Atelier WeekNotes w/c 20 May 2024
0/DETECTING: Linking my family crisis to holding the Tories accountable. Eradicating Hepatitis on a Pacific Island. In the Atelier: Māori in tech delegation; Influential Trajectories.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
This week covers:
0/DETECTING
Linking my family crisis to holding the Tories accountable.
Eradicating Hepatitis on a Pacific Island.
In the Atelier
Wāhine Māori in tech delegation.
Influential Trajectories: incremental steps.
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0/DETECTING
Linking my family crisis to holding the Tories accountable
Anyone who has been reading the Atelier WeekNotes will be used to me saying over the last few months that there are family challenges that have been affecting my professional work. Well, I can say a little bit more, especially with the surprise snap General Election now underway.
By way of background, my wife died 3 years ago, my wife's parents both in 2022, one by suicide. These close and sudden bereavements have deeply affected by my teenager children.
The recent family challenge: my eldest hasn't been able to take their GCSEs because of their mental health. After many months we are starting to get a formal diagnosis from the NHS of prolonged grief. We’re now figuring out what that means for the next few years.
What has this got to do with the government? Haven't we just had an extreme experience, which would destablise any family?
Well, yes. But, the government has made choices which have extended and deepened the effects.
Specifically, after the lockdown, the government refused to fund education catch up of £15b. A lot of money, but a huge and necessary investment in our collective future. Especially as one way to understand the lockdowns was to avoid the health system collapsing with extremely ill people, the vast majority of whom would have been the elderly. Everyone else had to pause their lives. I support that collective choice.
Any government with a sense of social contract and long-term responsibility would have reciprocated, helping young people catch up (and raising everyone's living standards over time, because it is the future success of young people which pays taxes, and state pensions). Today's youth mental health crisis has been heightened and deepened by lockdown, and the failure to invest in the education catch up will have consequences for everyone over the coming decades.
Stepping back, the Conservatives made a series of big strategic bets over 14 years, all of which failed:
Austerity.
Bet: reducing government spending in the aftermath of a financial crisis will reduce debt and prevent crowding out of private sector activity.
Result: prolonged stagnant productivity and wages; plus, struggling public services, especially for people and places left behind by globalisation and not in the knowledge economy.
Brexit referendum.
Bet: having a referendum will confirm the neoliberal settlement (small state, open markets, open-ish immigration) and reduce the pull of the identity politics of the Hard Right.
Result: referendum lost, as people voted against a status quo where they felt left behind economically, left out culturally, and let down politically. (My view: right to object to the status quo that was failing so many; wrong to blame the EU.) Hard Right given more prominence, and politics made uncertain.
Hard Brexit.
Bet: leaving the EU with the hardest Brexit will give the UK back sovereignty which is the same as control. This will unleash economic success and national pride in sunny uplands, reinforcing a new normal of strong Right politics. A fast exit will mean no avoiding the referendum result, and force a consensus.
Result: discover that, in the modern world, sovereignty is not the same as control. A fast exit did mean the UK left, but with huge contestation on economic model, even among those who campaigned for Leave. As a middle-large country, the UK's prosperity relies on trade with big players, who can set the rules. Investment down, wage and productivity stagnant. No sunny uplands, no re-growth in nationalistic pride, no new stability.
Governing through perpetual campaigning.
Bet: identifying accurately what is needed (regional productivity growth, a catalytic government) and then turning that into snappy slogans ('levelling up' and 'end to austerity') is enough. You can govern through perpetual campaigning and telling the state apparatus you are going to radically change them.
Result: Having no way of implementing radical change delivers nothing. Governing-by-campaigning creates expectations. If they are not met, then all faith in politics is undermined.
Fast shock to get to low tax-tiny state sector.
Bet: you can shock an economy into success by vastly reducing taxes and spending.
Result: immediate economic instability. International markets, already jittery because of no clear economic model to replace the one junked by leaving the EU, punished the UK for stepping into unknown (not just a small state, but a tiny state sector, now outside a free trade region). 'You believing in markets doesn’t mean they believe in you' — Torsten Bell.
