TALKING POLITICS

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David talks to the American historian Jill Lepore about the damage new technology can do to democracy, from the 1960s to the present. Who first tried to manipulate the minds of the electorate? Where did the money come from? What happened when the same technology was applied to fighting the Vietnam War? Plus we discuss US presidential elections from 1960 to 2020: do the machines really decide who is going to win, and if he does win this time, what might Joe Biden be able to do about it?

Talking Points

The Simulmatics Corporation was one of the first data analytics companies founded in 1959.

• They were collecting personal data, coming up with mathematical models for human behavior, making predictions, and selling that as a service.
• They got their big break in the 1960 election. 

Advertising was basically invented to defend corporations against muckraking journalists.

• It became something else as modern consumer society emerged.
• Eventually, some of the ad agencies began working for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the party of big business, so it’s nor surprising that they’ve always had a leg up in political advertising.

Was the Simulmatics Corporation for real?

• Their insights were not particularly startling.
• The Simulmatics Corporations were liberals who were trying to convince the Democratic Party to take a stronger position on civil rights by telling them that black voters could make a difference in the election.
• There’s something kind of creepy about the whole thing: a bunch of mid-century, white, liberal men building a machine to try to understand people of color and women.
• A tight election is good for huxters. There’s a huge, enabling industry of journalism to oversell this kind of technology.

There’s a big gap between how we understand politics should work in the physical world and the mysteriousness and anarchy of the digital world.

• Democracies are bad at reforming themselves because the winners are not incentivized to do it. 
• The monopoly today is the monopoly of the means of doing politics. 
• The pandemic makes it worse. We are now more wedded to our devices and it is harder to conduct campaigns outside of them.

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future 
• Jill’s podcast, ‘The Last Archive: Who Killed Truth?’
• Sue Halpern on the Trump campaign’s mobile app

Further Learning: 

• Jill in The New Yorker, ‘How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future’
• Our last episode with Jill on the American Nation
• Jia Tolentino for the BBC, ‘The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams’
• Evan Osnos’ profile of Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker

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This week we talk about the politics of incompetence: when does it matter and when can politicians get away with it. Have repeated u-turns during the pandemic damaged the government? Has Nicola Sturgeon had a better crisis than Boris Johnson or is it just competence theatre? Is the government's incompetence going to be enough to get Keir Starmer into Downing Street? With Helen Thompson, Chris Brooke and Chris Bickerton.

Talking Points:

Competence: does it matter? 

• What kinds of incompetence are likely to do this government the most harm?
• There have been a lot of u-turns in the policy and rules around COVID.
• Are these u-turns or is the government improvising in an unprecedented situation?
• The u-turns that do the most harm are those that are seen as a breach of trust.

The important context for u-turns in British politics is Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 speech to the Conservative Party Conference.

• Her predecessor, Ted Heath, did not stick to the manifesto line in government.
• She actually was making a u-turn in macroeconomic policy, but she had concluded that voters saw pragmatic chopping and changing as incompetence.
• The difficulty for Johnson is that there’s a general perception that the government isn’t entirely on top of things. The competence issue comes back to the surface.

The internal market bill is being published and it will apparently renege on some aspects of the withdrawal act.

• Being perceived as seeing yourself above international law is a risk for any government.
• In the context of Brexit, this is the consequence of how boxed in the Johnson government was when it came into power.

COVID has revealed big differences between Westminster and the devolved governments.

• Sturgeon in particular has pitched her government as more competent than the Johnson government.
• Critics of the SNP say that this is theatre. 
• But the handling of the pandemic may well feed into the SNP’s pitch heading into what appears to be an increasingly imminent referendum, which they are increasingly confident of winning.
• But it’s not just the pandemic; it’s also the whole Brexit process.

Can Starmer use competence as a lever? Can you win power through competence?

• The opposition is not in a great place to set the agenda. A number of very important decisions will be made in the next year or so that change the political situation.
• Don’t underestimate the power of the Conservatives to replace Johnson.
• Many of Johnson’s ministers are creatures of his politics.
• What’s interesting about Sunak is that he doesn’t quite fit that template.

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 speech to the Conservative Party Conference (‘the lady’s not for turning’)
• Scottish support for independence rises in the pandemic
• Who is Boris Johnson?

Further Learning: 

• More on the Internal Market Bill
• The Guardian’s view on the Internal Market...

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David talks to economist and author Noreena Hertz about loneliness and its impact on all our lives. How does the experience of loneliness shape contemporary democracy? What kind of politics could make us feel more connected? Can technology bring us together or is it driving us further apart? Plus we discuss the consequences of the pandemic for the future of work and the possibility of building a better world.

