¶ The Marshmallow Test and National Decline
Good evening. It's called the Marshmallow Test and as a nation we fail it. Put a marshmallow in front of a young child and tell them if they don't eat it now, in fifteen minutes they'll get two. It's the classic psychological test of self control, reason, and the ability to forego immediate satisfaction for long term advantage. A startlingly accurate predictor, it turns out, of individual success, and a compelling explanation of relative national decline.
For we are governed in the short term. The pressures of the moment are eased with tomorrow's taxes, and long term problems are continuously kicked into the long grasp. We're nearly three trillion pounds in debt, growing at five thousand pounds a second, by the way. Yet our infrastructure is crumbling, and the train lines, power stations, runways, reservoirs don't get built.
Short term and getting shorter, we may well soon have our seventh Prime Minister in a decade. The five year electoral cycle is being driven ever faster by the fifteen minute media one. Who's to blame, our leaders or us? More to the point, who or what has to change for us to become a country that would vote for two marshmallows tomorrow? That's our moral maze tonight. The panel Mona Sadiki, Professor of Religion and Society at King's College London. Ash Sakar from the Leftist Navarra Media Group.
the historian and writist, telegraph podcaster Tim Stanley, and James Orr, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, Mona. Where are you on Marshmallows?
I think in my younger days I would have waited for two, but I'm too old and impatient now. I think I'd probably eat the first marshmallow.
I think there are an odd consistency, but on delayed gratification, I think that we need to see political volatility as downstream from political paralysis.
James.
I think it's too easy to say that the kids who grabbed the second marshmallow were were weak. I think it's much more plausible to say that the some of the children didn't expect the marshmallow to be around very long and it was a completely rational thing to grab it.
When I was a boy I would not only eat the marshmallow, I would demand more and if I didn't get them I would scream and scream until I was sick. 'Cause that's what kids are like, and it's up to parents to persuade them to wait. And it's the same with voters. We require politicians who can explain compellingly and rationally why we have to wait, and the real problem is not the voters. It's the relative lack in modern politics of adults in the room.
Mm-hmm.
Panel, thanks very much indeed. Our first witness is Paul Dolan, who's professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics. Now what does the marshmallow test tell us about human behaviour and by extension, I suppose, how human politics works?
Yeah, thank you. So um James, you start my line really. Um so basically there were the second wave of experiments. Did exactly what James said is to manipulate whether the kids thought that the second marshmallow was coming. So if you grow up in a resource scarce environment, you're probably promised that you're going to get your birthday present next week, that you'll get the new toy, and you realise quite quickly that it never comes.
So it makes much more sense to eat the marshmallow in front of you. And when you control for that, some of those effects that were found in those early experiments disappear. And in fact, if you can make it a reliable condition, that is you can trust that the second marshmallow will come. You can wait up to four times longer for it than in the unreliable condition. So that comes to trust, basically. That's the fundamental word there.
¶ Context, Willpower, and Future Focus
So Paul Yes. You would not agree then with delayed gratification. You don't think it's a virtuous thing?
Oh well, um uh everything's context dependent. Everything is everything. Um I do think I do think willpower has been overstated as a mechanism. I think we're much more effective in the design power, in being able to organise our environments, our choices, our situations in ways that make it easier for for us to act in our longer term interests.
Well it might be easier, but I suppose the point is why should today's feelings feelings that make me instantly happy count more than tomorrow's consequences?
Well, partly because of uncertainty. You know about today in a way that you're not sure about tomorrow. Um and you know, look it is a little complicated, isn't it? In the one sense people um arguably many people ought to be saving more for their for for their um longer term wealth and health. Um and and at the same time we are a species that's able to imagine the future.
Not only tomorrow, but thirty, forty years' time. So so so if we can design the architecture within which we act in ways that make our Help us, not make us. Help us look more into the future. That's the most effective way than trying to rely on willpower.
I suppose people have always known that, you know, you can't look into the future. You don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. But let me quote Victor Frankl, who I'm sure you have recognized.
Cool.
Who said that, you know, of course most of us treat happiness as the highest objective, whereas we should really be thinking about a reason to live, not a permanent emotional state that if it doesn't hap make me happy then it's not worth pursuing.
Yes. So I can't help but mention Happiness by Design, which is a book that I wrote some time ago. And the subtitle is Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life. And it's absolutely about those twin aspects of our experiences. Pleasure and purpose. Finding meaning. Um and when you add meaning into the mix. You know, unlike money, which you can move around periods, you can't really move around happiness. If you're miserable today and you have no meaning
You can't substitute it for longer term meaning well, unless you're absolutely guaranteed that it will come into the longer term. Um and even then um it might not be worth it.
Happiness and meaning don't necessarily go hand in hand. Somebody, for example, who's looking after a sick relative may not find any happiness in doing that, but they find purpose and meaning.
Absolutely.
So in a way...
So I would put purpose under that banner of the broad church of happiness. It's a it's a sentiment, it's an experience, it's a feeling.
I suppose one of the questions for me is if personal happiness, whether you call it meaning or self gratification, is the goal for most of us, then who is going to make the sacrifices for future generations?
Well, we do care about future generations and we care about future selves. And we care about other people. Um, you know, one of the most one of the most selfish things you can do for your own personal happiness is to help other people. It actually makes you feel good as well as helping them. Um and the same applies to looking into the longer term.
So I think if we were to frame I mean one of the things we've obviously want to get into ways in which we might deal with this short termism, I think I think rather than than than more abstract notions of economic growth, if we actually s if we actually spoke much more about the well being of future generations. how those future people and ourselves included will feel, I think that makes it much more it makes it much more vivid.
