Alan Milburn writes in The Times:

“Like many in my generation, I have had that chance in my life. I was lucky. I grew up on a council estate and ended up in the cabinet. I benefited from a good family, a strong community and a society that was moving from 1950s rigidness to 1960s openness. Social mobility was in full swing. The reforms of the postwar years – universal education and the welfare state – provided unheard-of opportunities for working-class kids to get on. And as professional and service-based jobs grew, so more room was created at the top of British society.

“In the decades since then, birth, not worth, has become more and more a determinant of people’s life chances. But the latest evidence suggests that the long-running decline in social mobility has bottomed out. This is the right time for the government to make its core purpose creating an upwardly mobile society again.”

Swingin’ social mobility, eh?  Hmph.  Milburn massively overplays the decline in mobility (see David Goodhart’s article here).  The implicit argument is that, in a history of immobility, there was a brief flowering in the 1960s, and then it all collapsed again…  Until the Blairites made it all better, that is.  Probably not, in fact.  There was a huge explosion in mobility in the immediate postwar era because Britain had previously been highly immobile; this then receded a bit (more for men than women, as women were catching up).  Social change rarely starts and stops neatly.

Given that at least some degree of (cognitive and non-cognitive) ability is heritable (through genes and environment), mobility was likely to decline after its initial growth – because the distribution of ability across social class was going to change too.  Dynamics matter.  Also, universal education continued to expand, albeit more slowly, after the 1960s, while the welfare state also expanded well in the 1960s and 1970s (in the 1980s too, but that was to cope with high numbers).  But leave the diagnosis aside, here comes the prescription…

“And we know, from evidence across the globe, what makes for a more upwardly mobile society. An economic policy that prioritises high skills and quality jobs. A welfare system that encourages work, not dependence. Early-years education that is comprehensive and high quality. Schools that have rising standards. Learning that is for life. Families that are supported. Communities that are empowered. Individuals that own assets and feel they have a real stake in society.”

Some of these are trivially true – nobody’s going to want schools with falling standards or an economic policy which prioritises crap jobs, I imagine.  The questions that matter are what those goals look like in practice, and how we can realise them; and they’re bloody difficult questions with no easy answers.  But some of them raise some interesting contrasts with his own story.  Milburn (correctly) places a lot of value on coming from “a good family, a strong community”; but were those families especially supported, were those communities empowered, in the terms we mean?

No, 1950s working-class families and their communities prided themselves on their independence, almost to the point of proud insularity.  And to be fair, one aspect of the decline in mobility may well be that Milburn’s generation benefited from such an environment, but the social change which coincided with increased mobility (the move from “from 1950s rigidness to 1960s openness”) probably undermined it.  This isn’t a nostalgic point; my point is only that progress has costs as well as benefits; for all that we’ve become a more open society, where individual talents can prosper, we’ve also lost, in some parts, some of the social capital which better developed those individual talents.

As part of his mobility schtick, Milburn says:

“That is why the prime minister has asked me to chair a panel looking at what more needs to be done so that the best people, regardless of their backgrounds, have a fair crack of the whip when it comes to securing a professional career. With 90% fewer unskilled jobs and 50% more professional jobs expected in Britain by 2020, our future success depends on unlocking the talents of all our people.”

This last bit is true New Labour; the pleasant always coincides with the effective, and so it’s not only just to raise mobility, but necessary for economic growth – we actually need a more mobile society to prepare for the ‘global economy’, the Chinese, whatever.  The numbers about changing workforce needs taken from the Leitch Review, which proclaims (seemingly without irony, as Alison Wolf pointed out) “History tells us that no one can predict with any accuracy future occupational needs.  The Review is clear that skills demands will increase at every level.”  The Review is worth a post or two in its own right, it is so shot through with blind assertions, easily disproved assumptions, and cherry-picking of evidence, and as the numbers imply, the seeming view that businesses will leave masses of workers unemployed because they haven’t got the right piece of paper.  But another time.

Let’s be honest, public bodies aren’t exactly renowned for setting about their business without the odd hiccup here or there.*

And it’s probably going to get harder, not easier, in the years ahead – with the present Government eager to squeeze more and more results, often on short timescales, for funds which will grow much more slowly.  That, and the same agencies are stuck with staff that they probably paid more for than they wished (because they went on a recruitment spree when they had lots of money).  Not that they’ll get much sympathy, but times are tough for delivery bureaucrats.

So all you need is to be lumbered by Harriet Harman with this:

“Public bodies, including local government, have a crucial role in helping people to fulfil their potential and in removing the barriers that hold people back. We have already legislated to require public authorities to tackle the inequality that arises from race, gender, or disability. But we know that inequality does not just come from your gender or ethnicity, your sexual orientation or your disability. Co-existing and interwoven with these specific inequalities lies the persistent inequality of social class.

