A central contradiction

One of the things I work on is the idea of 'imaginative geographies' - how we imagine other countries. Once my present book project is out of the way, I'm going to be turning to another 'imaginative geography' - how we imagine the future, both now and how we conceived of 'things to come' across the twentieth century.

Well, some future are becoming obvious. Britain is, for one thing, about to get a lot older. Lower immigration, still-lagging birth rates and elongated lifespans mean that we're all going to be spending a lot of time in care homes - either visiting them or living in them.

So far so easy.

But this brings me to a central contradiction of our economy. What do we really, really want? Things that we can only provide collectively - guaranteed care for the elderly (as was mooted across party lines before the Election) more rail lines, access to the best medical care and top-class universities open to all.

That's not just because those things are admirable in their own right, but because otherwise our nearest and dearest are going to turn to us to pay - or for alternative care that'll take up all our time. Ask any one of the three and a half million women, or two and a half million men, who are carers in the UK. They'll tell you it's a full time job.

What are we asked to want instead? Bigger flat-screen TVs.

And while we are invited to want more and more short term rubbish, what we actually need to spend on and save for - pensions, for one thing - are looking more and more shaky.

I'll be thinking more about how we can square this circle next year, but this'll be the last post of 2010 before a long-earned holiday.

See you in 2011!

This year's books for pleasure

The Educator has often berated me for dividing books into two categories: 'work books' and 'books for pleasure'. Actually, this is because many of the books I read every day for work are so awe-inspiringly, jaw-droppingly dull that they practically wear a grey tie on a grey shirt under a grey suit.

So any opportunity read something a bit more, well, exciting is very welcome!

What have I read this year?

Well, Kate Atkinson's crime novels with no-nonsense northerner Jackson Brodie as their protagonist: Case Histories, One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? I really loved the way they brought noir to new settings: the not-so-mean streets of Edinburgh, mainly.

And Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books, for the first time after years of 'meaning to get round' to them: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Artuan, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu. Wonderful evocations of growing old, being a man (or a woman) and of power they were too.

Richard Overy's The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (from May 2009) was my belated history book of the year - sharp, focused and deeply evocative of a gloomy age of apparent 'degeneration'. The courage to face the subject-matter is not the least of its victories.

I was moved by Spud Talbot-Ponsonby's Small Steps With Paws and Hooves, her account of a trek through the drovers' paths of Highlands Scotland with her horse, son and dog (not necessarily in that order). Her later death from the cancer she hoped to be recovering from on her walk make this an even more emotional journey.

And finally, there was my most revelatory 'book for pleasure': Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, published in August, which richly evokes the raised hopes and dashed dreams of the Soviet experiment. I defy you not to be moved as the Russian scientists and engineers are subjected to the slow-motion heart attack of central planning.

That's nearly it for 2010. One more tomorrow, and then I'm shutting up shop to read more books!

Crystal balls work better backwards

What can a historian bring to the analysis of current politics?

Well, a sense of proportion for one things. And even more importantly in terms of actual expertise and knowledge, a balanced understanding of how certain situations are likely to play out - especially when they've happened before.

This is the context in which I'd see the Liberal Democrats' present coalition with the Conservatives.

Ephemera such as yesterday's 'Vince Cable hates Murdoch' debacle may come and go. But the lineaments of the situation remain the same: every Liberal cohabitation with the Conservatives has ended in a split.

In the 1880s, it was the Liberal Unionists, led by Joseph Chamberlain, who left over Irish Home Rule - an idea so farsighted it might just have avoided the Irish Civil War and Partition.

In 1916-22 David Lloyd George led a 'coalition' that eventually became a Conservative government in all but name, eventually booting out the mercurial Welshman and obliterating the Liberals at the polls in the subsequent General Election.

It was the 'National' Liberals in the 1930s, who joined a Conservative-dominated coalition after the economic crisis of 1929-31. They were finally absorbed by the Tories in the 1960s.

Read your history? Then the future's pretty clear I would have thought. The Liberal Democrats' leader is so cosy with the Prime Minister that he shares takeaways and household chores with him; Liberal Democrat Ministers, despite disagreeing with most of the government's agenda, follow his lead. But the party machinery is being captured by Lib Dem leftists - the Party Presidency and Deputy Leadership, for instance - just as it was in Mr Gladstone's long struggle with the Liberal Unionists over Ireland.

The result might well be the same: acrimony, split, electoral defeat.

Vince Cable reads my blog (maybe)

Following yesterday's blog, about how the Government was steaming ahead on far too many fronts, way too fast, comes confirmation from a Deep Throat-style source: no less than the Business Secretary, Vince Cable.

Here's what he told undercover reports from the Daily Telegraph:

We are trying to do too many things, actually... Some of them are Lib Dem inspired, but a lot of it is Tory inspired. The problem is not that they are Tory inspired, but that they haven’t thought them through. We should be putting a brake on them.

So there you have it - from the horse's mouth. The fact that he now might just have to resign down to the rest of his ill-advised comments is neither here nor there. What I'd say is: if you were serving in a government that you thought hadn't 'thought through' its ideas, would you want to stay?

The risks of 'breakneck government'

Following David Davis' tasteless talk of a 'brokeback coalition' back in the summer, there was lots of chatter about the Dave and Nick love-in. Similar backgrounds; similar schooling; similar outlook.

But the Government is more 'breakneck' than 'brokeback'. Everywhere you look they're fundamentally altering the shape of British government and society.

Their Localism Bill will divest local authorities of lots of powers, and allow parish councils or groups of residents to put a stop to housing developments. Want anywhere for your kids to live? Tough.

