Andy Beckett's Blog, page 25
November 8, 2015
The economics of scale: how housing became Britain’s biggest political issue | Andy Beckett
Postwar policy has given way to a property price spiral that has separated communities like a great social centrifuge
How much domestic space do you need for a decent life? It’s a deeply political question – as political as how much money you need for a decent life – but we rarely see it as such. The distribution of living space in our crowded country, and how it changes over time, and why, is both too everyday an indicator of the balance of power between social groups for us to notice and such a fundamental one that we avoid thinking about it too much. It’s the class system hiding in plain sight.
Related: London house buyers camp overnight for chance to buy £199,000 studio
Related: If we don't want to live in shoeboxes, we need to bring back housing standards | Owen Hatherley
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October 23, 2015
No Such Thing As a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy by Linsey McGoey – review
Ten years ago, when the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates was midway through his startling metamorphosis from monopolistic software magnate to possibly the world’s most admired philanthropist, he made a speech declaring that the traditional American high school was “obsolete”. Instead, his hugely generous charitable foundation invested $2bn in new, smaller schools for nearly 800,000 pupils.
But within a few years, in 2008, the funding abruptly stopped. Some of the schools had to close. Three years on, in one of his carefully rationed newspaper interviews, Gates explained: “The overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about – whether [pupils] go to college – it didn’t move the needle much … We didn’t see a path to having a big impact, so we did a mea culpa on that.”
Continue reading...October 9, 2015
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, Volume Two: Everything She Wants by Charles Moore – review
A few major revelations, some lapses into Tory triumphalism, and something still missing – an insider’s portrait of a prime minister in her pomp
Is Charles Moore a lucky biographer? Britain’s best-connected rightwing journalist has been working on his study of modern Britain’s most relentless rightwing politician for 18 years so far. He has published more than 1,700 pages, an intended two volumes have become an intended three, and he still has a quarter of a century of her workaholic life to go. With political biographies becoming shorter and scarcer in a country that increasingly dislikes politicians, this could be one of the last big commissions.
When, in 2013, the first instalment, Not for Turning, came out, shortly after Margaret Thatcher’s death, as she and Moore had agreed it would, it was helped by the political situation in Britain. The economy was struggling; the coalition was unpopular and it seemed possible that David Cameron’s days were numbered – the parallels were there with the often beleaguered first Thatcher premiership, which Moore’s book covered at length.
Continue reading...September 17, 2015
Good (PMQ), bad (national anthem) and ugly (dress sense) of Jeremy Corbyn's first week – Politics Weekly podcast
September 13, 2015
Toxteth, 1981: the summer Liverpool burned – by the rioter and economist on opposite sides
In an extract from his new book, Andy Beckett gets an extraordinary insight into the 1981 Toxteth riots – from the Liverpool-based economist advising Margaret Thatcher’s government, and a rioter enraged by their controversial policies
For much of the postwar period, Britain imported more than it exported. The resulting trade deficits were widely seen as a sign of approaching economic doom; that a once-great trading and manufacturing nation could no longer make its way in the world.
In 1980, this pattern went into reverse. That year, and in 1981 and 1982, there was a rare British trade surplus in goods. Yet the economic commodity most valued by Margaret Thatcher’s often struggling first government was still an import. It was not an industrial product, but something much more modern; an intellectual product, a theory – monetarism.
It was like having a case study on your doorstep. You had to be a bit careful, but in many ways it was very instructive
Liverpool’s a funny place. There was this feeling: ‘He may be in the enemy team, but at least he’s in Liverpool!'
In the car, one of the policemen had been making threatening faces and saying things – I was scared absolutely shitless
We’d set cars alight. We wanted to clear the street. You don’t do that by asking politely ...
Related: Toxteth then and now: photographs of a bygone Liverpool
Continue reading...August 27, 2015
How we all became Thatcherites | Andy Beckett
Even on the left, Conservative values are subtly entrenched. To change this will require a decade of defiance
Last month I had an abrupt conversation with a leftwinger I know about the result of this year’s general election and what would follow. A northerner, she works for the NHS and has a usually unshakeable contempt for the Conservatives. I was talking optimistically about their skimpy 36.9% share of the vote, and how it did not really constitute an electoral mandate, when she cut me off: “Look Andy, they won.” A few minutes later she mentioned that many of her colleagues were planning to leave the NHS and take their expertise private. She said she might do likewise.