Slow decline to get to low taxes-tiny state sector.
Bet: a novice PM, with a fragmented party who only agree on lowering taxes and performative cruelty, will be able to (1), most important, save the Conservative Party, and (2), of secondary importance, pull the UK out of unmanaged decline. (Sunak is no technocrat; economically he basically agrees with Truss on everything except the pace.)
Result: for the UK, poor-to-terrible economic performance, public services threadbare after 14 years of under-spending. For the Conservatives, the worst polling, ever.
Alongside those has been the governance bet that a vote from a small and skewed membership group is a good way to test and select Prime Ministers. That wasn't true of Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak.
Underneath these specific bets, some political economists have detected a drift of contemporary capitalism towards ‘rentierism’ and even ‘neo-feudalism’. In this piece (£), Will Davies phrase argues that:
-The rich (plus pensioners who’ve paid off their mortgages) just want to live off the rent of their assets.
-Investing reduces rents now (even if it supports returns in the future).
-So, highly unequal, low-productivity economies tend towards stagnation because wealth management strategies become largely defensive, aimed at preserving and exploiting existing assets, rather than risk-taking.
Hence all the 'low tax, tiny state' threads in the bets above. Hence stopping HS2, or investing in education, or anything really.
In a phrase: "the British capitalist class have given up on the future".
One illustration: I've called the National Careers Service twice, to get advice. Twice the conversation has gone:
Me: I'm asking about post-16 education requirements. It says here on the Department website that they can be in employment as long as they have enough education. I want to ask questions about that.
Them: Oh. I'm not sure if that is right.
Me: I'm reading it off the Department website.
Them: Really? Don't know about that.
Me:…
Me: Right, I’ll be ringing off now.
Any resemblance to the confusion of administrators while trying to get my children vaccinated is not a coincidence. It is what happens when your public services are threadbare, and close to falling over completely.
WHAT NEXT. Hold the Conservatives to account on Thu 4 July, by voting them out. Because if they can make this many errors and stay in power, then the UK is a one party state and will remain in perpetual unmanaged decline.
Eradicating Hepatitis on a Pacific Island
Before the General Election was announced, the big news in the UK was the results of the contaminated blood inquiry (Guardian coverage here; London Review of Books backgrounder here (£)), where people were infected with hepatitus and HIV.
By coincidence, that Monday morning I spoke with someone who has helped eradicate hepatitus from a Niue, a Pacific Island.
Hazel Heal is a a New Zealander, lawyer and also has recovered from hepatitus herself. She is also, like me, an Edmund Hillary Fellow, a community of 500+ innovators, entrepreneurs and investors committed to New Zealand as a basecamp for global impact.
Hazel set up Global Health New Zealand to address the hepatitus problem in Pacific Islands. You will know them as places of fantasy beach holidays. But they are small countries, with limited buying power, and many poorer people. Perfect for public health problems, like hepatitus.
Global Health New Zealand has shown how to eradicate hepatatus in one island. They are raising funds to take the model into the rest of the Pacific Islands.
My reflections:
Amazing what can be possible, given time, expertise, funding and committed leadership.
Just how much can be done with quite little funding.
But how little funding there is around.
Quite the contrast to the immoral organisational self-preservation shown by various UK health bodies, and US companies, around the infected blood scandal.
WHAT NEXT. Look forward to the launch of their film on Hepatitus Day, Sun 28 June.
In the Atelier
Wāhine Māori in tech delegation
Much of this week went into helping a trade delegation from Aotearoa New Zealand. Fingers crossed, with some success.
On Tuesday I had a call with the Investment Manager of the British Consulate in Auckland. We had been connected by a mutual contact, who I know through the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, a community of 500+ innovators, entrepreneurs and investors committed to New Zealand as a basecamp for global impact. I am an EHF Fellow (yes, I know the 'Fellow' at the end is superfluous; but "I am an EHF" makes less sense. Anyway.)