Well okay then so just give me an example of what a politician could say today that would be honest and for the well being of future generations.
Well, I think that's uh that's a difficult challenge. So I I would I would be framing um I would be I would be trying to If you can make something feel contemporaneous, or if you can make something feel, simply feel. um you're gonna be much more likely to cause action, uh in whatever ways. So if you can if if if we can make make that that impact on future your future self as well as the future generations vivid and emotional, then I think they're they've got a good chance.
The problem with that is that politicians can, if it's about feelings, and politicians can promise lots of things that might make people feel good, but that's dishonest if they can't really.
But it comes back to trust again, doesn't it? I mean we have to have trust and faith in institutions. And actually I think that's why sometimes you want to come out of politics and into um institutions that look that have that longer term view. that can build infrastructures and and, you know, take account of the next fifty years, not only the next two or five.
¶ Aligning Political Incentives and Trust
Uh.
I'm curious to know what you think about this. Do you think that politicians and voters are governed by the same incentives?
Uh you're probably better placed to answer that question. All of you are better placed to answer that question than I am. I mean the politicians are are they have to take some account of what the public have as incentives. Um and and that's why I think it's that's why I think it is a little complicated and also confused. You know, we do at the same time simultaneously being very present oriented, also have an eye, you know, I I care about my
two teenage children. I care about their lives into the future. That's nothing to do with me. That's a very long term view. Whilst at the same time I eat the marshmallow that's put in front of me. So so I think so I think it's it's aligning those incentives in ways that probably mean having more of a grown up conversation about some of the sacrifices that we might need to make today for tomorrow for ourselves and for other people.
I suppose um the thing that I was drawing on is that in twenty sixteen, immediately after the Brexit referendum, there was some polling done and it showed that a significant number of leave voters thought that an immediate hit to their personal finances was worth it if it brought down immigration in the medium to long term
So even though I disagree with the politics of it, doesn't that suggest that voters can take this medium to long term view? But you've got politicians who are just thinking about surviving the next day of media, the next general election. So there's two different timescales operating.
Yeah, that's really interesting. I think I think maybe sometimes the politicians can assume things about the public that may not necessarily be entirely true. Like the fact they only care about today. Um because yeah, I d I do think we are
We are willing and able to take short term hits if we think the longer term benefits are going to happen. So that's where the real trust in institutions and in the you know in the fact that this really will happen um is is in play and if also we can make those future benefits vivid.
I mean, something I say to my husband all the time as a warning, trust is easy to lose, hard to build. What would need to change structurally in order to produce A politics which is more worthy of trust and doesn't sort of activate that reptilian fear based bit of your brain.
Yeah, so I think I don't I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if it activates that reptilian brain, because that is that as as we're saying as as I'm saying that's where the emotion matters. I think I think we can we can pretend sometimes a bit too much that we're very cerebral. Um and that reptilian brain is is always present, always activated. So so I I don't think it's a bad thing to tap into it.
I think it comes again to my early point, is it's making making those future benefits vivid, to to actually feel something about them, to have an to have an emotional connection to what's gonna happen and how things will unfold in the next decade or two.
¶ Rationality, Evolution, and Modern Distractions
Do you think that the idea that we are rational political actors is a story that we tell ourselves?
Well, rational's a big word. Um do do I mean, we make all sorts of decisions that are that appear to be substantively irrational in the sense that we will often want things that make us And we will not want things that will make us better off. However you measure that could be could be could be in in uh terms of happiness, could be any other way. So so in some sense we act as if it looks like we're not rational. But there will be good evolutionary reasons sometimes.
why we would, for example, take the marshmallow today rather than wait till we're going to be able to do
Are we evolutionarily designed, hardwired to be short term?
Yeah, that's again a very good question. Um I I can't help but say context matters again. I mean I think I think I think we are we are in resource scarce environments and that's really interesting right now by the way, isn't it? Because I think what happens if people are facing a cost of living crisis If people are emotionally drawn to the present. Then they're not going to look into the longer term and it makes good sense not to.
Mm, I've lost my train of thought. One second. Um I suppose uh one thing that I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on is when people have really good reasons not to trust politicians. What is it that politicians can do to rebuild trust? Uh I mean, is it as simple as deliver on your promises or
Yeah, is it? I don't know what I mean what else I mean yes, I mean you you y as as you say, it's it's it's harder and easily lost. You know, it's one thing you it's one you thing you try to do with your kids is is not to promise them something.
that you can't deliver on. Or when you say if you do th if if you do X, why will Y will happen. You you you you you you you have to follow through with that'cause otherwise kids are like what what's what are the what are the uh rules? So in that sense it's a bit like bringing up children.
think that our like biologically coded hardware is being hacked in some way, that there are systems which are playing on our mistrust, what we're like in terms of short term gratification, and that's contributing to the sense of volatility and chaos politically.
Yeah, probably. I mean I I Yeah. when I was eighteen, there's the same age as my daughter forty years ago, I don't think we're we're not w we're not wired differently. Forty years is a tiny, tiny time span. We haven't been changed as fundamentally human beings. The opportunities to be distracted, to be mistrustful, um, to be present oriented are so much greater now than they were when I was eighteen. And that's the thing that's changed.
Well done and thanks.
Thank you very much.
Thanks very much indeed.
¶ Social Media and the Attention Economy
On that particular note our our uh next witness is James uh Williams, who's a former Google advertising strategist turned philosopher and author of uh Stand Out of Our Light Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. Th he's on the line from Copenhagen. Uh James Williams to to what extent can we blame the social media that you used to be a part of uh for our increasingly short term attitude to life and politics?