One crucial sign of the success, or otherwise, of this Conservative government will be the accommodations people on the left make with it. For much of 2010 to 2015 the coalition seemed too fragile for many non-Tories to see its radical shrinking of the state as permanent. There was a widespread sense of people holding their breath until the coalition’s inevitable disintegration. But this May’s Conservative win, and the seemingly strong chance they have of another in 2020 – with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and the coming review of constituency boundaries helping to entrench them in power – mean that over the next decade leftwing Britons will have to choose between rejecting and accepting a new political, economic and social landscape.
Related: The right to buy: the housing crisis that Thatcher built
It has been written out of history – but Britons far outside usual Tory circles became Thatcherites, consciously or not
There is something of the GLC’s rebelliousness and contempt for conventional political wisdom in Corbyn’s campaign
Continue reading...August 26, 2015
The right to buy: the housing crisis that Thatcher built
In August 1980 Margaret Thatcher’s first government, barely a year old but already deeply unpopular and bogged down by problems, produced a Housing Act. Even more than most legislation it was prolix and repetitive, but its bold intention stood out: “to give ... the right to buy their homes ... to tenants of local authorities”. It envisaged a revolution in how a large minority of Britons lived.
That revolution – which David Cameron’s government controversially hopes to revive by extending the right to buy to housing association tenants – had been an awfully long time coming. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, cleverly sown by the Conservatives in 1980 and doggedly cultivated by rightwing Britain ever since, selling off council homes was not a sudden stroke of genius by the Thatcher government. The idea was as old as council housing itself.
Related: Tory right-to-buy plan threatens mass selloff of council homes
Related: Right to buy: how will it work?
Continue reading...July 17, 2015
Is Foxtons the estate agent London deserves? - Podcast
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June 16, 2015
Is Foxtons the estate agent London deserves? | Andy Beckett
Even in the cut-throat world of the capital’s property market, Foxtons is notoriously aggressive – and successful. Is that why so many people are secretly glad when it turns up on their street?
From the street, the Foxtons in Brixton in south London, like the estate agent’s other 55 branches, is almost all glass. Two great floor-to-ceiling windows, separated by a slender pillar, reveal a trademark Foxtons interior, unlike those of other estate agents: all pale, smooth surfaces, very bright lighting and very little furniture. There is a reception desk, a fridge of drinks for customers, a few clusters of modular white tables and chairs of the kind you might find in a loft apartment that was not quite as cool as it thought it was, and a couple of low display cases containing photos of two dozen properties for sale and for let. An unremarkable one-bedroom flat in a plain street nearby is offered at “£346.15 per week, £2,077 deposit + £420 (inc VAT) admin fee*”. The advertisement does not explain the asterisk.
The Brixton Foxtons has been open for two years, glowing like an alien spacecraft, seven days a week and deep into the evenings, among the takeaways and bus stops and bargain clothes shops of Brixton Road. Parts of this area have been gentrifying for decades, but during the branch’s first month, someone scrawled “Yuck” on its windows. During the second, someone painted “Yuppies Out!” In April 2013, after a street party nearby to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher, someone threw red paint all over the facade. Later the same month, Foxtons temporarily hired security guards to prevent demonstrators campaigning against high rents and letting fees from entering the branch.
Each time Foxtons moves into a new area the character and status of that place seems to alter
Telling people you’re an estate agent is bad enough, but telling people you work for Foxtons is a double blow
When a scruffy Hackney terrace will sell with a note stuck in the window, the Foxtons model may not be sustainable
Continue reading...May 8, 2015
Lynton Crosby: the man who really won the election for the Tories
There were several critics from within the Conservative party of how the secretive Australian was masterminding their campaign. Not any more
“At its absolute simplest, a campaign is simply finding out who will decide the outcome … where are they, what matters to them, and how do you reach them?” Eighteen months ago, in a bland meeting room in Mayfair in central London, the Conservatives’ expensive, controversial, now extravagantly vindicated, hired election strategist Lynton Crosby offered this advice at a rare public masterclass, for the Patchwork Foundation, an independent political charity.
The usually secretive Australian’s hour-long talk is on YouTube; but fewer than 2,000 people have watched it. Other excerpts to which non-Tories might profitably have paid more attention include: “Tone is very important when you’re executing a negative campaign … Be clear and contrasting”; and, “Ignore most of the opinion polls that you see in the newspapers, because they are so simplistic.”
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