Abstract
Anthony Giddens’ writing over the years has moved from the world-ranked theoretical scholarship of its initial phase to, what Jeffrey Alexander (1997) called, the ‘Giddens-lite’ of the middle period, and to his most recent phase as party political public intellectual and architect and continuing supporter of New Labour's ‘Third Way’.
Over to You, Mr Brown is the latest volume in Gidden's current party political mode. Addressed to Mr Brown, and written before he was elected leader and became prime minister, the book is a call for the new leader ‘to reinvigorate’ and ‘thoroughly refurbish’ the party.
Giddens’ thesis is that New Labour has shifted the centre of gravity of UK politics and that the basis for a ‘progressive consensus’ now exists. The centre-ground should be maintained – including further triangulation on crime and immigration. Those disaffected from politics must be won over by emphasising that the Labour Party and its leader is the only party of substance. A ‘Contract with the Future’ is outlined – a 16 point programme of policies either not accomplished or not included in New Labour's previous ten years and of government. Its not that New Labour has failed or that the Third Way project has been wrong, but there are shortcomings. ‘Justice’ must be added to the success in promoting economic growth and full employment. What Giddens wants to now see receive emphasis is a ‘new egalitarianism’, but via a continued and more effective ‘modernisation’ of health and education provision, a ‘radicalisation of the welfare state’: in fact, its replacement by a ‘social investment state’, a ‘social ensuring’ and an ‘enabling state’ – and by more personal provision. The new politics, according to Giddens, must include greater ‘choice’ and ‘voice’, be ‘life style-related’ and enshrine sustainability. All in all, there must be more ideology, greater public purpose and a stronger public sphere. As one would expect from Giddens, positive and more creative responses to globalisation and to Europe are also called for, with the continuation of an ‘active foreign policy’ (and combating international terrorism), but with a relative detachment from Bush, though not from the US.
Two sorts of questions arise about the volume. First, what does it have to recommend that is new for New Labour and on what foundation? Second, what does it indicate about the current basis and state of Giddens’ sociology?
As I have argued elsewhere (Jary, 2002; 2005), my own viewpoint on previous formulations of the Third Way and the government of New Labour is that both have more coherence and deserve more credit than they usually receive (cf. Rustin, 2007). I also have a good deal of sympathy with the general direction in which Anthony Giddens would now want to move New Labour – including his belief that Labour must now be ready to ask a number of more searching questions about aspects of modern capitalism and call for greater ‘corporate responsibility’. However, in part at least in this volume, the quality of Giddens’ argumentation and the underlying scholarship in support of his position is something of a disappointment.
One problem with the volume is that Giddens’ determination to write in an ‘accessible style’ leads him to often simply assert rather than justify what sometimes becomes little more than a ‘rag-bag’ of loosely interlinked points. He even feels the need to introduce – for example, at the head of chapters – illustrative, but often rather limp, jokes, and what seem a somewhat random selection of photographs of Brown and Blair. In terms of Alexander's terminology, at times the impression is of Giddens ‘extra-lite’. Also Giddens appears a bit starry-eyed in his reports of his visits to the White House and his hob-nobbing with celebrities. We know that Giddens has deliberately chosen a ‘public intellectual’ role and there are trade-offs in doing so. But the question must be whether, at least on this occasion, he has gauged the level of his input well. It must be doubted whether sociology will continue to gain credit from his public inputs in the way that it has previously.
Among early reviewers, Charles Clarke (2007) describes Over to You, Mr Brown as a ‘brilliant book’ and rightly points out the interest of the volume from an architect and ‘world-wide guru of the Third Way’. Kenneth Minogue (2007) on the other hand, complains of ‘vacuities’, whilst David Miliband (2007) perhaps best sums up the character of the volume in suggesting that Giddens has moved from the ‘difficult wording’ of his significant earliest work to making points that are often so basic as to obscure his more interesting thinking.
All of this said, there's not much doubt that Giddens does get close to some of the directions in which Brown appears to be going in his relatively successful first three months of responding to floods, bombs at airports, cattle disease and runs on banks, culminating in his first speech to the Labour Conference as prime minister. For Brown promoting education, mobility and the knowledge economy and movement to a ‘class free society’ remain prominent goals. ‘Putting people first’, an expanded conception of citizenship, and a new importance for the Third Sector, all central to Giddens’ proposed agenda, are also emphasised by Brown.
As would be expected there are also a number of areas where Giddens’ discussion does seem more of a fresh contribution. Amongst these is his discussion of reasons for a declining trust in politics and politicians and his positive interpretation of this – in line with his emphasis on ‘choice’ and ‘voice’ – as an opportunity for the promotion of more ‘active trust’ by means of newly available modes of ‘two-way dialogue’, eg citizen juries and forms of ‘e-democracy’. A second is a call for New Labour to advance the ‘sophisticated multiculturalism’ of Charles Taylor (1994) and Amartya Sen (2006). A third is a useful discussion of what an expanded conception of ‘public service’ might amount to.
More generally, however, novelty and depth of analysis are often lacking in Over to You, Mr Brown. If the latter at least might be forgiven in a text oriented to a lay audience, the difficulty is that it's not clear that for many of Giddens’ assertions there is, in fact, an available grounding. One illustration of this is his favourable evaluation of PFI. Maybe, as one further reviewer, Michael White (2007), suggests, Over to You, Mr Brown will ‘prove accessible and stimulating reading’ to the lay reader or to students. But I can't help feeling that Giddens’ uneven and patchily grounded volume is more likely to be found wanting in popular as well as academic terms. Unlike his previous work, including his early contribution to the doctrines of the Third Way, Giddens’ new volume – however laudable are its motives – is unlikely to stand as a particularly strong example of sociology in public sociological mode. This is not to be seen as necessarily an attack on Giddens’ Third Way project but rather it may be as much an indication of inherent difficulties in seeking to write in any accessible popular, sociological, party political public mode.