“Given the important role that public policies and services play in supporting individuals to make the most of their talents, we will consider legislating to make clear that tackling socio-economic disadvantage and narrowing gaps in outcomes for people from different backgrounds is a core function of key public services.” (New opportunities: fair chances for the future, Cm.7533)

Leaving aside the desirability of eliminating social class divisions, even if it is ultimately achievable (and I’m somewhat sceptical, to put it mildly), it’s going to be tough and highly costly.  Lumbering the unspecified and potentially massive task on public bodies which have actually quite important work to be getting on with (thanks!), which they already struggle to deliver properly, doesn’t seem to be like a good idea…  But maybe that’s just me.

This via Peter Hoskins at Coffee House, who worries about it being used for all manner of money-wasting boondoggles.  I’m sceptical on that score; I think the cost will be less detectable, in the appointment of Social Division Co-ordinators and the collection of monitoring data and the issue of Life Chances Action Plans to be shelved and never read.  This is apparently all at the behest of Harriet Harman, who is a lawyer and has form for wanting to put the law at the service of her own conception of the good society.

Incidentally, according to Political Betting, Ms Harman is 10-3 favourite to be the next Labour leader at the moment.  Like Blair, she is an independently educated lawyer who’s very presentable to middle England and was one of the loyal founders of New Labour, after all.  Unlike Blair, she is seemingly always keen to hitch her wagon to the kind of opinions (i.e. positive discrimination) which would be remembered as much an electoral asset as Hague’s baseball cap.

* This is not an ideological point against ‘government’ as such.  Public bodies do difficult and unglamorous things, and only get noticed when they do things wrong.  All that that proves is that they face limits as any other human institution does – a basic point which people like Ms Harman seem unable to grasp.

Matthew Taylor makes a good point about the potential negative consequences of seeking to increase social mobility.  You should read it because you won’t hear much about arguments against social mobility in the years ahead, as all three parties (Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and the Government) have started competing in a meritocracy arms race.

Fitting nicely with my previous post, Matthew implies that the Left’s concern with social mobility is a function of the case for redistribution having become politically embarrassing.  An example of this in action is Kitty Ussher’s comment here (p.32 onwards), who describes her belief in terms of “breaking the link between class and the access to a fair outcome in life,” and then goes on to frame the argument against inequality in instrumental terms (p.35): “in a society with large wealth inequalities, resentment is bred and communities are undermined by feelings of marginalisation and and separation.”  No attempt is made to argue for equality, as a matter of justice.

But anyway.  A White Paper is due tomorrow, which will I’m sure unleash a new wave of social mobility.  Or so will be the promise.  As Matthew says, Cabinet Office Minister Liam Byrne has said that it’s a “classic liberal error” to view any gains in upward mobility (i.e. born poor but die rich) as being at the expense of downward mobility (i.e. born rich but die poor).  All have won, and all must have prizes.

Well, possibly.  Mobility can expand without simply creating a churn of people winning and losing over and over (which, as Matthew says, carries a big social cost).  But it’s difficult – it was a helluva lot easier in the 1950s and 1960s because of the rapid expansion of the economy created by technological innovation flowing from (but not fully used in) the 1930s and 1940s; this created a steady flow of new higher income jobs to absorb the products of improved educational opportunity.  There was also a lot of immobility to remove back then – for people generally, and especially for talented women – which explains the seemingly greater fluidity of those times.  Those conditions though – a coincidence of very fast skill-biased technological change with expanding educational opportunity and improved openness to merit above breeding in business and government – are probably not about to recur.

The problem I think is that many of those arguing for mobility, as Matthew implies, because they can’t argue for redistribution, seem to assume that mobility will achieve equality.  But they’re different things.  We could have an extremely mobile and indeed meritocratic society already; the increased inequality in income might be in part a reflection of that (as well as a range of other factors – dissolving family forms, collapse of institutionalised pay determination, technological change).  Personally, I think there’s some truth in this – although, as David Goodhart argues here, there are still those at the very top and very bottom not included within that society.

That’s because, as I think most of us know, there’s only so much Government can do to counteract the inequalities we have in our (cognitive and non-cognitive) abilities.  Some of us are good at maths, have a great work ethic, and have great people skills.  Some of us have difficulty with basic logic and can’t manage our temper.  A mobile economy will reward the first more than the second, all other things being equal.   And the problem is, a lot of our ability is inherited – not so much in our genes, but in our family and community environment.  The phenomenon of assortative mating (clever boy reproduces with clever girl) only serves to enhance this difference.

If you want to affect greater social mobility in that context, you either increase the churn – making life chances more a lottery, making them less meritocratic – or you have to ameliorate the underlying source of unequal talents.  This will not only take a lot of money, but (and people on the Left are never patient) a lot of time too.  The reason for this is that by the time we reach adulthood most of our ability is already determined between our genes and our upbringing.  That’s the motivation behind Sure Start, and school reform, and even by the effort to tackle child poverty.  What I do find amusing (and tragic) is that people on the Left seem to have become so allergic to making judgements on ‘the family’ [shudders] that they can’t see that maybe, possibly, influencing choices about family formation and dissolution might be a valuable tool in effecting early human capital formation - and cheaper than having full-tim nursery for every child, which seems to be the only offered alternative.