I think to a a large extent, possibly even, you know, uh the primary extent, um, you know, I I think in my mind a lot of this failure of short termism, to the extent we think it's a failure, um, it's a failure of attention and You know, we we have a situation right now where there is just a handful of people who kind of control the information pipelines uh for, you know, billions of people in the world.
And so um uh I think that, you know, there's a there's an enormous and and staggering really centralization of of power here. Uh so I think to the extent that there is sort of a defined class of people that's morally responsible, I think it would have to be the people that profit from and and perpetuate the current kind of attentional regimes that we have.
It seems as if your claim is that the attention economy is now i i i is becoming controlled. It's it's being manipulated. But isn't the truth the opposite? Isn't it the case that actually attention economy is not shrinking but that it's exploded? and that uh what we've got in fact is an extraordinary kind of proliferation of things that a c can command our attention, but it's no longer the monopoly of the old sort of legacy media
that uh that that that does it. And in fact the the the problem and the objection from people like you it seems to be that it's the wrong thing commanding people's attention or different things commanding people's attention.
Well I think it's true to say that the attention economy has d dramatically expanded in terms of the scale of it, of course, and then also the the kind of the diversity of things that can be put in front of us. um and that the kind of the context between the different forms of media input in our lives has has you know collapsed, which is why, you know, to a large extent politics is kind of like entertainment as, you know, Neil Postman pointed out in the eighties. Um but I I do think that the the
centralization and the m and the control is is also greater. Um I think it's not so much the the content coming through that that ends up being the problem. It's it's the way in which we give attention and the way in which we are um we are kind of
we are basically habituated into giving attention to certain things. And so um, you know, when when there's more things in an attention economy competing for our attention, that heats up the economy of attention. So that that makes these problems um even uh greater and so it's you know it's wide in the most extreme
candidate can gets, you know, it's t sucks all the oxygen out of the room uh in a conversation. It's why the most uh polarized voices can uh can kind of hijack the public debate on something. Um and so, you know, it's it's this it's this kind of
habituation into this kind of constant impulsivity, this kind of constant novelty and reward seeking behavior that um that I think, you know, it it's really the way in which we give attention, not the kind of necessarily even the content of what we give attention to that that is the the issue today. And, you know, it's at a global scale that is, you know, that would put previous previous eras of media uh infrastructure
Uh but but what what what's the problem with that? I mean d doesn't that just mean we've got more information, we've got uh more more a a a bigger sort of cross section of examples of what's working, what's not working in different societies. I mean w information has never been more abundant, voters have never been more informed, our our attention has never been, in many ways, more more more more sort of finely shaped by by the facts on the ground.
I I don't think it's the same thing to say that information has been never been more abundant and and voters have never been more informed. I think you know we have uh the entire corpus of of human output available to us. Uh I mean we could spend our days reading the you know through the classics and all this.
But uh, and people do, increasingly.
And so I think part of the problem is we still talk about these systems. in informational terms as opposed to attentional terms. So you know if most people never give attention to information at all, then it
You know, i i it they're not really informed. There's no information happening. Um, you know, it can just be sitting on a server somewhere, but that doesn't really matter. So I think the the core question is why do we attend to the things which we we attend and who's controlling that that attentional that process? Well
¶ Democratic Control of Digital Platforms
But w what's what's the remedy then? D who who ought to control it? I mean you're you would say uh at the moment presumably it's it's controlled by an oligarchy of Silicon Valley tech bros. W who who should sh who should do it instead? Should it go back to public broadcasters? Should I go back to Michael and and his colleagues? The European Commission. What what's what's your what's your remedy?
Well I mean I think if if for in my mind I think we would apply the same expectations, the same principles that we have in the political domain already where you know where there's you know, significant power over the world we live in that that significantly affects our life, it ought to be responsive to certain kinds of democratic control. And so, you know, I think what we have here is is the largest power to shape human thinking and behaviour in human history ever, by far. And so I think um
it it just seems natural that we would then want to apply that to it. So I think certainly, you know, looking at kind of public broadcasting models, public financing models, um, you know, public ownership models today, uh just Bernie Sanders uh in the US suggested a kind of uh kind of a sovereign wealth fund model for um ownership of uh public ownership wasn't the AI committee. So I think this kind of um accountability, this kind of uh kind of yeah control of
Mm-hmm.
the the uh the means of a of a p of attention I think are are urgent and essential.
Right. You want the Twitterers to own the means of production. I put it to you that I hate the rich two, don't get me wrong, I'd like to eat them. But I suspect you've slightly overstating their power. I mean the truth is is that the the tech bros they own the platform. but we create the content that goes on it.
🔇 Silence
Well, I mean m not most of us don't actually. Most of us are uh just consume it and not don't create it. It's a vr a minority of users that actually create content. But even if they did
Told what to create by the tech owner by the owners, are they?
Well yes, they are because um the platform incentivizes in the its design a certain you know, success is a certain thing. It's defined as a certain thing. Um and so in order to be successful
on the platform and play that game and, you know, uh get attention com over another person on the platform, you've got to do certain things that you might not otherwise do. And so then when you get this enormous scale of competition and and kind of uh vigor of competition, then you get you know, like you get YouTube videos where it's just, you know, they're highly, highly optimized for um for hitting all of these little psychological buttons and um and and and and they're sort of
speaking to our our brains and minds in a way that they never otherwise would. And so so absolutely. I mean this is I think you know McLuhan's famous maxim, like the medium is the message. I mean I think this is um kind of the the point of it is that the the str the the shape of the lens shapes what we see.