Loneliness has been rising among young people over recent years: 3 in 5 18-34 year olds feel lonely often or sometimes; nearly a half of 10-15 year olds.

• Lockdown has likely exacerbated these numbers.
• So much of the interaction between young people is online; parents can’t see the exclusion.

Loneliness is political as well as personal, social as well as economic.

• Exclusion and marginalisation are also forms of loneliness.
• Can loneliness bridge generational divides?
• In the pandemic, we are all sharing a negative experience—will this produce solidarity or divisions? 

What solutions do politicians provide for solidarity?

• In recent times, the left hasn’t provided a strong alternative notion of solidarity.
• The diminishment of trade unions and workplace solidarity play a part here as well. 
• What politician will speak for the lonely?

Democracy produces certain kinds of visibility and excludes others. What would it look like to be more open to the lonely?

• There is a skillset associated with inclusive democracy that we are in danger of losing.
• There are inspiring examples of participatory democracy on the local level.
• In a lonely world, representative democracy filters out the lonely.

If loneliness is the problem, and human beings are increasingly socially inept, the machines might step in.

• In Japan, robot-human interaction is widespread, especially among the elderly.
• What will increasingly intelligent robots do to our relationships with each other?

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Noreena’s book, The Lonely Century: Coming Together in a World that's Pulling Apart
• Noreena on ‘Generation K’
• The Camden Citizens’ Assembly on the climate crisis

Further Learning:

• The New York Times on how to manage loneliness
• Solitary citizens: the politics of loneliness
• More on robotic eldercare in Japan
• Our episode with Yuval Harari

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

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We revisit our interview with the economist Thomas Piketty recorded the week Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency and David and Helen ask what we have learned since. Where does Macron fit on the left/right political spectrum? What has his cult of personality done to French politics? And are we anywhere nearer knowing how to tackle the problem of inequality? The last in our series of updates from the Talking Politics archive.

Show Notes:

Why isn’t inequality having a more primary effect on our politics? 

• Are ethnic and nationalist divisions trumping class divisions?

Piketty’s research shows that nothing is pre-ordained, but it often takes a crisis to reorient politics.

• In the 20th century, war plays this role. If you take war out of it, what happens?
• Can democracies deal with inequality without a crisis? 
• Is there a democratic path to redress inequality? 

Macron relatively quickly became a politician of the centre-right.

• This shouldn’t have been a surprise. 
• What was harder to anticipate was the nature of the opposition, in particular, the Gilets Jaunes.
• Macron has become more preoccupied with the geopolitical than reforming the Eurozone.
• It’s easy to forget how contingent Macron’s rise was.

Macron’s rise blew apart the French party system. 

• The failings predated Macron, but he did inject something much more personalized into French politics.
• Macron created a movement that could win a majority in the French legislature. 
• During lockdown, however, he lost his absolute majority in the lower house because various people on the left defected.

The larger story about economic choices, especially macroeconomic choices, being taken out of the hands of democratic politics took a particular shape in France.

• Can we see Macron’s rise as an answer to France’s problems in the euro?

Has COVID moved Europe any closer to answering questions about what engenders solidarity?

• Piketty has been an advocate of quite radical institutional reforms towards a more centralised European project.
• Clearly the crisis has changed notions about common European borrowing. 
• If you have debt, what kind of political solidarity sustains that debt? 
• For there to be meaningful solidarity where debt is concerned, you need to see meaningful taxes. So far, this has not happened.
• Nor has there been any institutional reform in the last few months. That part of the Piketty project seems as far off as ever.

Mentioned in this Episode: 

• Capital in the Twenty-First Century 
• Last week’s episode with Lucia and Hans

Further Learning: 

• Piketty’s most recent book, Capital and Ideology
• Will coronavirus lead to fairer societies? Thomas Piketty explores the prospect for The Guardian
• An interview with Piketty in The Nation about the virus and his...

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This week we look at the big changes in European politics during the crisis and ask who has managed to turn it around. Is Italy now a model for crisis management? Has there been a reorientation in German politics under Merkel? Can the EU rescue fund really rescue the European project? Plus we discuss the long-term implications of big state politics for the future of Europe. With Helen Thompson, Lucia Rubinelli and Hans Kundnani.

Talking Points:

Over the summer, life—including political life—in Italy resumed some normalcy.

• There will be regional and local elections, as well as a constitutional referendum, at the end of September.
• The government now seems to be on firmer ground. This has to do with the recovery fund, and the fact that the two main parties in the coalition have decided to run together.
• The Five Star movement had previously said it would never run with another party. It is becoming a more establishment party.

Salvini’s comeback has slowed down. 

