Martin Wolf, the long-standing chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, had a meltdown of sorts in his latest column, which as shown above is titled We must fund oppositions properly to save democracy. Because Wolf has been at this game for decades, he is able to maintain a veneer of reasonableness in presenting yet another “save democracy” scheme. Those pretty much without exception are anti-democratic. This piece is true to form. Their purpose is to prevent a populist presumed rabble from taking over, or as a fallback, to domesticate them sufficiently so that they don’t represent too much of a threat to elites, particularly of the professional-managerial class sort. Wolf’s notions are so obviously self-contradictory, and his distaste for what was once called the masses so evident that his piece is a train wreck, the written analogue to a decoration horrorshow that interior designers would label “tragic”.
We’ve both cited and criticized Wolf over the years. He has penned many fine and informative columns. But too often, he has advocated wrong-headed orthodoxies, sometime a bit too obviously to curry favor, such as backing Bernanke’s bogus “savings glut” theory of the crisis, which conveniently exculpates the Fed.
Before we turn to Wolf’s seizure-in-the-form-of-an-article at the prospect of the knuckle-draggers getting even more power, note how he omits how we got here. The ultimate cause is neoliberalism’s success in shifting from an economic model that tried to achieve rising real wages as its measure of success, and one that shifted to rising asset prices as the priority, and used easier access to debt, particularly consumer debt, to bolster consumption so as to avoid pressure to share the benefits of productivity gains with workers. That has produced an explosion in concentration of wealth at the top and the shift towards more open oligarchy.
The part that Wolf and his ilk did not anticipate was that the best defense of the old technical-managerial elite was having sufficient concern for the welfare and pay levels of the lower orders and making sure a socially-stabilizing level of policies were put in place. Remember, this is not just for long-term survival but also competitiveness. Stronger social safety nets and government support allow for higher levels of real prosperity. Think for instance of how much employees pay is wasted on US health industry grifting. That cost savings could be shared between industry and workers, resulting in more competitiveness.
Again this is a crude generalization, but many in the professional-managerial class were happy with the way skyrocketing pay at the very top lifted their boats. They ignored that rising inequality created precarity for all but heavyweight capitalists (as we are seeing now with the collateral damage from the DOGE slash-and-burn operation).
Consider one episode of this history: the savage and successful establishment campaigns against Sanders and Corbyn. As we chronicled at the time, virtually all US polls showed that Sanders would beat Trump, polling 10 to 20 points better than Hillary in 1:1 matches. And importantly for the Wolf and Co. hysteria about populists, Sanders and social democrats generally are not hostile to having elite experts inform policy. Their priority is a fairer sharing of the economic pie, and the people they threatened most were the top wealthy, as opposed to top technocrats. I cannot speak with the same confidence about whether a Corbyn win would have checked the UK far right (the question about Corbyn was that he had only been a backbencher and might have faceplanted as party leader) but it seems highly improbable that he could have been worse than Starmer.
Now let’s turn to the bizarre Wolf offering. Its opener:
Boris Johnson won the Brexit campaign and a general election not because he knew how to govern, but because he knew how to entertain. If the present government fails, will the successor be a better government or a populist entertainment? My bet is on the latter, with possibly devastating long-term results, as is now the case in the US…
The Starmer administration has good intentions. But it was woefully unprepared for government. Part of the explanation has been such a lengthy period in opposition. The government is inevitably very inexperienced, as was also true in 1997 and 2010. But there is a further constraint: oppositions are chronically underfunded. They are supported not as governments in waiting, but as small private organisations trying to win elections.
Huh? UK readers can correct me, but the Government historically had a remedy to this problem, which was a highly professional civil service. My impression is that its quality has eroded seriously over time. The first blow was the deregulation of UK financial market in the 1980s, which led to both a big rise in pay levels along with employment. That led to a brain drain , not just from government service, but also science and research. I am not anywhere as clear on the second component, and hope British readers will fill in the gaps, but I have the impression that there was also deliberate hollowing-out of the civil service, starting in the 1990s. I don’t have the older history, but comments to the article described recent purges. For instance:
Emalyom
Martin, the role of public servants is to guide a new ruling party. The problem is that the last bout of conservatives tore the rulebook; first through the unelected cummings et al, then through Truss’ farcical stint, firing many career public servants.
The current system works just fine, as long as public servants are never fired for ideological reasons (this should be somehow codified)
Other readers made similar points, that better pay levels in civil service would be a simpler solution:
M from Milan
Make civil service a more attractive career, with prestige and better money. There is plenty of interesting and significant work that calls for intelligent young people to do, especially if they want to influence policy and make positive contributions.