But it seems to me that what I'm being directed to in the media is not so much what I suspect you're worried about, which is quote unquote far right content. I'm being directed constantly to do ch chair Tai Chi. So much so much of uh what we see online is really lifestyle, not politics. What's wrong with that?
Well I think part of the well I first of all I'm I'm not s necessarily for t concerned about particular content. I'm more concerned in the way in which we're giving attention to whatever content uh it is. Um but um I think part of the issue is that these different contexts of our life have essentially collapsed. in the phenomenon of the internet. Um and you know, now it it's you know not it's not just that a political candidate has to be competing for the attention of the electorate.
um without for uh with other c pot uh political candidates, but no with you know, what this celebrity war to the
Okay. Okay, but to take an example of this, just to explore that, if you take Tucker Carlson, whose videos get millions of hits, for a while we were all worried that Tucker Carlson was going to remake the Republican Party in his image. What happened in the last round of Republican primary?
All of the lunatics who he supported were beaten by candidates who were loyal to Donald Trump and were friendly towards Israel. The real world impact of an online phenomenon is probably much smaller than I think you're suggesting.
Well I mean I think it's different to extrapolate difficult to extrapolate from kind of one one case it's out to to kind of the I mean John Trump is still the president of the United States. I mean I think it's the the i the story there is more just that Trump is so much better at playing this game than anybody else
I just think that's the same thing. I suspect you think that what the internet is driving is an attention economy which is actually destroying our patients and our ability to focus. And actually from what I see a lot of it is actually promoting things that have gone out of style, such as reading and philosophy. There is a weird craze online at the moment for reading Dostoevsky's White Knight.
Right. This is this is stuff that people would not have encountered except through this technology which is bringing new ideas into their home.
Well I mean I I would just have to completely disagree with the idea that it's in some general sense. promoting reading or bringing society back to reading. I mean I think it
It's just a a continuation of the the move out of print media that has been going on since the rise of electricity really, but but here it's kind of just to an extreme. I mean certainly there are these pockets you can find where there are are memes or trends, but um I mean, every week I will talk to someone who's a professor and they have to they're they're have to assh assign shorter and shorter texts, you know, to philosophy students.
because uh the like what they were able to assign, you know, a couple of years ago is is seen as too long now and people just won't read it. So um but these de these things can both be true. There can be these uh these pat trends and there can also be the kind of exceptions like you're talking about.
James Williams, thank you thank you very much indeed for joining us this evening.
¶ Politicians' Role: Vision and Charisma
Next witness is Sonia Pernell, historian, uh political journalist, author of a biography of Boris Johnson called Just Boris. Uh she's on the line from France now. Um uh uh to what extent do you think uh can we blame our politicians for not being strategic, not thinking long term, not being honest about the complexity and the tricky trade offs of politics.
I think we can blame them a lot actually. We've already talked about how we could do with more adults in the room. I think we could talk do with more adult conversation in the room. Let let's talk about what these things actually mean. Let's talk about how long they will take to come about.
I I find the conversation incredibly trivial. Um I think that's why people go for podcasts so often now, because it's a longer form of these brief conversations we're so used to. That people it shows that people have an appetite. for a more serious, discursive view of politics. But unfortunately we we get that so rarely. And I think we've had so many examples. I mean I think Brexit
to go back to that. Do you remember the day after the referendum when we saw those pictures of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the two architects, if you like, of the Leave campaign looking like frightened rabbits in the headlights as if, oh no, what have we done now? We hadn't actually thought about the next bit. I I think that we've seen a lot of that in the last few years and frankly that's why we're in the mess we're in.
Okay.
How important is it for a politician to be inspiring and confident when they articulate a long term vision?
Oh, incredibly so I think. Let's think about Mark Carney for a second, the Prime Minister of Canada. He gave um a speech that uh many people thought was an absolute masterclass to Davos earlier in the year. describing the position of a middle ranking power like Canada in a in a world that he described as ruptured and how Canada was uh dealing with that, how it could go forward, how it could make its place in the world and thrive and survive and all the rest of it.
through alliances, through, you know, chumming up with other middle ranking powers. I think that confidence, the way that he speaks, the way that he holds himself, is very powerful. Of course he's had a lot of experience in many different countries. That certainly helps. We don't have that many politicians of the calibre of Mark Carney, I'm afraid.
If I might push that a bit further is that Mark Carney delivered a, you know, uh storming speech, um as you put it, but it hasn't necessarily changed the structural challenges that he faces. So even a very charismatic politician will still have to contend with an overly financialised economy, demographic ageing in the UK, not having central bank independence. Charisma can't do it all.
Oh no, of course it can't. But actually it can sugar the pull. We we've been talking about marshmallows. I think Um, you know, seems to be the theme of the evening. I think a charismatic p uh politician can say, I'm gonna give you just a little bit of marshmallow now, but you're gonna have to work really hard.
for your next marshmallow or your next two marshmallows. If you do work really hard, you might get three. And look at in the past, when the country came together, it did big things, whatever that was. in wartime and peace time and then we had lots of marshmallows and we felt pretty good about ourselves.
So I think a charismatic politician can do that. And actually not just politicians. I mean, you know, perhaps surprising to quite a lot of us was how the king managed uh to do so well in America with some charisma, with some wit. with that kind of long term picture, um, bringing in the Magna Carta, you know, Oscar Wilde and all the rest of it. And it was a powerful speech that had a big impact. I was in America
the time. You know, you you you you you mentioned sort of wartime, peacetime. Clement Attlee famously was branded as sheep in sheep's clothing by Winston Churchill. He was a charisma black hole. Rydyn ni'n gallu gwneud hyn sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n.
