A Roman Conspiracy

This weekend I finally threw away my t-shirt from the 2010 Conservative Party Manifesto launch. It was not a political statement. I did not throw it away in disgust at the state of the country, and I still have my copy of the Party Manifesto perched on the shelf between Niall Ferguson’s Empire and Will Hutton’s Them and Us.

I liked the shirt, a lovely soft blue, but it was simply uncomfortable. In fact, I could not bear wearing it, with stiff plastic letters emblazoned across the chest in the shape of Great Britain proclaiming, “We’re all in this together”. Frankly, it did not make me feel any better to know that the whole country was banding together with a stiff upper lip, bravely to take whatever fiscal retrenchment the Treasury sent our way.

In the same way, it does not make it any easier to suffer through a Saturday morning hangover to know that all my mates’ heads are pounding just as much as my own. And I am not going to wear a shirt with a stiff plastic front carrying a comfortless catchphrase, blaring into my eyes on a Saturday morning before breakfast.

Perhaps it is time for a new catchphrase, time to reinvigorate the Coalition’s approach to government.

Whilst browsing my bookshelf last night, I came across a passage in Sallust’s Bellum Catalinae peculiarly reminiscent of the Conservative party slogan on the t-shirt I had just discarded. With rough hands I transcribe it here:

Causam civium cum servis communicavimus.

“We have shared the affairs of state with our servants.”

Not only is this less ominously Orwellian than “Together in the national interest”, the current manifestation of Cleggeronian inspiration, but Sallust’s slogan is simply catchier. The staccato alliteration and the final metrical flourish are exactly the kind of rhetoric we should expect from a strong leader and a strong government serving the national interest.

It is also a much more frank and accurate assessment of Coalition politics. With no small reluctance, the Conservatives have shared the duties of government with the Liberal Democrats. But there is no doubt who is really in charge.

I tried out the Sallust slogan at lunch, and the lively conversation at my table promptly went dead. One friend seemed to think it was “accurate in relation to the general mood of the nation” but she was generally dissatisfied with the whole idea. Well, that is one way to silence a crowd. Maybe Cameron should bring his Loeb to the despatch box and start quoting Sallust during Prime Minister’s Questions to silence the opposition benches. I doubt Miliband Minor can muster a mouthful of Marx in the original German to retort.

The full quotation tickles even more when read in the context of the Coalition:

Opibus coniurationis fretus simul alienum suis rationibus existumans videri causam civium cum servis fugitivis communicavisse.

“At the same time as he [Cataline] was relying on the strength of the conspiracy, he decided that it was inconsistent with his principles to appear to have shared a matter of state with runaway slaves.”

The Lib Dems probably would not like to be compared to runaway slaves, but some Cabinet members certainly have been trying to run away with this government, pursuing “fairness” whilst ignoring unintended consequences.

I point you to the Business Secretary’s now abandoned proposal for a graduate tax, an additional, progressive income tax on every graduate of a British university. Consider two graduates who have gone to the same university and done the same course. One does well for himself, while the other does not. Why should the first pay a toll for his own success in order to subsidise the other’s failure?

Before gaining practical experience, a university degree is the best qualification that most young people have. Perhaps we do want to encourage more young people to volunteer their time for good causes – that is what the Big Society is all about – but do we really want to discourage the best qualified members of our society from being productive and contributing to the common weal as well?

Sullust contemplating the cuts

Vince Cable caved in to pressure from backbench MPs and stuck the graduate tax plan in the bin in mid-October, labelling it “unfair”. Although fairness seems to be the elusive catchword of the day down in Westminster, no one can agree on what it means, neither on Government nor opposition benches. What kind of a measuring stick is that?

Rather than ignoring unintended consequences, we need to focus on the incentives that government policies generate. This country is facing massive challenges, not all of them fiscal. Whether encouraging high achievement in education, reducing the rate of criminal reoffending, or determining Britain’s place in the world, we have to get the incentives right. We cannot chase fairness, a vague and indeterminate ideal. We need practical solutions to practical problems.

Think of some of the practical consequences of introducing tuition fees. In an oversubscribed and underfunded university system, demand for Mickey Mouse courses will decline. University is not the right place for everyone. Young people will start to seek out substitutes for an expensive and time-consuming university course. Training programmes and apprenticeships will rise in both popularity and prestige. Polytechnics will come back, and Britain might see its first liberal arts college. Alumni will donate to fund scholarships, giving the same opportunity to study at a great university to the next generation.

Allow me to draw an illustration from Switzerland, which has a highly qualified workforce in the services and high tech manufacturing industries. To qualify to be an accountant in Switzerland, you have two choices. You can do a full university course, or you can do an apprenticeship from age sixteen. By the age of twenty six, the apprentice holds full professional board qualifications and has had ten years of industry experience. On the other hand, the graduate with a BA and a Masters has little experience and struggles to find a job in a competitive labour market. The apprentice garners just as much professional esteem from his colleagues as the graduate, and is undeniably more experienced.

No one will deny the unique value of studying at our university, in both humanities and sciences, but this country has a raft of young people who would be better served by pursuing a different route.

Let us return to the Coalition government. Thankfully, the Catalinarian analogy has its limits. The Coalition is not a conspiracy, and it is not just the Lib Dems who are servants. As Prime Minister, David Cameron is the First Servant to the country that elected him. He has formed a government to carry out the will of a public who did not see fit to grant a majority government to any party.

To fulfil that duty, we cannot just sling trite catchphrases at each other across the despatch box. We need confident backbenchers and a strong Opposition to hold this Government to account. And with their help, by and large, this Coalition is getting it right.