

Many of the Tate’s major showcase exhibitions draw huge crowds, particularly at the weekends when tourists, day trippers, students and work-weary Londoners descend upon the gallery looking for rest, relaxation and a little inspiration.

It is fair to say that paying more than ten pounds to dodge crowds, avoid buggies, jostle for eye line and stand in a queue in front of the most popular images can be an unedifying experience. Perhaps the problem is one of rising expectation or unreasonable pricing – for the one thing we cannot complain about is a public expression of excitement and appetite for the arts.

Three years ago I visited the fantastic Hogarth exhibition at the Tate. The rooms were all busy, and spending as long as I might have liked contemplating the complexities of each image proved out of the question. I am sure that I felt at least some mild irritation at the time.

And yet, years later, my overriding memory of that Sunday afternoon is not of “gallery rage” but of my great pleasure in seeing so many people, young and old, enjoying the profanities and political punditry of Hogarth’s groundbreaking work.

The coalition government has already proved itself ready to smash through funding for arts and culture with blunt axe, leaving little thought for the impact on our thriving cultural sector.

If so many people are willing to pay the entrance fee and battle the crowds to see the Gauguin exhibition, then ministers should prepare themselves for an epic scrap worthy of Hogarth himself on the matter of cuts.

Such an appetite for visual art in these straitened times should be cause for celebration, not criticism.