Um and I I suppose I would be suggesting that you're over determining from rhetoric and aesthetics and undervaluing the importance of historical conditions and the political programme which is designed to meet.
Oh no, I'm not indeed. And if if it sounds that way then then I haven't explained myself well. No, I think charisma can take you so far, but actually what you've got to look at is the long term um prospects and long long term plans. I mean if we could look at Manchester for example and everyone t talks now about what a success story it is as a city and Andy Burnham has reaped a lot of, you know, uh that success if you like. But the fact is
It took decades to achieve and you go back to Howard Bernstein who worked for twenty years or more in you know setting up that management. It takes a long time. I mean what I'm saying is that charism can make can make people wait.
On that point, um, you know, you have two very charismatic uh leaders in the twentieth century, had Allende in Chile, had Lumumba in Belgium, you know, what happened to them? They got cooed. You know, w what about the disciplining forces that exist around politicians? So In the global south it's the long arm of Uncle Sam, but here it might be something like the bond markets or the media.
Well o obviously no one has untrammelled power, which is something else actually the King was was trying to explain to Donald Trump, I think, in his speech. I mean, we everyone has some kind of opponent, some kind of limiting power. All I'm suggesting is that a long term plan
delivered with charisma will go a lot further than a short term plan delivered with charisma, which is perhaps what we've had on several occasions the last few years. We've got to get away from that because we're not get we're not moving forward. But maybe a politician like Keir Starmer can't deliver it, A,'cause he doesn't seem to have that long term plan. And even if he did, does he have the charisma to deliver it? And make it make it sort of marshmallow proof, if you like.
No, no, no, no.
¶ Short-Termism's Real-World Consequences
So Sonia, just just to clarify what you mean by short term, do you mean that, you know, most of us call something short term s simply because we don't agree with the policy?
I always like to think of roads. Um, I was uh driving in Staffordshire uh last year and uh drove into a pothole and had uh had to pay four hundred and fifty pounds to repair my car. Apparently that pothole had been mended something like eight times in the last six years. Obviously incredibly badly each time because the pothole got bigger.
This is a false economy. What would be much better was to spend a bit more money right at the beginning and re retarmac that road. When I took the car to the garage, they said that half their work was mending damage from potholes. This is short termism. This is ridiculous. It's a false economy. Let's do it properly. Let's spend a bit of money bit more money at the beginning and save it in the long term and save a lot of angst and people's lives in the process.
How much hardship should today's citizens be expected to bear for the benefits they may never live to see?
This is a this is a a a a difficult one, isn't it? But I suppose one of the ways of selling it to us and again we've already touched on this is what about our children and our children's children? I mean I I want my kids
to have a great life with lots of opportunities and to be proud to be British, to live here and feel good about that and to see this country progressing. I really, really want them to do that and I want it to be the same for their kids. So that kind of what what drives me and I think it would Drive a lot of people to I think really do think What you know, excites people.
Could I go uh uh pose an example? So when politicians prioritise climate targets over living standards or vice versa, which side is being short termist?
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gender is a different matter. It's because we want to make ourselves ultimately less dependent on fossil fuels. That is generally speaking a good idea. Whether we're going about it in the right way, you know, is open to argument. But I think to make sure that we're not so dependent on foreign powers who may turn against us, who may become unreliable. I think if you explain that a bit better, then I think that that becomes more palatable to everybody.
I suppose uh j just to finish off, I mean th there is an issue about long term thinking and often just to just to give you an example, you know, people talk about long term thinking as visionary, but Let's take the example of Margaret Thatcher, who pursued very painful economic reforms and had a lot of widespread opposition. Supporters said she took necessary long term decisions and transformed the British economy, but critics argued that the social costs were enormous and devastating.
So sometimes in hindsight the long term decisions actually were far more conflicting than we we like to think they can be.
I th yes, I and I would totally agree with that. I I think therefore you have to have a a filter which is Is this adding to the quality of life? Um, a little bit now, but maybe more in the future? I think perhaps if you'd added that filter to what Thatcher did, you you might not have ended up with all that kind of Social division and and pain and heartache that that Britain experienced and which I think we're still kind of, you know, dealing with now.
¶ Trust Gap: Voters, Politicians, Expectations
Sonia Pernels, thank you very much indeed for joining us this evening. Our last our last witness is Dr. Carl Pike, who's a lecturer in public policy at Queen Mary University London, and former political adviser to the Labour Cabinet Minister Yvette Cooper. Uh so, uh who do you think is to blame and who might fix it? Are politicians just doing what we want and we vote for?
I think the the challenge is to find a a balance between, as uh people who've appeared just before, that the short and the longer term change. Uh someone mentioned Mark Carney. I think Son Sonia mentioned Mark Carney. Mark Carney has a very explicit strategy, which is this long term decoupling from the Canadian economy from the United States.
He's also doing short term things to help people with the cost of living, new benefit entitlements, th things like that. So I think getting this balance right is really important. Both to have this dialogue with the electorate, things that they need help with now, versus this longer term vision, but also trying to fix these very difficult problems that inevitably take place.
But the question was, is it easy to blame uh politicians when actually politicians are just doing what voters seem to want?
Yeah, I mean there is certainly a gap when it comes to um what uh politicians consider to be long term. And what a voter would think of as long term. So to give you an example, if we think about long term economic growth, the chance there is sometimes quoting time horizons of forty, fifty years down the road. From our research we know that voters think long term is about ten, which is quite a significant difference on things like that.
Indeed, Tim. Tim standing.
Um do you think the voters are impatient?
Um I think it depends on what we're talking about.