But that brings us back to the question of how genuinely committed people on the Left are to improving social mobility.  A bit more honesty from some would be nice, but not all.  A true liberal quite properly seeks to forge a meritocracy as the just society; within whatever schema of redistribution is necessary to please Rawlsian sensibilities, a liberal should want a less talented person to be ‘poorer’ than a rich person.  It’s the social democrats who are most confused on the Left these days - signing up to the liberals’ agenda, but knowing there’s something wrong, knowing that a society which condemns somebody as ‘less talented’ to a life at the bottom seems… wrong.  Byrne’s statement is part of that problem - excess social mobility (up and down) is a potential means to a more equal society, but tending to meritocracy raises some serious issue; although as Matthew says, a bit more equality along with some social mobility might actually work better.  (As should be obvious, there are liberals and social democrats in both the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.)

Now to my own side.  Why are we concerned with promoting social mobility to the extent we now seem to be?  On reading recent Right-wing commentary, conservatives apparently now take social mobility as their driving creed.  I think this is at once poor reasoning and bad political strategy.  (I leave aside again the fact that there are liberals in the Conservative party.  One of them ran it for 15 years.)

It’s bad political strategy because most voters will follow social democrats in conflating social mobility with equality, and in that sense a Conservative party in Opposition or in Government will never come close to satisfying expectations.  The problem is that, as much as social mobility is worth pursuing, there will be losers as well as winners – and the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties will always there to point out to the losers how they’ve not been helped.  Unfortunately, as any marketing type will tell you – losers care more, and work harder to do damage, than winners will give you back.

On the poor reasoning, really.  It’s not that conservatives should be against social mobility (not at all), but they should – as with all such concepts – keep it very much in perspective.  Given the rhetoric we sometimes hear, one could be forgiven for thinking that British conservatives now believe in social mobility as unalloyed good, such that even the upward-downward churn would be good, to keep society fresh.  Let’s deal with that one first: being a conservative means you accept the world as it is, and in this case, accept that there is natural inequality – the task of our institutions is to make sure the best are at the top.  So social mobility, yes – but only insofar as it helps the best be recognised.

Second, conservatives should recognise that there’s a trade-off in all such mobility.  Meritocracy still admits of some change, because the world changes.  Technology, the global balance of power, changing tastes and preferences – all these mean that different people will benefit at different times.  As well as the general problem of churn there’s a specific one – if our institutions don’t give the successful some degree of security, then they will never make their contribution to society.  Too much mobility can cut against social capital, and raise transaction costs – there’s a balance between benefits and costs.  Peregrine Worsthorne put the balance thus thirty years back: “to the Conservative the problem is to ensure enough stability and continuity to prevent tomorrow’s aspirants to power pushing themselves upwards so fast that nobody can rule in an orderly and civilized fashion”

Third, there’s a trade-off in another way.  The particular flow of social mobility working at any time will never be complete, because some people win and some people lose, and some people haven’t got much chance (because they’re limited in ability).  Such a situation creates opportunities for those who wish to undermine support for our economic and social arrangements, by playing on people’s envy.  Therefore, as well as making sure people have access to opportunity, we also need to make sure that those arrangements overall work to their benefit.  That means ensuring that those arrangements not only reward economic success but other forms of service.  We can’t just ask people to know their place; we need to make sure their place typically isn’t that bad either.  And in this sense, every conservative should give a few moments’ thought to Kitty Ussher’s concerns over the effects of large wealth inequalities.

Conservatives’ asset is that they are not as ideologically constrained in removing the blockages to opportunity which constrain mobility.  Michael Gove can propose reforms to break the State monopoly in schooling and be criticised for not going far enough.  Iain Duncan Smith and the Centre for Social Justice can propose changes to family policy to improve child development and barely raise a murmur of protest.  Conservatives generally are more comfortable with promoting competitive individualism and implementing conditional welfare.  All this is good.

Conservatives’ liability is that we seem to think, because we’re still fighting the last war, that any concession on addressing excesses of income inequality is tantamount to supping with Tony Benn and Michael Foot.  Consequently, we are hampered in considering how financial barriers themselves can sometimes constrain income inequality, but also in creating the conditions in which the right amount of social mobility is seen as legitimate by the majority.  In Opposition, this is easy; we’re in favour of all social mobility.  But we’ll soon run up against some that we (correctly) feel is too much.  But if we say that there are never conditions in which there is too much inequality, we will never get to the point of tackling real problems that concern us, not just of social mobility but of society more generally.

Incidentally, the assets and liabilities for social democrats are in partly reversed but also too much entwined.  Their asset is that they are willing to tackle inequality by distribution, even if they are scared to admit it – it is a good thing that they now won’t take it too far, because inequality isn’t in itself a bad thing.  Their main liability is that, because they are so weighed down by existing commitments to ideas and to client groups (e.g. the educational establishment), they are not prepared to tackle all of the constraints on social mobility – when for them, probably excess social mobility is a good defence against meritocracy.  And the liability is made worse by the asset of being willing to redistribute - because, why annoy a client group, when you can give the losers a bung?