Conservatives love to talk about the 'global race' – but what does it really mean? And is Ed Miliband right to say that that David Cameron's party have taken the concept in a dangerous direction?
A year ago, when the government was more drifting and unpopular than it is now, a short, fierce book was published by five young Tory MPs. "The British are among the worst idlers in the world," claimed Britannia Unchained. "As the world becomes more competitive, Britain will have to work harder to keep up."
A debate about the "idlers" charge briefly boiled in radio phone-ins and newspaper columns. But within a few weeks attention had moved on. References to the book dwindled. From its policy-wonk subtitle, "Global lessons for growth and prosperity", to its headachy statistical tables, Britannia Unchained seemed of specialist interest only – just another Westminster pamphlet.
Except that, starting at last year's Conservative party conference, there were signs that the book was on to something. The first came in the speech by George Osborne, which suddenly shifted from his usual cheap but nimble party point-scoring to a more ambitious, international argument: "Western democracies," he said, "are being outworked, outcompeted and outsmarted by new economies … And the truth is, some western countries won't keep up, they won't make the changes needed … They'll fall further and further behind."
Two days later, in his leader's address, David Cameron made the metaphor explicit: "We are in a global race today … How will we come through it? It's not complicated. Hard work."
Dominic Raab, one of the authors of Britannia Unchained, is not quite prepared to claim credit for supplying Cameron and Osborne with what, belatedly, may be one of their few persuasive governing themes. "We had quite a lot of interest in the book from across the backbenches, and from various people in and out of government," he says, perhaps mindful of sometimes being tipped in Westminster as a future Tory star. "But it did occur to me, as I sat there at conference, listening to the speeches, that some of what we had written had … resonated."
Last September, the phrase "global race", used in reference to Britain, appeared twice in British national newspapers. In October, 17 times; in November, 38; in December, 65. Usage has barely dipped since. Much of it has been by Cameron himself: in his 2013 New Year message; in a party political broadcast in March; in set-piece speeches to business conferences; in more informal remarks to journalists; even, slightly bafflingly, in a speech in July to promote to the world the British legislative approach to same-sex marriage.
Almost every other senior Conservative has also caught what the Daily Telegraph parliamentary sketchwriter Michael Deacon calls "global race fever": from ultra-loyalists such as the education secretary Michael Gove and party chairman Grant Shapps to loose cannons such as Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke, from usually measured Tory thinkers such as David Willetts to the loosest cannon of all, Boris Johnson. Further down the Tory food chain, "the global race" theme pervades strategy meetings about how the Conservatives plan to present themselves, both at their party conference and at the 2015 general election.
Rushed into use shortly after the 2012 Olympics, by a party whose key figures went to expensive schools that fetishise sport and general competitiveness, "the global race" is hardly the most subtle or socially sensitive of rhetorical devices. But it has the advantage of flexibility. Britain, the Tories tell us, needs to "win" it, "succeed" in it, and get "to the top" in it; "compete" in it, "thrive in" it, and be "strong" in it; "fight" in it; or merely, "equip" itself for it and "get fit for" it. If Britain fails to do some or all of these things, it will "sink", "lose", "fall behind", be left in "the slow lane", or let "others take over".
This race, we are told, is economic. Our opponents are usually specified: the rising countries of Asia and South America such as China, India and Brazil. Yet the prize is vaguely and promiscuously defined: "jobs", "wealth", "growth", "trade", "talent", "technology", "skills", "capital", "competitiveness", "big ideas", "influence", "innovation", "investment", "investment opportunities", "recovery".
Meanwhile the race is invoked to justify seemingly any government goal or policy: bigger British arms sales abroad and smaller school holidays; tighter immigration controls and looser planning laws; the lavish high-speed rail project HS2 and a leaner Whitehall; harder GCSEs and better childcare; reducing social security and reforming the European Union; promoting the renewable energy industry and the redevelopment of Battersea power station; even dignifying Cameron's recent visit to Kazakhstan.
With its portentousness, official ubiquity and obviousness as a metaphor, "the global race" could almost be a catchphrase from The Thick Of It or Yes, Minister. Especially when politicians mix it with other grandiose metaphors, as Cameron did at last year's Tory conference: "A global race … means an hour of reckoning for countries like ours. Sink or swim. Do or decline."
And yet, the phrase is beginning to embed itself in modern politics – more effectively than Cameron's previous, cuddlier concept, "the big society". The phrase has spread far, too, through the machinery of British government. This is from the official blog of Scott Wightman, British ambassador to South Korea: "Education … is really the only way that a developed country can keep up in the global race for prosperity. In Korea, education is at the heart of how this country has transformed itself …"
The underlying implication of the global race idea – that the world is getting harsher and Britons should toughen up accordingly – seems to fit these unforgiving times, with zero-hours work contracts and punitive public attitudes to welfare claimants.
"There is a lot of fear at the moment," says TUC economist Nicola Smith, "and the small-state, deregulatory part of the Tory party is using 'the global race' idea to try to exploit it." One of her rightwing counterparts, Philip Booth of the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs, also sees a potency to the global race metaphor: "It plays on the idea in people's minds that British manufacturing is in decline. And it plays to the business support for the Tory party – to people who are engaged, say, in the day-to-day business of undercutting a German car company."
