The more politicians talk of change, the more things stay the same

The Scottish Government’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation sounds courageous. It may not be a statement of intent, but just getting a little bit ahead of what will inevitably happen. Scotland’s economy is already transforming to meet the challenges of decarbonisation.

There seem to be two currents motivating change just now. It is increasingly fashionable to claim we are in a post-growth world. The strategy will probably not go that far. It will, though, try to sidestep expenditure-based measures of the size of the economy, preferring instead to use general language about building a wellbeing economy.

At the same time, there is talk of global investments of up to $100 trillion being made to tackle climate change. Crudely, that means that about half of all investments over the next 10 years will be in climate change-reducing technologies. That is large enough to require government leadership, but not yet overwhelming. How we talk about the economy will be important in the Scottish Government’s strategy. There’s a simple advantage to adding up all the expenditure in an economy to generate a measure of national income, and then working out a desired investment rate – there is only one dimension to measure. The underlying assumption is that spending is tied to wellbeing.

Everyone knows that is a simplification, and no more than a useful starting point, but it depends on accounting data, and it can easily be abused. The economy is not just a matter of numbers, but the backdrop to people coming together, and, hopefully, living fulfilled lives.

The Scottish Government’s alternative to single-number measures is embedded in the National Performance Framework. Drawing on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, this recognises that many factors contribute to wellbeing. Some of them probably cannot be measured in any way, and so there is no way of coming up with numbers to measure wellbeing. Instead, we need to make do with score cards, which allow us to paint a picture of how the economy, and society, is changing.

Many of the most important factors determining people’s wellbeing are largely beyond the reach of government. Humans are social animals, so it is unsurprising that good health, and strong friendships are generally recognised as being among the most important components to people’s sense of wellbeing.

In the area where economics might be expected to have most purchase, workplaces engender a sense of belonging, and even of purpose and identity. They allow for problem solving, and the practise of skills. We can think of work as structured social interactions, in which the economic components, like production, costs, income, and profits, scarcely appear.

The challenge for the Scottish Government, in framing its strategy, is to decide how to bring together narrow economic and broad social narratives so that there is a clear narrative about what will change, and how it will change.

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This does not start with a blank sheet of paper, but instead is building on four previous strategies, the last three of which were set out by an SNP government. Even without Sir Humphrey in the room, there are good reasons to expect substantial continuities between previous and future policies.

THE bold promise of transformation seems likely to end up with the adoption of a well-worn template. To some extent, this template emerged the platform on which Harold Wilson won election in 1964.

Thatcher developed a right-wing version of it, which placed much more emphasis on individual accountability than government leadership. New Labour repeatedly won elections by building on those earlier versions, with government as an enabler. Last week, the Chancellor seemed to be making a claim to be the “heir to Blair” in his Budget.

This template normalises paid work. It starts from the learner journey through life, in which people will need access to education and training repeatedly as their careers change. It then links skills acquisition to the importance of increasing labour productivity – and wages.

It concludes by asserting that the country needs to have more imaginative problem solvers, who will form organisations which address social and economic needs, including decarbonisation, and in the process create new well-paid, secure employment for the highly skilled, highly productive workforce.

At that level of generality, there is nothing to which any of the major parties in the UK would take exception. The Conservative version comes with added Brexit and “levelling up”. Without borrowing the term, the Scottish Government will probably produce something similar, in which it talks about economic growth having to be distributed across the country.

The effectiveness of this template, with political parties which adopt it repeatedly winning elections, demonstrates its popular resonance, but also indicates deep-seated nature of some of the perceived problems of British society.

The fictional Sir Humphrey would be delighted were that the summit of the Scottish Government’s ambition. He would happily allow his minister to use words like “transformational”. Its familiarity allows the civil service to continue quietly administering the country.

Only the description is novel.

Even as nothing changes, politicians can declare that everything is changing.