In 2011, I wrote The Courageous State, which was a call for governments that act with purpose and confidence, not cowardice.
Fourteen years later, we still live with austerity, outsourcing and fear. I argue it's time to reclaim the language of democracy — to speak of courage, care, and common purpose.
The words we choose decide the world we live in.
Watch now — and ask yourself: Do you want a courageous state?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
In 2011, I wrote a book called 'The Courageous State'.
I remember the title being created. It was over supper one night. We'd been searching for an idea to bring together a whole series of arguments that I wanted to put into a book. And like most authors, we'd struggle to find the right language. And finding the right language is, in fact, what the whole book is, in a sense, about.
The phrase, 'The Courageous State' came out suddenly over a matter of two or three minutes. We literally morphed through a series of ideas, and there it was. This had to be the title of the book, because what I did in this book was do something which I think is really important. I compared a cowardly state, which is what I thought we had in 2011 and which I still think we have now, with the vision of the state that I wanted, which is a courageous state which tries to deliver for people.
Let's just stand back for a moment and understand why I wrote the book at the time that I did. What I'd done was witness, by then over 30 years, maybe 40 years, of the development of neoliberalism and had seen how it was already hollowing out government so that it was not delivering democracy and care in the way that I thought it should.
What I believed was that it was time to recover the language that lets us believe quite literally in government again, because the whole purpose of neoliberalism is to undermine that belief.
And of course, I wrote the book not that long after the 2008 crash, which had proved that markets cannot protect society. We'd been building up to this point. We'd been told that the market was the solution to every problem that the government and we as a society faced, and then we discovered it wasn't.
What I hoped was that in the immediate aftermath of that crash, governments would recover their nerve. And for a year or so, that looked to be the case. I was actually at the April 2009 G20 Summit in London. I was in the room with world leaders. It was an extraordinary privilege, and I just hoped that the air of confidence that they had at that moment would permeate out into the wider world.
But by 2010 in the UK, we had the Conservatives in office, and we had George Osborne talking about the need for austerity and how the state had to be put back in its box. We have never recovered.
And so I wrote the book, 'The Courageous State', to reclaim this vision of a world where government could act for the common good, where democracy could deliver governments that were anything but cowardly, and which were courageous enough to deliver for everyone in the countries that they governed, and cooperated with other governments to achieve the same goal around the world; the possibility of which was sort of hinted at in that meeting in April 2009, but which was never delivered.
We got instead a continuation of the cowardly state.
The government run by neoliberals that we had seen right from the time that Margaret Thatcher arrived in the UK and Ronald Reagan arrived in the USA.
A government that outsourced its responsibility to private companies and pretended that there was only taxpayers' money, so that money could run out on the government.
And which treated services to be supplied by government as costs into which they claimed that money was poured with no benefit arising.
And which ignored everything about rights.
These cowardly governments used language to frame the appearance of the state. They talked about things like 'tax burdens' and 'spending cuts' and 'public waste' - words that were meant to demoralise democracy.
In contrast, I envisaged a courageous state. A state that accepted its power and purpose. A state that is not constrained, but a creator of possibility within the economy and in the society which it manages. And which exists to secure fairness, well-being, and sustainability for everyone, and which would benefit everyone, whoever they were.
Courage, then, in this sense meant speaking the truth about money and capacity and talking about how government could enable people and not markets.
And language, as you can already see, matters absolutely critically to all of this. Neoliberalism won through because it used language like 'reform' when it actually meant cuts, and 'efficiency', when it actually meant layoffs, and 'freedom' when it actually meant deregulation for a few at cost to the many.
Those were the things that I was pointing out in this book, and we still need to address those problems now. We still need the new language to make care sound like strength and not weakness. We need to change how people think about the words we use.
The old language makes government sound like a problem. The old language of neoliberalism, that is.
The new language must show that it is the solution.
Old words in this sense - the neoliberal words - weaken belief in government.
Spending is treated as if it is about waste.
Deficit is treated as if it was just an accumulation of debt, when in fact it is the government injecting money into the economy to help it to function now and into the future, and accepting deposits from those with wealth to balance the cash flow if that is necessary.
And tax burden, as neoliberals call it, is nothing of the sort. It's the contribution that people are asked to make, and it's not a punishment. A contribution they're asked to make out of the money that the government has already spent on their behalf, because remember, the government spends on all our behalves.
It supplies us with education for universal benefit. It provides us with healthcare for universal benefit. It provides us with the justice system. It provides us with essential services. Everything from emptying the bins to a fire service, and on and on, and all that money is spent for our benefit. So when we pay it back, it isn't our money that we are returning. It is the government's money that it spent into the economy to deliver well-being for us.
And the old words include things like red tape, as if protection were obstruction.
New words, the ones that we need to use, are all about confidence and purpose.
We should be investing in well-being. Spending that creates real value.
We should be creating social balance sheets which measure health, security, education, and not just money, replacing, as a result, GDP is a measure of how well off we are.
