The RSA launches the Citizens’ Economics Council, supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust and Friends Provident Foundation, on Wednesday 29 June.  In this blog, which was first published on the RSA website, Anthony Painter, Director of the Action and Research Centre at the RSA, discusses the implications of the referendum result for democracy and refers to the predictions of the 2013 Policy Network publication ‘Democratic stress, the populist signal and extremist threat’ which was also supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust. Sign up to attend the launch event. 

The EU referendum is now done and the UK has voted to leave the EU. It was anything but a glorious advert for British democracy.

On one hand, we had a campaign that was willing and determined to set people against one another by their ethnicity, their class, and whether they were ‘experts’ or ‘elites’. The other campaign, when it wasn’t in melodrama mode, deployed the modern organisational technology of political narrowcasting. In so doing, it ignored a huge part of the country, on the basis of its probability of supporting its campaign. As a consequence, whole areas – including many traditional Labour areas in the north crucial to the outcome – heard only the discordant voice of Faragism.

Much has been made about the fact that this referendum was a choice about the types of values that our country epitomises. The referendum was indeed that but more besides. It was also a choice about the type of democracy we want to be. There are deeper democratic and social forces at play – how they are resolved will be one of the critical decisions we as a society make in the coming years.

For many decades now trust in representative democracy has been in decline. Interestingly, many of the advocates of leave framed their argument in terms of defending parliamentary democracy. But it was no such thing. Representative liberal democracy relies not only on the consent of people but on a set of institutional arrangements that can meet their needs and protect their rights – from independent legal institutions to international cooperation. ‘Take back control’ ultimately rejects this web of relationships in favour of some general ‘will of the people’. But how is this ‘will’ formed?

The answer is by substituting individual instincts and emotion for expertise, representation and institutional structures that put a break on populist impulses – if only to force us to pause for thought. Not only in politics but in education, health, business, local governance, and policing too, we are ever more willing to put our personal judgement ahead of ‘experts’ or ‘so-called experts’ as they have come to be known. The experts failed to convince their fellow countrymen and if their post-Brexit prophecies do not come to pass then the schism will become deeper.

Scrutiny and a degree of scepticism is not in itself a bad thing of course – the high-trust society had major drawbacks as Hillsborough, the increasing share of national wealth taken by the top, figures of trust preying on children, and the scandal of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust all show. Healthy scepticism is just that – healthy. Too often, however, we are replacing scrutiny and scepticism with a trust in our own instinct and cynicism. It is ‘me the people’ rather than ‘we the people’.

So the legitimacy of hierarchy is threatened but then replaced with a notion of democracy centred around populist individualism – whether it’s ‘take back control’ or ‘make America great again’. The foolish aspect of the decision to hold this referendum was the notion that it would resolve anything. Instead, it has released the forces of populist individualism. Far from being a political alternative, populism is actually an alternative form of democracy. The aim is not simply to replace parties and powers within representative democracy, it seeks to replace representative democracy itself. These forces may be difficult to contain now. Labour is seen to have deserted whole swathes of its traditional support; Conservatives are seen as vacillating and untrustworthy. The mainstream is brittle.

This was all predictable. In a paper on populism, extremism and democracy back in 2013, I wrote of the referendum pledge:

“As a strategy to minimise the space for the UK’s populist radical right party (UKIP), David Cameron’s EU referendum pledge is likely to be a misguided one. It may split away a portion of his party, threaten his own leadership, give profile to a populist party that he cannot or will not match, boost the brand image of UKIP in the eurosceptic media, and fail to address the real underlying anxieties of voters who are attracted to UKIP. It is a considerable opportunity for UKIP as they are given the spotlight in a way they have not been able to secure in their entire history.”

This feels like a scenario that is closer to the current reality than a ‘lancing of the boil’ that the Prime Minister was hoping for. The same paper recommended a process of ‘contact democracy’ where the political mainstream engaged in a process of democratic engagement in a discursive rather than campaigning fashion. A discursive democracy is a very different approach to individualist populism and tired, narrowcasting, hierarchical representative democracy. Discursive democracy breaks down the barriers between experts and the people, the governing and the governed, policy and politics. In other words, it flattens democratic engagement and eschews false divides, opening out and making democracy more solidaristic as a consequence.