The UK-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement came into force in May 2023 (which I sorta knew) and is the first agreement of its kind with a chapter on indigenous trade (which I definitely did not know).
One year on, this Mâori Trade and Cooperation chapter is being brought to life with a mission to advance Mâori economic aspirations in the UK. (Sidebar: just as in the UK we might say "inclusive economy" or "circular economy", in Aotearoa New Zealand some people talk of the "Maori Economy".)
The British High Commission in New Zealand, together with the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Callaghan Innovation (a government agency which is the "enablers of good innovation here in Aotearoa New Zealand") are working with Te Taumata ("the government's first port of call for trade discussions with Māori") to take a delegation of ten wâhine (female) Mâori leaders in tech to London Tech Week on a trade mission and knowledge exchange.
The delegation aims to foster international connections and build an ecosystem of wâhine Mâori in tech who are trade ready and export enabled.
My idea for the breakfast was to give the entrepreneurs as much chance for close conversations as possible. (I’m guessing they will have lots of capital P Presentations at London Tech Week and elsewhere.)
Through the week I reached out to Zinc (the mission-orientated VC and incubator, where I am a Fellow) and Undaunted, Imperial College climate innovation centre. They were keen to help but we couldn't quite get the logistics to work.
Up stepped The Conduit, a collaborative community of people committed to creating a just, prosperous and sustainable future with a building in Covent Garden. Specifically, Eliza Gleave, the Head of Community & Member Experience.
WHAT NEXT. Distribute the invites to folks who work with start ups (let me know if you want one). Have a great event. Huge thanks to The Conduit (if you want to become a member, come through me so I can get a reward for us both).
Influential Trajectories: incremental steps.
Step: 4/DEVELOPING. Theme: Method; Sectoral Transformation; Governance; Futures.
This week: great progress on possible uses, and on explaining. No progress on the method itself.
By way of reminder:
Purpose: To create shared commitment to investments and initiatives that drive towards ambitious outcomes.
How: Imagine different trajectories from today to a future goal together (informed by latest systems transition theories), test each to see if the pre-conditions for exist, and then invest based on the results.
Key insight: people are more willing to commit to investments and initiatives where they have devised the test of whether to proceed themselves.
Acknowledgment. We are very grateful for the opportunity provided by Sustainable Shipping Initiative, and funding from Lloyd's Register Foundation, for the first pilot use in the State of Sustainable Shipping (SoSS).
This week I've been having various conversations with organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand about applying Influential Trajectories during a trip in August. (Once again, this is part of me being an Edmund Hillary Fellow, a community of 500+ innovators, entrepreneurs and investors committed to New Zealand as a basecamp for global impact. Quite the theme of the week.)
I don't want to jinx things, but the conversations include:
Helping public bodies with delivering climate targets faster.
Helping a financial institution to electrify a key sector faster.
Helping a civil society organisation deliver on local regeneration goals.
The common features along the lines of:
People roughly (or even exactly) know the future milestone they are aiming for.
They have tried other orthodox planning methods and got little traction.
They are looking for:
More certainty and confidence.
Multi-faceted understanding of the situational dynamics (not just the tech or the economics).
Its exciting to have some validation of the need, which lead to trying to investing effort in Influential Trajectories. It is also a bit anxiety inducing to now have to actually make progress on the mechanisms inside the method (I feel like I've written that phrase a few times in these WeekNotes; oops).
I've realised that I need something to point people to, as an introduction to Influential Trajectories. So, I've created a page in the SubStack site here which covers:
Commentary* (including risks, challenges and reflections).
Examples (with lessons learnt).
*=currently blank [Last updated = 21 May 2024]
The idea is to make it future-proof, hence some blank sections. Over time I want to populate them all, including with instructions -- so oters can use the method to create change where they are, an 'open source' approach to developing and diffusing a method.
WHAT NEXT
Templates! Workshop outlines! (Third week in a row I've put that. Procrastination will stop being an option soon, I hope.)
Set up pilots for late July (before going to Aotearoa New Zealand).