We should be talking about shared contributions that recognise that tax builds the society we are all dependent upon, as well as cancelling the impact of government spending. Tax, remember, I think, is the most powerful instrument of government to shape the society in which we live, an idea I explored in another book, 'The Joy of Tax'.
And public safeguards should be the things that provide protection for people. That's not red tape. That's about ensuring that people can live safely in communities and on this planet into the future.
Language is economic policy in disguise in that case. Change the words and you change what is possible.
You talk about the government being unable to run out of money.
You talk about the fact that real limits are resources, skills, and the environment.
And you talk about the courage to use money to build well-being and not to feed scarcity and austerity.
And the household analogy must go, of course, because you should be talking about government as what it really is, the agency that protects us all and manages on all our behalves and is therefore nothing like a household because that isn't what a household does, which has a micro view of the world about just the people living within it, when government is about the well-being of everyone in a state and very often, what's beyond it.
So, you talk about services as the fabric of life. Health, education, housing, care, and security are not optional extras. They are the infrastructure of a civilised society. Describing them as spending pressures diminishes our collective purpose. Courage means naming them as rights and guaranteeing them publicly.
A courageous state is government in action. It speaks economic truth and not comforting myths. It takes responsibility rather than outsourcing. It invests for the long term and not for the next headline. It leads the transition to sustainability. It talks of government as us and not them. And when it sees a problem, it addresses it and doesn't walk away as cowardly governments do, just in the way that I described in this book, and which still happens day in, day out.
This all still matters, then. The book might be 14 years old, but if anything, the need for the arguments I made then are sharper than ever.
I didn't imagine that populism would now be as popular as it is, filling the space where trust in government has collapsed, and where cynicism has grown because the language of care has disappeared. We have to rebuild trust. We have to do so by speaking differently about government. The words we choose decide the world that we live in.
The call then is to understand that government is how we care for each other at scale. To rebuild society, we must rebuild the language of the state. Courage is at the core of that. It begins with speaking truth. And courage, expressed through government, is how we thrive together, and that's why it's important.
Do you want a courageous state?
I had a vision for it, but would you like to live in a place where the government actually believed, not just in itself, but in you and in achieving your potential?
There's a poll down below. Let us know.
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Spot on. Using the right language is crucial. Back in 1979 Lord Denning, in the opening chapter (Command of Language) of his book “The Discipline of Law” noted that “Words are the lawyer’s tools of trade”. He went on to say “The reason why words are so important is because words are the vehicle of thought. When you are working out a problem on your own – at your desk or walking home – you think in words not in symbols or numbers. When you are advising your client – in writing or by word of mouth – you must use words. There is no other means available. To do it convincingly, do it simply and clearly….”.
(By the way, Lord Denning studied mathematics at Oxford so no one can accuse him of being biased against numbers!)
Much as I despise Farage, I have to admit that he is adept when it comes to the language that he chooses. But right language does not belong exclusively to right wing politicians. It is down to all of us who oppose Farage and the far right to speak ‘simply and clearly”. Too often politicians talk a form of meaningless middle management language that is devoid of vision or clarity. I watched BBC Question Time last night (a programme that should be humanely put down asap) and was heartened by Zack Polanski’s performance which stood out from the rest of the panel. Judging by the response of the audience in Shrewsbury, when talking about immigration, it was clear to me that the public are beginning to tire of the right wing agenda towards migrants so now is the time to shout from the roof tops that we, the people, demand a courageous, caring and inclusive state and an end to the politics of despair and division.
KUTGW.
Thanks
I will watch on catch up
QT does not mix with being up by around 6
So correct to make this point. We appear to now live in a “depreciative” state. Nigel Farage, for example, hardly seems able to go through a day without attacking somebody. This week he was having a go at UK teachers as you’ve already commented in a previous post. We ought to call him “Slagger” Farage until he starts coming up with some positive and caring policies.
100% right Richard. We need a new narrative to replace the current neoliberal narrative. I think George Monbiot in the Invisible Doctrine describes it well using the “Restoration Story” approach – which the neoliberals use effectively as you describe (arguably most effectively in Nazi Germany). I particularly liked his description of how John Maynard Keynes changed that Restoration Story into:
“Disorder afflicts the land, caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of the economic elite, who have captured the world’s wealth. But the hero of the story, the enabling state, supported by working and middle-class people, will contest this disorder. It will fight those powerful forces by redistributing wealth and, through spending public money on public goods and services, will generate income and jobs, restoring harmony to the land.“
Thanks
Then there’s the cowardly state, ruled by that famous Thatcher 1988 lie, “you can’t buck the markets”.
I applaud your books, Richard, and the fact they remain prescient, pertinent and perceptive.