Next week, the RSA will launch the Citizens’ Economic Council which is in an experiment in discursive, solidaristic, contact democracy. Essentially, a demographically diverse group of 50 – 60 citizens selected using stratified random sampling methodology will, over the course of a year, deliberate on the big economic questions of the time and make their own recommendations for future economic priorities – including the fundamental objectives on which economic policy is based. Economists have had a tough ride of late – justifiably some might argue – but this opens up the black box of economic thinking to the laity. We are intrigued to see the outcome.

This is but one experiment and others have been successfully run previously as tracked by Claudia Chwalisz in The Populist Signal. An unstated conviction at the heart of this experiment has to be that if representative democracy is to face continuing pressures then there has to be an alternative that is not akin to the referendum campaign we have just endured.

Democracy is hard; it requires work. Representative democracy was a hard won battle. The historian E.P.Thompson has described the two centuries-long making of the English working class. World War II contributed an accelerated politicisation. An exclusively class-centric politics doesn’t feel right for these more plural times. Class is important but just one component of political consciousness. However, we can’t just allow democracy to be a battle between an untrusted ‘elite’ and an impulsive political discourse. Democracy works best when it challenges all of us to think, discuss, and reflect. That’s where models such as the Citizens’ Economic Council come in.

There’s lots of unfinished business post-referendum: the presence in our midst of far-right violent extremism, how we can find the right relationship with the post-Eurozone/post-crash EU from which we intend to depart, and the future of political parties that are split in quite fundamental ways. But we desperately need to take time to understand the democratic mess that we have created. In reality, democratic forms co-exist. We might want to reflect on how we can bring people into the process of making better informed decisions about the national future. That means a bigger role for people in our democracy.

Sign up here for the launch of the RSA Citizens Economic Council

Here’s a quick question for you. For every £100 that a man working in Birmingham earns, how much do you think a woman earns? Ninety five pounds? Ninety pounds? Maybe as low as £85?

We’ll reveal the answer at the end, so while you’re mulling over that here’s another one. The unemployment rate for white people in Birmingham is about 9%. What’s the rate for black people? If you doubled 9%, try again. The answer is actually three times higher – 26%. The unemployment rate for Pakistani and Bangladeshi residents is similarly out of kilter, currently standing at 18%. But here’s the really interesting thing. Back in 2004 the white unemployment rate was 6% while the black rate was 18% – again three times higher. Over the course of a decade, despite all its strategies and plans, the city was unable to reduce this stark inequality.

Why is this? Well, it’s not just Birmingham that’s been asking these questions. A number of cities – from Plymouth to Sheffield to York – have held fairness commissions in recent years to understand why entrenched inequalities persist. As useful and, in some cases, penetrating as these commissions have been they have tended to ignore the nuts and bolts of how public agencies ‘do’ equality – how they go about tackling discrimination, eradicating social patterns of disadvantage, and fulfilling their legislative equalities duties. This is a serious gap. Understanding why these approaches have failed may go some way to explain why serious inequalities continue.

New research From Benign Neglect to Citizen Khan, providing a bird’s eye view of equalities practice down the decades shows that many ideas have been resistant to change. Whereas society has changed greatly over the last 30 years, our equalities tools have remained remarkably similar. For example, in 1984 Birmingham City Council set up a Race Equality Unit with the aim of addressing institutional racism and improving access to council services. By 1989 the Unit had 31 staff, including race relations advisers in housing, education, and social services. The Unit’s annual report for that year shows its activities included training, monitoring uptake of services, helping different departments devise race equality schemes, improving access to services (mainly by translating information), and organising outreach events. If you were to include something about community development (helping local community groups to support disadvantaged people) these activities would all be part of the Standard Six – the half a dozen key actions that have dominated equality strategies and policies over the decades. They’re the things that crop up time and time again, regardless of the organisation’s sector or the demographics of its service users. Ideally, equality approaches would be dynamic – constantly evolving as we better understand what works. Unfortunately, this generally hasn’t been the case.