Well let's let's let's to give an example. Um so it's true that we've had oh how many six Prime Ministers in ten years? Which would imply a politics which is feebile and influx. But the voters have actually given both the Tories and Labour massive majorities twice and said, Here you go, you've got four or five years to go away and really get things done. It's the politicians that have screwed up, isn't it? Not the public.
I mean I think um there is certainly a lot of uh blame that can be put uh at the politicians' door. Um I think if we think about shorter term time horizons, the challenge for the Labour government right now. is when we asked people when do you expect to see noticeable improvements in health or education, they said about three years from when the government was elected.
I think cabinet ministers would probably say, you know, the former health secretary would certainly say, Well, there's a noticeable improvement in the NHS. The education secretary would say, Well, there are breakfast clubs now, that's noticeable improvement in the Department for Education. But Labour are languishing in the polls. So I think maybe is the gap. scale of change. How how noticeable does change have to be?
Yes, I think you're right. I mean to to give an example, immigration has fallen something like eighty two percent under this government. Net immigration, which is astonishing. But they're not getting rewarded. But I think the reason why they're not getting rewarded for that goes back to our very first discussion, which is about trust. This government, when it came in, tried to take away winter fuel payments.
and then handed them back. It did things that people felt they weren't elected to do. So whatever this government now does, doesn't it all come back to the Marshmallow problem, this question of psychological trust in politicians. If you don't do what you said you were going to do We can never take your word on anything again.
Well I think th the the interesting thing about this government actually is when they came to office they were quite explicitly long termist. So, you know, Keir Starmer made no secret of the fact that he felt like his change, as I think he said, was going to be a decade a decade of renewal. And there was, I think, an expectation from this Labour government that people would be patient. an expectation that they'd be more patient than they have ended up being.
We let the government down, I'm so sorry then.
I don't think it's I don't think it's that. I think it's just a difference in expectations. Yes. You know, I think Keir Starmer, perhaps to an extent Rachel Reeves as well, believed that they would have a little bit more time. Yeah. And also that if you can portray I think quite fairly at times, the previous government has haven't caused so many problems. There would be an appetite and a patience in the public to say, Well, look, it's gonna take a while for them to click.
Okay, well let me let me give you another reason to mistrust and blame the government then.
¶ Political Rhetoric, Public Patience, Accountability
Part of the problem here is the the sheer moral rectitude of the left. It's always telling us that everything is a crisis that must be fixed now because of poverty, racism, sexism, etc. And the Tories are making your lives hell. If you run on that, You're going to get judged on that when you govern. If you're telling the public things are really that bad, it's reasonable for us to expect fast improvement.
Yes, I mean I think this crisis rhetoric is not not just a left uh kind of uh habit, to be honest.
But I think
You know, there is a challenge for governments to set uh reasonable expectations whilst also doing their best to undermine whoever they're opposing at that particular moment. But I mean, let me give you an example of how sometimes change seems to kind of undershoot where the public expect it to be. As I said before, voters are expecting uh a decade, kind of ten years to be a fair idea of long term change. The recent trade deal with India, I think was a point one boost to GDP fifteen years.
You know, this is quite small, I think, and it's it's fair to characterise that as quite small. But when you go into different policy areas, think about early intervention to try to solve inequalities of education, health, economic inequalities.
By definition, if you think that early intervention in somebody's life is going to pay off when they become an adult, you have to wait fifteen, eighteen, twenty years to know whether that policy has worked. And I think it's issues like that where the where the discourse is not right.
So you seem to think that voters want miracles sort in a hundred days and that, you know, they'll punish any politicians not honest enough to to say that that it's actually going to take a lot longer. But I put it to you that actually it's the other way around, that voters are actually far too patient.
And politicians just aren't honest enough. I mean on a whole range of issues, voters have said over the long term we don't want endless foreign wars. Over the long term, we're worried about reckless fiscal spending leading to inflation spikes. Over the long term, we want less d dem demographic change. And politicians have responded by effectively saying, No, we've got to we've got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, we've got to keep the money flowing in, we've got to keep immigration going.
Isn't it actually the pub the the case that the public it's just been a breakdown of trust because time after time the uh the voters have said what they wanted and the s politicians have simply not delivered on it?
There is um there are a few inconvenient truths I think which can undermine some of that. So for instance, um research that's looked at uh the record of governments making good on their manifest. over time, not just now, but in previous decades, shows that a lot of the time British governments do a pretty good job of doing what they said they were going to do in their manifesto.
I think the what makes the trade off so difficult and what makes a lot of this so hard is the structural pressures uh upon governing in Britain are a lot harder. And you think if Tony Blair made an intervention, was it last week? Suggesting that you can fix things this way, that way, and the other. He was governing in a very different time. And I think now, uh these pressures are so hard. It's it's hard to be popular. Anybody.
uh would find it very hard to be popular right now. Left or right, big national story or no national story.
And I suppose part of the problem is that many of the challenges that face us are ones that one government can't really have much control over. I mean in thinking of uh the glob response to the global financial crisis or um or or COVID.
I mean the the challenge there is that a lot of those decisions that were taken that were not responsive to what the people wanted have have actually been a disaster. And again we come back to this trust point. There isn't There isn't a feeling that there is a kind of a competence in the political classes that would deliver on what on what the people want over the long term.
Um decisions of governments can cause long term problems. If you think about the response to the global financial crisis, certainly from 2010 on. Um the the impact of austerity has been a a a slow burn in some ways. Um if you were a welfare if you were if you received some kind of welfare benefit at that time you you you felt quite immediate
uh pain. If you're a local authority, it took quite a few years before we're now at this point where you need emergency bailouts because there's no money to do anything. So I think this connection between some of the short-term choices that government makes. causing some of these long term issues is is probably underestimated and something that we should think about more.