By way of contrast, I note the intellectual shallowness of the right, the lack of scholarship, the preference for prejudice and the mean-spiritedness of their outcomes. But perhaps they too are merely waiting for right titles? I have a few suggestions…
– Gilts without Guilt: a new ethics for oligarchy
– Unconscious Thinking and the Refuge from Wokeism
– The Preservation of Privilege
– She Lives! : Thatcherism for the Future Era
– Commanding Common Sense: a leader’s guide
– The Science of Over-Consuming
– Holidays as Lifestyle
– Over-thinking the Socialist Menace
– etc
Inspiring, eh?
Now make me some…
Courage is needed in realising just how bad things really are?
There is still a tendency for human beings to believe in things that are no longer there, that no longer work because essentially that is what makes humans tick – believing in what is good – the possibility of what is ‘good’? We are drawn to this I think as a species because essentially we do have a co-operative spirit – not just a sense of self – we do have a sense of ‘the other’. It is a form of positivism that can be turned into a negative like Farage and May have done and has even been denied by people like Hayek and Rand.
But we have a tendency to cling to what we believe, and in doing so, we cannot more finely calibrate our efforts to defend what we are losing, or have lost, enough to win the argument.
Now, it is easy for me to say this as a working stiff with a full time job and kids to support who dabbles in these things really compared to Richard’s exertions. And although this post may seem critical of those who have been working at this full time, I can assure you that it is not. All I am doing is my usual thing really, acting as ‘plant’ to put in observations and POV which help to refine the critiques put forward to others with the skills and time.
But for all the critiquing, there is no doubt in my mind that we are in a period of ‘doubling down’ of Thatcherism, Neo-liberalism, market fundamentalism. This is the real rebound of 2008.
The raping capitalism that we have – and I think the word is apt – held its breath then and the world blinked first and let them get away with it. Since then, all they have done is press home their advantage. Because they know its going to happen again. And again.
To sum up, I think that the extreme wealth we have allowed to be enabled sees itself in terms of survival. And in order to survive the rest of us don’t mean anything. Extreme wealth – pleonexic as it is – has decoupled from reality and humanity.
The answer to that I’m afraid may not be endless critiquing.
But until we have answers nothing else can replace what we have
But you and others have provided the answers Richard. They’ve been refined here and elsewhere.
Over and over again. And over again – just for emphasis.
The answers are there.
No – what is happening is PREVENTION. Not ‘no answers’.
Maybe…
And meanwhile the answers are getting better.
‘Courageous State ‘- seems a very good way to frame it.
It is obviously no accident but very depressing that over subsequent years ‘spending’ still means ‘waste’, ‘investment’ is actually often asset stripping or subsidising big business, ‘tax’ means ‘taking what’s rightly yours’ etc etc.
There so much power and vested interest promulgating this stuff – with BBC fully embedded. Doesn’t seem that social media – is enabling a push back. If anything, making it worse.
Polanski seems the only leading politician prepared to frame things differently – but the system will probably find a way to do a Corbyn on him.
He understands the power of language and narrative
I didn’t think Polanski did that well last night on QT. Was disappointed the audience wasn’t more responsive with what he had to say.
I respectfully disagree with Margaret. You have to look at QT in context. Polanski was on a panel with a deeply rude member of Reform who constantly interrupted, a Tory MP, a right of centre Labour MP and a right wing journalist from the Torygraph. Fiona Bruce was weak (deliberately?) as chair. In that context he performed well. As a west midlander by birth and upbringing I was surprised at how positive the Shrewsbury audience were. I never expected the good residents of that lovely historic market town deep in the heart of Shropshire to be so welcoming of migrants. And it served Jenrick (a pound shop Enoch Powell if ever there was one) right for the nonsense he spouted about Handsworth
The real questions are how and why had the BBC transformed a once proud programme into a propaganda outlet for the right in general and Reform in particular? I resent paying my licence fee whilst this apology for a political programme is still on air.
Thanks
New balance sheets, exactly. As a result of being introduced to Steve Keen’s rebel economics course I started to look into how the concept of Real Capital (seen as stocks) could be used to quantify things that economists (focussed on flows) tend to ignore.
You have taken up the idea of the six capitals earlier, so I guess we are thinking on the same lines. If readers of your blog are up to help, for the evaluation approach I am lacking the mathematical skills, but anyone is welcome! I have come some of the way, I feel A potted version is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/real-capital-138334817
Thanks
Courageous State, like Entreprenurial State are both good books and should be widely read.
They are still relevant.
I voted not for Courageous but Cooperative. The latter was not defined but I do like the idea of people running their own affairs locally with a healthy independence from an all powerful centralised state.
It seems to me we need a Courageous State though to improve the mess that neoliberalism has created but ultimately I do think that the state ought allow local democracy & local communities and organisations to have much more of a role with the highly centralised state doing less but making sure what is relinquished by the state is adequately funded and transferred with care.
A big ask. I wonder whether the people leading a courageous state would ever willingly relinquish the power, funds etc to enable local people to run their own affairs.
Plato’s Guardians?
Thank you.
And to everyone who has voted.