We don’t want to suggest that no progress at all has been made, of course. For one thing, the number of excluded groups considered by equalities practice has increased. For example, public authorities in Birmingham didn’t fund any lesbian or gay groups during the 1970s or 80s – a situation which would be subject to serious scrutiny today. In addition, equalities practice is beginning to explore the impact of leadership and organisational vision when it comes to embedding best practice, and organisations are beginning to focus more on partnership working. However, there are still some things we need to get better at.

Firstly, as agencies work together more closely we need to be crystal clear about what ‘equality’ means. This may sound simple, but if you speak to people in different organisations you’d be surprised at how many answers you get. This is no longer an option. Different agencies have to be on the same page when it comes to delivering fairer outcomes for the most vulnerable. Secondly, and connected with this, we need a shared vision of what good quality of life looks like for Birmingham’s residents. This needs to be informed by what people think is important and by the common needs of people from different communities in the city. In other words, it will involve much more clarity about the ‘domains’ of equality that are important to a wide range of people in the city. Thirdly, we need to devise a series of entitlements necessary to guarantee these needs and measure the provision of these through a multi-agency, multi-sector programme of activities.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly – we need to take equality, cohesion, and integration seriously. In addition to the Standard Six, the clearest feature arising from a historical survey of equalities practice is that we’re constantly reacting to things. Whether it’s an influx of new migrants, riots, or legislative changes, equalities practice has always been devised in response to a particular crisis or problem. We have never stood back, thought about the type of society we want to create and then pursued this vision with vigour. It’s clear that equalities practice has usually been seen as a side show to the main business of delivering services. This can’t continue. We need to get on the front foot. Rather than react to problems we need to proactively shape the future.

Which brings us back to where we started: how much does a Birmingham woman earn compared to a man? The answer is £81 for every £100 he earns – a gender pay gap of 19%. This is bad enough itself, but it’s also worth noting that at our current rate of progress it’ll be 2038 before pay equality is achieved (and this is assuming there will always be progress: between 2012 and 2013 the gender pay gap actually increased). It’s becoming increasingly obvious that our traditional approaches to equality are delivering progress at too slow a rate. If we do what we’ve always done we’ll get what we’ve always got. And what we’ve always got has let down too many people.

It’s time for a change.

As new reports highlight the increasing inequality in the UK economy; cities, towns and boroughs across the country have united to tackle issues of social exclusion in a new national network set up by the Leader of Birmingham City Council and the Bishop of Birmingham.

While in recent months economic statistics seem to be indicating a more positive outlook for the UK economy, it is clear that a significant proportion of our population are still not feeling the benefit of this improvement.  Only yesterday the Equality Trust released a report highlighting that the gap between rich and poor was rising and that inequality was costing the country £39bn a year.  Figures from Oxfam also released yesterday highlighted that the five richest families in the UK are wealthier than the bottom 20% of the entire population and the gap between the rich and the rest has grown significantly over the last two decades.

Continuing and increasing inequality has the potential to have a  long term damaging effect on our population, impacting on a wide spectrum of social outcome.   Duncan Exley from the Equality Trust highlighted it perfectly when he said yesterday “We know that inequality is a major cause of social problems from crime, to poor health to low educational performance, and that it is psychologically scarring, reducing trust in strangers and isolating individuals”.

Local authorities in towns and cities across the country are grappling with these issues every day.  However the challenge of dealing with social exclusion has been made more difficult because of the reduction in resources.  It is  this context that makes the launch of the National Social Inclusion Network and accompanying Birmingham Declaration so timely.

Led by the Bishop of Birmingham,  Birmingham’s Social Inclusion Process has over the past two years been trying to develop ways of dealing with social exclusion in the city.  The process quickly identified that the task of creating more inclusive cities has moved beyond what local or national government can do on their own, and that there was a need to build a network of local authorities to work together, share knowledge and understanding, as well as establishing a collective voice to challenge the Government to bring about changes that will make dealing with these issues easier.

