For many the run-up to the 1997 election saw us clutching our pledge card in one hand and our copy of Will Hutton’s The State We’re In in the other.
In How Good We Can Be, Hutton once again seeks to provide not just an analysis of the deepseated problems with the United Kingdom’s economy and political system, but also a programme for reform and rebuilding. He is at his most compelling in his analysis of the way existing corporate ownership and governance and the failure of our industrial policy stifle innovation and growth; how talent and entrepreneurialism fail to grow into the long-term value that the economy needs; how we have undermined the role of the state in providing not just a successful industrial policy, but also a defence of the public realm and a modern social contract. His description of the growing inequality of income, wealth and opportunity is vivid and he argues that this is not just morally wrong, but economically crippling too.
I was less keen on a rather grumpy critique of New Labour and when he ventures into other areas of social policy. For example, I am never convinced by an analysis of the criminal justice system which contains no mention of those with the least power in the system – victims.
The energy returns as he turns his attention to what is to be done. He confesses to having worked with Peter Mandelson at the end of the last government when we began to develop the idea of a new industrial policy. There was neither the time nor the political capital to make a reality of the early ideas then, but Hutton is now able to provide a detailed blueprint for reform in company law, finance, a modernised and exciting role for trade unions, a focus on innovation and new social and industrial agreement to promote skills and pensions.
He identifies the ‘crisis’ of the Scottish referendum as a crucial opportunity to devolve more power and real financial clout to cities and regions across the UK and argues that the British state needs to change from an approach ‘of being a directive sovereign over us to a co-creator with us’. He is right in arguing that it is the devolution of power to autonomous organisations rather than their privatisation which is the best route to innovation and more effective public services. He further argues for a deliberative democracy in which public officials enter an iterative discussion with citizens about their priorities and what they value in their public services. I would have liked him to go one stage further and think he should get together with Liz Kendall and Steve Reed so that they can persuade him from their recent work around the pamphlet Let It Go, published with Progress, that power needs to go to users of public services, not just to the providers.
It is too late in the day to inform the 2015 manifesto, but I hope that shadow cabinet members and advisers will spare just a few moments to consider some of the ideas in this book. Perhaps even put it in your pocket with your pledge card again.
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Jacqui Smith is a former home secretary. She tweets @Jacqui_Smith1
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How Good We Can Be: Ending the Mercenary Society and building a Great Country
Will Hutton
Little, Brown | 304pp | £16.99