Instead, they are misled into thinking—and tempted by the bounty—of “effective altruism”.
Better paid MPs (and more/better staffers) would help:
Psi
This misses one of the most important point, lack of policy development is one thing but the quality of politicians is significantly worse than they were historically. What we should also be concerned with is fixing the incentives about entering politics. Properly functioning (and funded) MPs offices, MPs paid properly, proper exit support. Many of these things have deteriorated over the years and the quality of MPs has dropped along with it.
But let’s turn now to Wolf’s desperate measures:
This is not a critique of democracy per se. Yes, it has many failings. But none of them is as great as those of despotism. Yet we have to recognise that oppositions need a great deal of help if they are to prepare themselves for the tasks they may face….
What is needed then is large-scale public support in keeping with the reality that a political party is a core institution of government. Its vitality is a public good. Even parties one does not agree with are part of that good, because healthy competition is what democracy is about.
There are two risks with relying on private money: insufficient resources and corruption. The former would be smaller if British think-tanks had the resources of US ones. But they do not and never will. Moreover, the priorities of the think-tanks depend on those of wealthy and powerful donors. These may be in line with the true priorities. But that cannot be guaranteed.
So, we should create funding for the opposition on a scale sufficient to invent and create policy, and work out many of the problems of implementation, prior to coming into power. This would improve the quality of public debate and governance, thereby making our democracy more effective. Today, support is just too limited. Thus, financial assistance to opposition parties “to carry out their parliamentary business” in the House of Commons (so-called “Short Money”) was set at only £11.1mn for all opposition parties for 2024-25, with Labour getting just £6.8mn. Opposition parties may also have access to civil servants in the run-up to an election. But that, too, is not enough.
I can see three possible improvements. One is to create a department of the opposition staffed by civil servants and outside experts, designed to help the opposition formulate its proposals. An objection is that this would undermine civil service impartiality. It is also unclear what to do with multiple opposition parties. A second possibility would be publicly funded party think-tanks, as in Germany, with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and others. The third would be to fund parties to commission research and policy development on a large scale.
Hopefully German readers will sanity-check as to whether these “publicly funded party think-tanks” seem to generate better policy proposals and are seen as meaningful forces. And how does one prevent the likes of McKinsey muscling its way into this research by being willing to do it on a pro-bono or severely discounted basis? I saw shortly McKinsey proudly discussing the work it had done pro-bono for the US Treasury after the crisis,. It was not hard to see that they were keen to promote the idea that they now had an inside track and could thus better advise financial services industry clients (even before getting to the fact that they would be advocating for industry interests rather than the benefit of the broader public).
Wolf reminded readers that he had previously advocated for citizens’ assemblies to provide input. Some pink paper readers saluted that idea, while one reader said his experience with them in California was dreadful (the caliber of the discussions was poor and there was a lack of convergence on what to do). One also might recall this this sort of channeled populism can lead to unexpected outcomes; one of the steps on the road to the French Revolution was when the King asked representatives of each of the three Estates to list their grievances via cahiers de doléances. In other word, having voters crystalize their views on what is wrong may not be stabilizing, as Wolf seems to believe.
Needless to say, a preponderance of Financial Times readers comments derided the anti-populist tone as well as the patently weird idea that government employees should be helping parties currently in opposition formulate policies. A few reactions:
Daniel 21
Is this an April Fool’s piece? Incorporate the “opposition” into the state? JD Vance’s Munich speech seems to provoked an allergic reaction to democracy.
A bloke at work
I find this argument out of date and naive. If we have learned anything from Brexit, Trump or any other populist argument it is that “facts” hardly seem to matter any more, and the more they appear to come from “experts” the less they are listened to. Sure we could invest in the ‘machinery’ to maintain the balance…but who will listen to it. Both sides of Brexit “knew what they wanted to believe”. Same in the US. What we are living through now is a fundamental issue of democracy meeting polarised social media. I have no idea how you solve for that. Politicians live for votes. Popular ideas (vs. Economically or ecologically sensible ones) get votes.
YourNextAIBot
OMG, what have I just read?
Who are we to fund, Mr. Wolf?
Tories which just caused damages to the tune of £100bn+ GDP yearly (regardless of being well-funded), or
Reform which CEO (yes, CEO!) has been eating d**** on national TV because they paid him to do that?
Seriously, I like reading your articles, but this is daily-mail-worthy.
In other words, this Martin Wolf column is part of the accumulating evidence of desperation among the current ruling classes in the UK and Europe. And these reactions don’t seem simply to reflect fear of a loss of power, but the loss of legitimacy.