This awareness resulted in the first National Social Inclusion Symposium being hosted by Birmingham City Council’s Leader, Cllr Sir Albert Bore and The Rt Revd David Urquhart, Bishop of Birmingham,  funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, in September 2013.  At this event 15 local authorities from across the country agreed to establish a National Social Inclusion Network and to sign a declaration to demonstrate their commitment.

By signing the declaration, participating authorities have agreed to:

• Be part of the National Social Inclusion Network
• Share learning and develop joint campaigning on key issues around social inclusion
• Build a strong collective voice to articulate the arguments for social inclusion for all communities across the country
• Identify action that can be taken around issues of shared concern

The authorities that have signed the declaration are Barrow-in-Furness, Birmingham, Bristol, Islington, Knowsley, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Tower Hamlets.

The work of the network starts now.  We are already sharing ideas of best practice from successful Birmingham programmes such as the fair money manifesto, places of welcome initiative  and the Birmingham Jobs fund; and we are learning about other projects from across the country.

Over the next few months we will continue to work together in a variety of ways across the network with the shared determination to address deep-rooted issues of inequality and disadvantage and deliver the changes needed.

If you would like to  follow the work of the network you can do so through the blog , via social media @fairbrum and #fairplaces or by getting in touch with our team [email protected]

Paying the Price is the first report in a three-year project investigating the effect of the ‘age of austerity’ in single parent families. With data collected from an online survey and in-depth interviews, the current report turns its attention to how single parents’ household budgets have been affected by austerity measures.

More than half of (55%) of single parents stated that they ran out of money before the end of almost every month. Almost nine in ten (87%) had borrowed money for sought emergency welfare support in the last year. Gingerbread also found that 40 per cent of single parents are behind on their bills.

Between 2010/2011 and 2011/2012, the incomes of single parent families have fallen by  six per cent whilst the incomes of couple families have, for the most part, remained static.

A significant source of financial trouble for single parent families was the rise in living costs; single parents are more affected by the costs of housing, utility bills and foods as they take up a larger portion of their income. Additionally, single parent families are significantly affected by tax and benefit reforms.

This can also hinder single parent families’ financial resilience with three quarters of single parent saying they were rarely able to save, leaving them unprepared to cope with unexpected financial costs.

Although many single parents have adopted a number of ways of coping with austerity, such as careful budget management and finding cheap substitutes for some products, many single parents are trapped in a difficult-to-escape cycle of financial fragility.

Read the full report here.

The survey was conducted as part of the report, Paying the Price: single parents in the age of austerity, due to be released next month. Paying the Price looks at how single parents are faring light of austerity cuts and rising living costs. Around a third (36 per cent) of their outgoings go on housing, food and fuel essentials as opposed to around a quarter (27 per cent) of couple families’ spending. Rising living cost have also impacted on single parents’ food expenditure with two-thirds of the parents saying they had cut back on food for themselves, and one in seven (14 per cent) said they had cut back on food for their children.

In responses these findings, Gingerbread chief executive Fiona Weir states, “Single parents aren’t feeling any warmth from an economy that is supposedly heating up. In fact, the majority expect things to get worse. At this time of year, parents with growing children need to buy new shoes and winter coats – but for too many this is becoming impossible.”

There are currently two million single parents in the UK and children in single parent families are twice as likely as children in couple families to live in relative poverty. Estimate show that almost all single parents will be eligible for universal credit with the intention of making work pay.

The report explores the likely impact of universal credit on the incomes and work incentives of single parent families. Looking at three different types of single parent household; those where the parent is not working, the parent is working and earning the national minimum wage and those where the parent is working and earning above the minimum wage, the researchers highlight the differential effect of universal credit as a function of their level of employment.

Single parents in all three categories will lose out in cash terms under universal credit, but single parents who are working will lose a greater proportion of their income than any other household type. Conversely, single parents looking to enter employment will have strong financial incentives to do so until they begin working more than 20 hours per week.

Gingerbread suggest two changes to how universal credit is calculated, which would increase the financial incentives to work longer hours; increasing the amount claimants can earn before universal credit begins and reducing the rate at which benefits are taken away from earnings. They also state that more should be done to address single parents’ barriers to work such as the cost and availability of childcare and a lack of flexible jobs.

You can read the full report online here.