¶ Breaking the Cycle: Hardwired or Nurtured?
Briefly if you would, what's the answer? How do we break the cycle?
Well I think two things. I think there is uh there is this balance question, and I think certainly the the Labour government got that balance wrong in the first year or so, which is Um people will be patient I think if they know the direction a government's going and this government has not always had a super clear direction.
But also there wasn't an obvious thing that was getting better in the first six months to a year. Um and if you think of the uh removal of the two child limit and universal credit, that is probably a good example of a good short term change, but it took a while to come. I think the second thing is is far harder to fix and is not entirely in the politicians' hands. And that is the kind of discourse we have about some of these really long running problems. Social care.
I mean, yes, it's a political failure, but can we honestly say that, you know, when Theresa May mentioned it in that general election in twenty seventeen, the public rewarded her by wanting to confront it? Not really. So I think getting that discourse right is essential.
Carl Pike, thanks very much indeed. Uh okay, panel. Well I think we cracked this. Uh all all we need is honest politicians and patient voters. Uh simple simple really, isn't it? Uh except that our first witness, Ash, the expert on human behaviour. Uh I reckon that we are actually hardwired to be short term, Mr.
Well I I think that's true.
Reptilian brains.
I love it.
I mean he might have a reptilian brain. Mine is perfectly human though.
Mammalian to the poor. Um I mean I actually thought that there was a way in which um the first witness and the second witness flowed very nicely to um from each other, which is that we are hardwired to mistrust.
the future, particularly when we've had that trust broken before, the world is full of uncertainties. We've evolved to think about how do I make it through this next day rather than just thinking about, you know, what about in ten years time? And that We have created a society through social media, smartphones, digital immersion, where the opportunities to be distracted and what he called present oriented
are infinite. And I found the term present oriented really interesting because yes, it's present oriented in the sense of I'm being pulled into a never ending now, right? Things which are just constantly infinite and demanding my attention. but it's inhibited my ability to be present and be immersed in a social system. And so I think that that's the interesting thing about what James Williams was saying.
Um, which is that I don't think it's just about our attention has been split. It's that you've got this hyper politicization. and you've got the scarcity of attention and you've got the weakening of in-person associational culture because of this rise of a digital attention economy.
Uh Tim, it's really interesting about the uh the mu famous Marshmano test. Fascinating. Uh uh you know, that actually you know, if you've been disappointed about promises and you can extrapolate this into politics obviously, um uh then it's perfectly rational. Yeah.
There's a little bit of nurture versus nature in this debate, isn't there? Because this concept I'm surprised in you, Ash, you're sounding like a Thatcherite. This idea that we are short termist and self interested by nature, I'm actually not sure I agree. And just free and and what what I took from this was that actually uh it is the nurturing process that determines how we react to events. And it makes perfect sense that a child that is loved will trust
And therefore can be can can find expression to its natural altruism. So I suppose for me the pattern goes order is rooted in love, which is surprising, but it is, and then out of order comes liberty. Because once our lives are ordered, then we can take risks. And I and I f my so where I come down this whole debate with relation to politics is I feel the voters have very good reason to have lost trust.
They are naturally altruistic. They would like to vote for the long term. But in a generation which gave us Iraq which gave us Gaza, which gave us the lockdown, which gave us Brexit. It doesn't surprise me that the children don't trust d mummy and daddy any more.
Uh Mona I was I was uh actually quite surprised that uh uh none of our witnesses thought the case was hopeless, that that actually we were capable of long term uh decision making, even long term sacrifice. Though the b first the first witness, Professor Tonham, um, uh did say that he didn't think delayed gratification was a virtue. He regarded it as an unreliable concept.
I mean, take for example scientists who work on a difficult problem for decades. they're not working because they're happy on that problem. They're working because they want a result that might res and I think he underestimates the kind of life of duty and sacrifice a lot of people willingly um carry out in their lives because that is also a kind of happiness. That is also a kind of meaning.
¶ Emotion, Information, and Modern Politics
But I disagree. I think a lot of people, including myself, I think most people still are trusting. I mean, it's very easy to say, oh, all politicians lie or they're in for it themselves. But the reason people are politically engaged is because people want to believe that s these people or some of them might make our lives better.
Um and I think this dismissal that people don't trust politicians or they don't trust what they promise, I don't think that is true. I don't think we would have this level of engagement with politics. at whatever level if people thought that nothing good is gonna come out of this. That is the only mechanism we have of governance. So why should we dismiss it?
James, uh Professor Donald did did think that uh uh he did think that we we do have pro social motivations. that are stronger than self interest. And that they can be uh I was interested in in in answers t to to to this thing. That these can be mobilized by m giving things meaning, making the message vivid and emotional. Do you think that's just too simple?
Well,
Look, I think that politics has never been simply about cold hard reason. Um you know, Jonathan Hyde has written very well about this and goes all the way back to David Hume. It may be the case that the human condition is indeed the Humean condition, that that reason is just the slave of the passions. It's just how we're wise. Now I think that's a little bit simplistic, but I think that we do we vote with our hearts as well as our heads.
And uh, you know, sometimes the crowd the crowd c w it's some we talk about the madness of crowds and we talk about the wisdom of crowds. And there are certain conditions that can make crowds wise and crap certain conditions that make them mad.