• Salvini has made several mistakes over COVID.
• The League runs the region that suffered the most during the COVID crisis. The president of that region, who is close to Salvini, is now embroiled in a corruption scandal that has to do with the process of buying PPE.

Italy has stabilized the situation domestically by excluding those who are most radical about the euro and by getting ECB and wider EU external support for Italy’s debt.

• In Germany, there is a sense that Merkel has moved quite radically on debt mutualization in the Eurozone. 
• But there’s some misunderstanding about what the recovery fund does: it doesn’t deal with the pre-2020 macro imbalances in the Eurozone. 

During the negotiations in March, Conte was hard on the EU. But once it was negotiated, the tone switched completely. 

• The debate over the conditions of accepting money from the EU is almost completely focused on whether Italy should apply to the European Stability Mechanism. 
• This doesn’t seem to translate to the recovery fund, which is surprising.
• Five Star can criticize Europe in one regard, while accepting everything else.
• But unhappiness with conditionality always reasserts itself in Italian politics because of Italy’s debt position and Eurozone fiscal rules.

There is too much focus on Merkel. 

• Merkel has embodied a broad consensus in German politics that has existed for the last 15 years. She tends to go with the flow of German public opinion.
• The shift in Germany that led to the recovery fund is an example of this: she shifted because she saw public opinion shifting.
• The big questions are: who will be Merkel’s successor? And who will be the junior partner in the coalition that successor leads?

In both Italy and Germany, there appears to be a doubling down on grand coalition politics.

• In Italy’s case, this has involved co-opting a previous anti-establishment party. In fact, Five Star is now the senior partner.
• In Germany, it’s more about keeping out anti-establishment parties.

There is a danger that the EU constrains countries from making the kind of shift toward state intervention that European governments currently want to make due to COVID.

• This could become a problem down the line.
• If EU countries were unanimous about this shift, you could imagine a remaking of the EU, but the old divides will almost certainly come back.

Mentioned in this Episode: 

• Our most recent episode with Lucia
• Our March...

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This week two conversations with the feminist theorist and writer Judith Butler: one recorded the week Trump won the presidency in 2016 and one recorded a few days ago, as his presidency (just maybe) approaches its end. We reflect on what has changed over the last four years, what has stayed the same, and whether our worst fears were realised. Plus Judith tells us what she sees when she sees Biden and what she hopes might come next. Two linked conversations about misogyny, racism, representation, empowerment, hope, rage, and the damage one man can do to democracy.

Further Learning: 

• Judith Butler: on COVID-19, the politics of non-violence, necropolitics, and social inequality
• Judith Butler for the LRB on Trump’s death drive
• ‘Judith Butler wants us to reshape our rage,’ from The New Yorker 
• Judith on performativity and Black Lives Matter
• Gender Trouble, Judith Butler
• Precarious Life, Judith Butler
• The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

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This week David and Helen talk with the historian David Kynaston about his diary of the 2016-17 season in football and in politics, when a lot happened both to the world and to his beloved Aldershot FC. It's a conversation about loyalty, identity and belonging, and about what sorts of change we can tolerate and what we can't. Plus Helen reflects on her life as a West Ham fan.

Talking Points:

For David Kynaston, football is about identity.

• We all have our personal myths.
• Continuity of space, even colours, is also important.

Football in Britain has derived a lot of meaning from the relationship between club and place.

• The continuity between location and fan base broke at some point in the 1990s, maybe earlier. 
• And then there are questions of ownership, management.

For David Kynaston, football is rooted in place; politics is not.

• Small and medium sized towns feel ‘left behind’; these places have also been left behind in the football sense. 
• But anger about the inequalities or the premier league doesn’t have a lot of political purchase. 

What is the relationship between the planning period of the 50s and 60s and Brexit voters?

• People who lived through that maybe had reasons to distrust people telling them what was best.
• There was also a coarsening of popular culture, led by Murdoch and the Sun.

Mentioned in this Episode:

• David Kynaston’s new book, Shots in the Dark
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time
• Colin Shindler’s books on Manchester United and Manchester City
• Our post-Trump episode 
• David Goodhart on somewheres and anywheres
• Liverpool’s vote and Sun readership
• The Financial Times editorial on Trump and Portland

Further Learning:

• Helen on West Ham
• Helen on coronavirus and the Premier League

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

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David and Helen talk with Diane Coyle about what the pandemic has revealed about the changing nature of work. Who is doing more of it? Who is still getting paid for it? Which jobs are not coming back? Plus we explore the impact of the digital revolution on how we get rewarded for what we do and we ask whether the big tech firms can continue to hoover up so many of the rewards. Is Jeff Bezos really worth it?

Talking Points: 

Since the post-war era, unpaid work in the home doesn’t get measured in formal economic statistics.

