The Case for an Office for Empathy
“I’m interested in how we can help promote understanding between the machinery of government and the citizens and communities they should serve.”
Dr Hugh Ellis
What would happen if central government was actually helpful in meeting the needs of our diverse communities? I ask this question not out of anger but out of genuine curiosity. But the answer does matter because while a great deal of the disaffection with national politics is cynically manufactured by the populists on social media, it builds on a feeling many people have that Government neither cares nor listens. And that, in turn, does reflect a reality for countless communities across our nation.
In thinking about how we can do better, two bits of context might be useful. First, I’m writing this from Derbyshire, which just overwhelmingly voted for Reform. This was inevitable given the current government’s lack of a positive message on community development. Second, I have spent many years as a bit-part player representing the charity sector in Westminster. During this time, I have built a reputation for failing to have any influence of any kind over government policy. You might want to bear that in mind when reading this proposal.
My starting point for how we can rebuild public trust is that Government would have to be able to do three things; it would have to be interested in the messiness of people’s lives, capable of respectful listening to people’s hopes and fears, and finally capable of seeing people as part of the solution and not as a problem to be sidelined. And make no mistake, there is a strong culture in Whitehall which sees people as at best inconvenient and at worst as ‘blockers’ to the latest genius policy announcement.
If government could do better at these three things, they might be able to enable communities to take practical action in ways which tangibly improve people’s lives. And that matters in an era where central government doesn’t have the money for many of the basic things communities need — from youth workers to flood defence. To survive and thrive, communities will have to act together more effectively. They will need more power and more responsibility at neighbourhood level. And while most of this proposal is about changing government, communities do need to show more leadership. We used to laugh at the whingeing conspiracy theorist at the end of the bar but now we’ve started electing them to solve our local problems. Good luck with that. Ultimately, if communities are to take a much stronger role in driving the solutions they need, government and the public are going to require some very serious relationship counselling.
Setting up an Office for Empathy (OFE) is the first step in rebuilding that relationship. The office is designed to help solve one of the oldest problems in British politics: why is it that so many well-intentioned people in Whitehall are capable of organising a government so out of touch with the needs of ordinary people? Why is it that young and progressive politicians go to Westminster with high ambitions only to be absorbed into a culture which seems determined not to show the care and kindness vital to good politics and central to combating extremism?
The answer lies in the culture of Whitehall, and to understand that you have to start with its geography. The politicians, civil servants and lobbyists who we allow to shape our lives all work in a very small and very peculiar village, and when people mock parish council decisions I’m always conscious that central government behaves in precisely the same way. It’s just that the toys they play with are much bigger. From Tufton St in the West where the right-wing think tanks lurk, to the Home Office, to the boundary of St James’s Park, tracing past the Treasury and Number 10 and then round the Admiralty to the MOD, back to the river and finally the Parliament building. The fact that this village is set within a world city is mostly irrelevant because the ideas developed to run a diverse Britain only have to make sense within the village. Success or failure does not depend on whether ideas work in practical terms in Rotherham. Rotherham might as well be in a parallel universe and probably wishes it was. Success in the village depends on whether they can be effectively implemented to meet ministerial timetables. Policy ‘missions’ become articles of faith, and changing your mind or reflecting can result in a loss of face fatal to career progression. And it’s not just long-suffering civil servants. It’s amazing how many researchers and pollsters in the village are magically selected as candidates for places they have no emotional relationship with. And so, despite the best intentions of many, the culture perpetuates itself.
It is still startling to me that so many senior civil servants and political leaders struggle with their very limited educational backgrounds. Let’s be honest: the decision makers produced by ‘elite universities’ do not have a shining track record of finding creative solutions to the many problems of modern Britain. Lovely, bright and cultured though they are, they lack, on the whole, the one vital qualification for good government: they have never been without power in the decisions that affect their lives. Neither do their jobs in the village bring them into any relationship with those who do face that struggle. One of the few things I do know for certain is that I left more emotional intelligence and intellectual talent in what was then called the remedial group of my local primary school than I’ve ever found walking the corridors of Whitehall and Westminster. If nothing else, we had a better sense of humour.
For myself, I have long ago stopped being bewildered or bitter about this problem. I’m interested in how we can help promote understanding between the machinery of government and the citizens and communities they should serve. So how do we get more listening, more kindness and more emotional sensitivity into the way that we govern Britain? To further that aim the OFE would do five things:
Transform the culture of government by ensuring that all those applying for entry and progression in the civil service can demonstrate two years’ work in community-based organisations. Community organisations need all the help they can get, even if it’s just making the tea — and there’s more learning in a food bank than you will ever get in the Oxford Union.
Ensure Government has to talk to people respectfully about new policy through running national conversations based on a programme of citizens’ assemblies. It will require politicians to go out and sell the ideas at town hall debates and ensure Government can show how it has listened to feedback.
Promote a new programme of citizenship for schools and colleges which aims to reveal the machinery of government and promote skills about how to navigate and verify online ‘news’.
Have a duty to promote kindness and respect in politics by adopting a new set of standards in public life. These standards would set out boundaries of behaviour with clear sanctions for knowingly sharing false data or using abusive language. They would apply to anyone who held public office at any level. They would ensure our politicians ‘play nicely’.
Develop a programme of decentralisation in England, starting with moving the reformed House of Lords to Middlesbrough. The OFE itself would be based in Bradford.
Of course, none of this is going to happen, but the question of how we can reclaim our political life won’t go away. That democratic renewal depends on respectful listening; it depends above all on those who govern having empathy for the fate of people and places.