One of the conditions I think that makes crowds wise is an abundance of information, it's being informed. Um and so I think generally speaking, this our speaker who said that we we are worried about the shrinking of the attention economy, I think it is quite the reverse. The problem is that voters' attention is Directed to other things and we're becoming generally a lot more informed as as
the emotions of hyper vigilance, of outrage, of disgust and of rage, because that keeps us sucked in. So I I I tend to think that there is a difference between an abundance of information in which we are well placed to navigate it, make choices, spend time with it, critique it, analyze it, and what's happened, which is a sort of deadening of the senses because of information overlap. over stimulation.
And that's what James Williams was saying, which I found very interesting, that he wasn't talking about the content which you the question you posed him. He was talking about how we give attention. And so in a way One thing that we didn't say was actually despite all of this, most people still believe what they want to believe. You know, whatever facts or truths or whatever you put in front of them, if emotionally they're connected to something else, they'll believe that.
Tim James Williams said it uh uh that that social media b were turbocharging effectively turbocharging short termism, that they they amplified uh the polarising voices.
Yes.
The shout.
I agree it's an accelerant, but heavens, uh what else?
We were very pan glossy and
What what else stimulates uh people's biases more than uh Lenny Riefenstahl's The Triumph of the Will? Uh Stalin narrowed people's minds by cutting them out of photographs. We were terribly short termists in this country during the winter of discontent.
Maggie Thatcher, I'd argue, was short to was short termist by selling off all our public services which we're now busily taking back. So none of what we've discussed is new. I would argue, because I've been in the politics game now for twenty years, this is a golden edge.
Twenty years ago there was, for instance, no publishing industry in books in this country, there was politicos and that's it. Now my goodness, you can't walk for James Or you can't move for James Orr's books or your books, Ash, uh or Douglas Murray's. There's been an explosion of intellectual interest in politics and curiously of mass membership of parties and new parties. There's now a real Green Party and an alternative to the Tories.
I would say, okay, some of this is dizzying, accelerating, dangerous, but it also reflects a certain maturity people are choosing for themselves and expressing for themselves.
¶ Effective Leadership in Complex Times
Mona Son Sonia Pernell, the third witness, blamed our politicians f fairly and squarely, you know, seemed to be incapable of grown up conversations about long term challenges.
Yeah, I d I don't really buy that. I think um I mean the example she was
Very persuasive.
Well I mean if you take for example King Charles's speech of course it was
Bring back the monarchy, I think.
You know, we're talking about politicians who have to act in a very different way and they have to actually govern and make decisions. Of course p Prin King Charles' speech was good, but in a way he's not really affected by the consequences of what he says in a way that a lot of politicians are. Um and then Mark Carney as well.
He's Canadian, so he's definitely not attracted without a politician.
Yeah.
In some ways I think it's actually easier to give a rousing speech than to do the banality and boredom and struggle of daily governance. And I think she was missing that. And it was all about if you make a good speech and you have some policies that you can realise, then that's what makes a good leader.
What about the external issues that make p that make governing difficult? What about wars? What about you know, credit crises? What about all these other things that people have to struggle with? And how you navigate that I think is what Distinguishes a good leader from an average leader.
to to quote the greatest tactician of our age, as Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And that's the first thing that I thought when she said A long term plan delivered with charisma is better than a a short term plan delivered with charisma because yes, charisma is one form of power and you can see it be effective. For instance with Zorain Mamdani who managed to charm the pants off of Donald Trump somehow.
But you also have to do all these other things. Um and if we go back to a boxing metaphor, if everyone has a plan to you you get punched in the face, maybe you've got to knock the other guy out first.
precisely why you need a mechanism for cause correction. And it's what's what's dismissed as short termism or as as populism is actually very often just the natural immune response to the body politic when it's when there's something unhealthy in the body.
So volatility's downstream from Paralis.
Well, yes and no. I mean yeah y i it certainly the b a body that is you know, if you got got poison you'll vomit it out. It's not always pleasant but it's it's what it's what needs to happen. And it's a it's a course correction that's needed. The alternative what's the alternative? Ten year electoral cycles No democracy at all.
Tim, I was about to say, what's the answer, but you don't think it's a problem?
No, I do think it's a problem, I just think it's a new one and I think it i it's one which can be fixed with a little bit of charisma and maybe a change of Prime Minister. I do genuinely feel sorry for this government. It is actually delivering on a lot of what it said it would do.
Uh, but it doesn't seem to matter. But I think that's because of the trust lost in the first few months, but also because they have demonstrated that politics is fundamentally light entertainment. And if you have a Prime Minister who can't dance or can't sing, then what use is he?
But that's that's the tragedy of modern day politics. It has become light.
It's why people watch.
Journalists like you who likes a likes a drama of its own.
No one would vote.
I'm not sure.
Exactly.
But the thing is we we you know how does changing leadership make us a better country? We've had, as you said, six different
You've asked the question, uh Ash, I'm gonna put you on the spot.
You've got a bat.
Thirty seconds, I say. What's your answer?
Um basically I think whether he's a tap dancing poodle or a very boring vabarian, the important thing is a politician's willingness and ability to construct a coalition.
Which of our leaders do you do you see in that role as the tap dancing poodle?
So Tap Dance and Poodle I would actually say you know Trump cut his teeth in wrestling and that's where he gets his oratory from. He he really did. He he talks um a lot like Vince McMahon. And whereas, you know, Keir Starmer is a very boring vibarian. And I think what determines a a politician's real chance of success is their willingness and their ability to take on vested interests and that is about hard power.
Okay. We'll leave it there. That's it uh for this week from our panel, James Orr, Ash Sarka, Mona Siddiqui and Tim Stanley. And from me, until the same time next week. Goodbye.
I'm Gemma Gander and for BBC Radio 4 and Shadow World, this is Stolen Years. More than two decades ago, Andrew Malkinson was found guilty of a crime he didn't commit.
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