The NHS is undergoing its most radical overhaul since its creation, giving almost all its commissioning to local GPs. Many wise old birds, including Conservatives, are shaking their heads in despair.

The 'Universal Credit' is supposed to replace all other types of benefits early in the next Parliament with a kind of 'negative income tax' withdrawing income support as you earn more. Sceptical it'll work? You bet.

Their economic policy will shrink the state more radically than any OECD austerity programme since the Second World War - over a longer period of time. Unemployment will probably peak between three and three and a half million.

Their Housing Benefit changes will make sure that people on low incomes won't be able to live anywhere near city centres, changing their character forever.

The Government is withdrawing almost all current funding for university teaching, shifting the burden onto families, graduates and (incidentally) onto a different and less visible bit of their debt book called 'loan subsidies'. Thought the 'debt society' was a thing of the past? Think again.

This also explains why Tory backbenchers are the ones doing all the muttering. They're basically concerned that this is just too much. Talk of an 'imperial clique' at the heart of government, shutting them out of any decision-making while the Lib Dems get to exercise their consciences, is growing. It's on the Conservative, not the Lib Dem benches, where we will see the Coalition's first cracks. They've already revolted a lot more than the Lib Dems.

I'll post more in the week about the implications of all this - suffice to say, this is the mother of all high-risk strategies.

One of these clouds on the horizon is going to turn into an almighty storm, far bigger than the tuition fees imbroglio. But which one?

Turnaround in The Ashes

The sudden turnaround in England's fortunes in the Ashes was stunning. One minute, they were floating along on top of the world... and then within an hour the entire logic of the series had been turned upside down as Mitchell Johnson tore through their middle order.

Now the whole series is up in the air.

The moral? Well, don't ever get too confident when you're on top.

But the whole affair set me in mind of two things. The first is the role of momentum, in sport as in life. Johnson had cracked a quickfire 62 as a batsman the night before. That seemed to puff him up and give him the confidence to go on with the ball. When you get on a roll, the seratonin and the adrenaline flow, and you bear all before you. Silly England for bowling around his ears and getting his blood up. A more controlled approach might have chilled his blood still further after his lamentable display in the First Test. The whole affair reminded me of Graham Swann and Stuart Broad's rearguard action at Headingley in 2009, when their defiance seemed to lift the team in the final Test at The Oval (which England won).

Quite a lot of the banter or 'sledging' might also make my second point. Jimmy Anderson had a word with Johnson on Thursday night; then on Friday quite a lot of words were exchanged, and not only among the players. Steve Finn made what we might call an 'assertive' gesture towards the crowd as well. But as a historian, I think we should see all this for the storm in a teacup that it is. Want aggression? What about the 'bodyline' tour of 1932-33, where the English narrowly avoided being lynched during the Third Test at Adelaide as they persisted in bowling unsportingly 'at the man'.

Conduct has usually got better since then. Age of the gentleman? Don't you believe it.

Turning to the future

So, it's all over on the higher fees front. English universities will be able to charge £9,000 a year.

Most of them will - whatever Ministers say about restricting costs. If they want universities to charge less, there'll have to take statutory powers to force costs down. Then we'll all be in the courts wrangling about education 'cartels'. Fantastic.

So now we've got to look to the future. Put aside that the new university system will be one of the worst-designed structures ever to emerge from public policy. That's gone.

What will the new world look like?

1. Teaching will become more important, but in uneven ways.

The Research Excellence Framework that will judge academics' performance in 2013 won't go away: research funding has been protected, while teaching monies have been obliterated. Champagne corks (above!) will still pop for good results in the REF. So the 'revolution in teaching quality' that David Willetts talks about is unlikely. Academics have absorbed the lesson that research is the most important thing they do for more than two decades. Turning that around immediately just isn't going to happen.

2. Private universities will open and proliferate.

Pearson has jumped in already - IBM, Microsoft and the like will probably follow. American providers such as Phoenix (online) and perhaps universities which already have UK campuses (i.e. NYU) won't be far behind. Business, publishing, marketing and law courses in more 'traditional' universities (i.e. not for profits) are going to have a lot of competition. These new providers will start off validating degrees with existing HE institutions; soon there'll open new campuses, recruit faculty, start teaching thousands of undergraduates. Pearson University, Oxford, anyone? These new entrants might help to drive down costs - but only in the medium term.

3. The fees cap will come off.

In the rather likely event of a solely Conservative administration after the next election (in May 2015), the cap on fees will come off altogether. This is what Oxford and Cambridge want; Conservative Ministers overwhelmingly went to university among 'dreaming spires', and Oxbridge VCs are the internal voice they are temperamentally inclined to listen to. Fees will rise in that case to perhaps £20,000 a year for science courses by the end of the decade. That's what the Russell Group of universities have wanted all along - £16,000 a year was bandied about in this round alone. That's what they'll eventually get. Fancy £80,000 for a Chemistry degree? Come off it.

4. Students will become more demanding - and frustrated.

Ministers have now adopted, nearly wholesale, the concept and discourse of universities as 'sellers' or 'providers', and students as 'consumers'. They're not, by the way - they're citizens engaged in the collective search for truth (if that's not too highfallutin'). But young people will increasingly bend this language to their own ends, just as left-wing campaigners drew on 'consumerist' modes to campaign against government in the 1960s. Expect to see a lot more on-campus conflict - occupations, sit-ins, complaints, confrontations - as this rhetoric collides with reality.

A baleful prospect.

Welcome to your future!