• At the time, people argued it would be too hard to measure.
• When women went out to work in the paid workforce, the market started growing.
• The digital revolution brought a lot of things we paid for back into the home, for example, online banking.

The pandemic has exacerbated existing social patterns and trends.

• Women are more likely to have been laid off and furloughed. The hardest hit sectors, such as hospitality and retail, employ more women. 
• All working parents have been hit hard.
• In a self-inflicted recession, the service sector has been hit hardest (instead of manufacturing).
• Key workers are not our best paid workers. Those who can work from home are, broadly speaking, more well off.

Official economic statistics are analytical and statistical constructs. 

• If we ran surveys about what households are doing, we would have measures of these things. 
• You can’t devise good policies about social care or pensions about understanding who is doing what. 
• The statistics we have were created in relation to a particular mode of economic management: Keynesian demand management. 
• We no longer think that’s a sufficient way of thinking about economic activity, or the more human issues around economic activity.   

The financial market economy today bears little relationship to the real productive economy.

• This is essentially because central banks have (intentionally or not) propped up markets with asset purchases.
• We will see a continuation of the trend since 2008 of greater asset inequality.  

What has the pandemic done to people’s economic psychology?

• Fear might make recovery harder. 
• Certain sectors like hospitality and entertainment depend on people moving from one place to another and gathering in close proximity.
• People’s expectations from the government may also have changed.

Information technologies have become part of our fundamental economic infrastructure and often these markets are dominated by only one corporation.

• After 2008, large companies like Amazon that weren’t making profit at the time still had access to huge amounts of cheap credit and could engage in share buybacks. 
• The end of people’s ability to physically go shopping has been a huge boon to Amazon in particular. Online retail doesn’t suffer like the high street.
• Right now, Amazon is seen to be providing a vital service. Does this make it less likely that policymakers will take it on?  

There may still be a shock coming, especially when the furlough scheme winds down.

• Is it too late to save the brick and mortar economy?
• If we are moving towards a more digital economy, we’ll have to rethink taxes too.

Will the pandemic take us back to an earlier version of the digital economy? Will we go back to living further apart? 

• There’s a limit to how much you can do online. 
• The shift towards urban centers took off in the 90s, before the tech revolution. It’s probably more about the shift away from manufacturing towards service-sector economies.

Mentioned in this Episode: 

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This week we go back to the first ever interview we recorded for Talking Politics, when David talked to Yuval Noah Harari in 2016 about his book Homo Deus. That conversation touched on many of the themes that we've kept coming back to in the four years since: the power of the big technology companies; the vulnerability of democracy; the deep uncertainty we all feel about the future. David reflects on what difference those four years have made to how we think about these questions now.

Talking Points:

In Homo Deus, Harari distinguishes between intelligence and consciousness.

• Intelligence is the ability to solve problems; consciousness is the ability to feel things.
• Humans use their feelings to solve problems; our intelligence is to a large extent emotional intelligence. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
• Computers have advanced in terms of intelligence but not consciousness.
• What is more important: consciousness or intelligence? This is becoming a practical, not theoretical question.

Artificial intelligence could create a new class—the useless class.

• Institutions or mechanisms might become obsolete.
• In humanist politics, the feelings of individuals are the highest authority; could algorithms know your feelings better than you do?

The idea of the individual is that you have an indivisible inner core and your task as an individual is to get away from outside forces and get in touch with your true, authentic self.

• According to Harari, this is 18th century mythology.
• Humans are dividuals: a collection of biochemical mechanisms. There is nothing beyond these mechanisms.
• In the 20th century, no one could understand these mechanisms. 
• We haven’t abandoned humanism—the rhetoric is still there—but it is under pressure.

In a long-tail world, everyone has a little bit—there’s lots of tailored, personal politics—but there’s also a huge concentration of power and wealth.

• Think of Google or Facebook: they are basically monopolies.
• Technology is not deterministic: it could still go in different ways.
• There is human pushback. 
• Voters may be right in sensing that power is shifting, but are they right about where it is going? 

In the four years since this interview, machine intelligence hasn’t hugely advanced.

• Machines are more a part of our lives, but they aren’t necessarily smarter.
• Are we becoming less intelligent as we adapt to a world increasingly dominated by machines?
• Human agency is not just under threat from machines. It’s also under threat from corporate power. Amazon is much more powerful than it was four years ago. 

Mentioned in this Episode: 

• Homo Deus
• ‘Inside Out’
• David’s review of Homo Deus
• Our episode with Brett Frischmann
• Dominic Cummings’s blog

Further Learning: 

• The Talking Politics Guide to… Facebook
• On...

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