Any political survey of the future is by its nature a risky endeavour. But, ahead of the Progress conference, 2020 Vision: A Clear-sighted Look at Labour’s Challenges in the Next Decade, it is worth revisiting a pamphlet I wrote four years ago that attempted to do just that.
Britain in 2020, published by the Labour party thinktank Forethought, had three big conclusions: that progressives should be more ambitious, not less, for social change; that the threat of extraordinary new inequalities was very real; and that continuity in office would soon require a meaningful move on from parts of Labour’s 1997 platform.
Five big trends dominated the findings of our survey. First, dramatic potential changes in Britain’s fortune are likely as the pace of change in global business and human capital accelerates. By 2020, our country may be 50 per cent richer than today. The global output of just two working days is forecast to match the entire economic output of the year 1900.
Our graduates will compete in a global graduate population of two billion IT-literate workers. Computers are expected to multiply in power by a factor of 4,000. Information and communication technology will fuse with traditional products and services. This, combined with advances in biotechnology, materials science and nanotechnology will ensure that technology becomes pervasive in business, the military and medicine. As the internet becomes the lynchpin of industry, business practices across the economy will alter, changing completely our workforce requirements.
This, together with the accelerated growth of global trade, will fundamentally alter our economy. China and India – already one sixth of global GDP – will offer Britain new and evermore sophisticated markets for our exports, especially in high-value sectors like pharmaceuticals, aerospace, biotechnology, electronics, the automotive and creative industries and food production. By 2050, China, the US and India may constitute three massive economies some $22 trillion larger in GDP than the next largest economy. But our closest market – the EU – will also enlarge until 2010, bringing with it a larger single market, with greater trading opportunities than ever before.
Second, greater global interdependence will bring new risks and potential changes to society at home. The terrorist threat to our country from abroad is likely to persist, as disaffected states, terrorists and organised criminals take advantage of advances in technology to develop their resources and alliances. Transnational organised crime, already a bigger global economic player than the UK, is expected to grow – and grow in alliance with weak and unstable states.
New bonds across old borders have the potential to alter the shape of Britain. During the 1990s, the UK changed from being a country of net emigration to one of net immigration – 2.4 million people left Britain and 3.4 million came in. Over the next 14 years, global migration pressure will grow. By 2020, the world’s population will increase by two billion to eight billion people. The developing world may see 95 per cent of this growth, creating younger populations who are more mobile and quite possibly more motivated to seek a better life abroad.
Third, science will create extraordinary new possibilities for public services – but it will come coupled with new demands. Perhaps the most dramatic changes will occur in medicine, as the genetic revolution, which Britain may help lead (half of our Nobel prizes since the second world war are in medicine) helps power a shift from ‘diagnose and cure’ to ‘predict and prevent’. By 2015, gene therapy may treat 30 per cent of life-threatening diseases, and ‘lifestyle’ diseases may come to dominate health outcomes (50 per cent of mortality is thought to be linked to behavioural factors).
Pressure on housing and transport is bound to grow. By 2021, the number of households is expected to balloon by 8.5 million, to 24 million. Pressure on housing is likely to be concentrated in specific pockets across the country, especially East Anglia, the East Midlands, the south-west and the south-east.
Across all public services, expectations and requirements for rapid and effective service will rise, as key sections of the population grow richer.
Fourth, the politics of ageing, already rising in profile, will raise the premium on policies that counter fears of the future. By 2020, 30 per cent of the UK population will be over 60 – up from 20 per cent today. Already, research carried out shortly after the 2005 general election shows that the baby boomers – who will be over 60 for the first time at the next election – are feeling anxious, and sceptical, about pensions and social care. Age Concern’s ICM poll found that 30 per cent of over-50s put pensions as their top issue.
Fifth, changes in both society and the media will require politicians and parties to adapt. Social trust is still high: membership of voluntary organisations has risen over the last 20 years, and people are prepared to exercise power directly as consumers or as members of lobbying organisations. But people are already less engaged in politics and turnout in the 2001 general election hit 59 per cent. Only 15 per cent of the population trust political parties, nine-out-of-10 people do not trust politicians to tell the truth in a tight corner, and 63 per cent say that the governance of Britain could be improved quite a lot or a lot.
Yet, over the next 20 years, social and consumer activism is likely to grow, the structure of power is again likely to alter as the institutions of global governance alter, and the media, if anything, is likely to become more pervasive and, at the same time, more globalised.
Taken together, these changes will radically alter the policy demands on progressives. Indeed, they already demand a revised agenda. The balance of concerns that underpinned Labour’s grand coalition of 1997 has already changed fundamentally.
The salience of many of the key issues of 1997 – the EU, unemployment, education and the NHS – have all declined, in some cases substantially. And while health and education remain very much on the radar, they have been joined by three issues which have grown and grown dramatically: crime, race relations, and defence.
This new balance will help define the politics of the next election. The politics of personal security may dominate the electorate’s sense of their basic contract with the state in 2009. This is a complex mixture which encompasses crime, respect, a fair immigration system, and the basics of personal protection – housing, pensions and care.
But alongside this must come a renewed drive to build on the hard-won foundations of stability achieved by Labour and an appeal to the politics of aspiration, with proposals to harness new science and the global services economy.
Finally, there must be a more distinctive concern not only to protect Britain from the risk of new inequalities in a rapidly changing world, but also to combat existing inequalities, both at home and abroad. We are the fifth largest funder of UN peacekeeping and the world’s fourth largest aid donor. We retain the unique distinction of membership of the EU, NATO, the Commonwealth, the UN Security Council, the Council of Europe, the OECD and the G8, with a track record of leadership from Kyoto to cancelling third world debt. We are uniquely equipped to lead a progressive internationalism that helps deliver not just a world of trade, but also a world of trust.