Nationalism, declinism, insecurity, acceptance of diminished wages and working conditions, a certain puritanism – Britain has been exhibiting these classic symptoms of difficult economic periods for half a decade now. Focus groups organised by the Conservatives have reportedly shown that voters with these feelings are receptive to "global race" rhetoric. As Raab puts it: "Do we want to be Greece in 40, 50 years' time?" It will probably take more than a few months of better economic news to make this underlying fear go away.
Besides, talk of a more competitive world is not just Tory scaremongering. "We're moving into much more bracing times," says Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World and former editor of Marxism Today. "For a very long time, the west was extremely privileged, by privileged access to commodities during colonial times, for example." The left-leaning American economist Robert Reich, labor secretary under Bill Clinton, sees international competition "intensifying". Jacques says the solution for Britain, if there is one, will not be comfortable: "I do think that kids don't work nearly hard enough. It's no use ordering them [to]. You have to create a new mentality."
But haven't we been here before? Fifty years ago this autumn, Harold Wilson, then an eager young Labour leader and prime minister-in-waiting, made a famous speech to his party conference. "There is no more dangerous illusion than the comfortable doctrine that the world owes us a living," he said. "From now on, Britain will have just as much influence in the world as we can earn … We must use … all the energies and skills of our people … We shall need a totally new attitude."
Since the 60s, Labour prime ministers have been just as keen as Conservative ones to tell Britons to pull their socks up. "[The] forces of change driving the future don't stop at national boundaries," Tony Blair warned another party conference in 1999. "Fail to develop the talents of any one person, we fail Britain." In 2008, Gordon Brown wrote in the Observer that "winning the global race to the top" would require the "unlocking [of] all of the talent of all of the people".
The Blair and Brown governments aimed to prepare Britons to cope with globalisation through increased state spending on education, employment training and childcare. "Government has an essential role to play in investing in the human resources ... needed to develop an entrepreneurial culture," wrote the New Labour guru Anthony Giddens, with a whiff of Whitehall-knows-best, in his influential 1998 book The Third Way. One of the origins of this approach was a UN strategy called "social development", which for decades had aimed to increase the economic "capacities" of citizens of poor countries. The implication that Britain was now a developing country, too, at least in its population's preparedness for globalisation, was not dwelled on by Giddens and other New Labour thinkers.
Under Blair and Brown, the actual phrase "the global race" was rarely used by British politicians, but it gradually became a favoured concept on the business pages of rightwing newspapers, especially the Times. Then the coalition took office, and New Labour's free-spending response to the global race was abandoned in favour of the Conservatives' much more austere one, which argues that globalisation requires less investment in Britons – cuts in workers' rights and welfare– rather than more.
"I don't see it as about making Britain a sweatshop," insists Raab. "We have a shrinking share of the populace pedalling harder and harder. Those are the guys whose side we're on." When I ask him whether the government should offer Britons carrots as well as sticks to make them perform better in the global race, there is a long pause. Then he offers more stick: "Education and retirement are being spun out for longer" – that situation, he implies, cannot go on. "Unless we're in a position to compete, the raw truth is we will not produce the kind of jobs we want, and the tax revenue the public sector requires. Our economy will become unsustainable."
Some analysts consider such talk pessimistic. Interestingly, critics of the whole global race idea are not confined to the left. "Economists don't think of trade as a race in any way," says Booth. "The world economy is not a zero-sum game. Countries get richer together. If China carries on reforming and growing, there will be more opportunities there for Britain." Reich agrees: "The race needn't [mean that] every country's citizens lose ground, but some lose more than others … or [that] some can gain only at the expense of others … We can all grow, and at the same time spread prosperity to more people."
He points out that it is increasingly irrelevant to think of global competition in terms of national economies anyway: most big corporations are multinational archipelagos of employees and share holdings. Jacques sees a similar over-simplification in how China is often presented as the global race's great bogeyman. Wages in the top cities there are rising fast, he says; Chinese manufacturing is moving upmarket; and the Chinese state is intimately involved in many of the country's major businesses. None of this suggests that the sole route to economic success is, as the British government's global race rhetoric often implies, simply for citizens to work harder for less while the state steps aside.
Recently, the TUC and Labour have tried to redefine the race as one for better wages and skills and living standards, rather than "a race to the bottom". Ed Miliband has attacked Cameron on the issue in the Observer: "He thinks for Britain to win the global race people have to lose." Yet as often with Labour under Miliband, this effort to change the terms of the debate has been sporadic and as yet has had limited effect. As Reich puts it, in Britain and other rich countries, "creating a 'favourable business environment' remains tantamount to deregulating, reducing wages, cutting taxes on corporations, and giving employers more flexibility to fire at will." Even in Germany, often rightfully cited by the left as taking a different, more socially benign approach to globalisation, the strong economic performance over the past decade has involved a prolonged squeeze on wages.
For now at least, the greatest threat to the government's "global race" argument may be over-use and ridicule. At Conservative party HQ, those working on the 2015 general election campaign are reportedly already sick of the phrase. And in a politician-hating age, a Tory party without great orators or much of a mandate to govern deploys catchphrases – remember "we're all in this together" – at its peril.
In the meantime, global race sceptics may enjoy a half-minute film shot last year in St James's Park and posted on YouTube. It is of George Osborne trying to look comfortable jogging. Those wanting to make Britain lean and mean should perhaps start at the top.
Economic policyEconomicsManufacturing sectorConservativesLabourAndy Becketttheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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