In late 2024, a series of brainstorms were arranged for Keir Starmer’s team. Experts in different fields were brought over from various countries to swap ideas. The discussions were planned for lunchtimes, and kept short, to ensure that they didn’t impinge too much on the day-to-day work of ministers, advisers and officials.
According to one of the organisers of these seminars, on one day only three people turned up. There wasn’t a big crisis keeping them away. They just couldn’t be bothered.
That is Whitehall and Westminster in a nutshell – I’m told interest was marginally greater during Rishi Sunak’s brief tenure. The only cultural reference point for a political culture mired in monolingual mediocrity is the United States. Labour folk will do anything to attend a Democrat convention, Conservatives likewise with the Republicans (at least before Trump complicated things).
From Robert Putnam to Joseph Stiglitz, from Cass Sunstein to Charles Murray, they’ve queued up to learn from American oracles. Less so if it involves a little lateral thinking or language learning.
The lack of curiosity about the outside world is one of the most enduring features of Britain, or perhaps to be fairer, England. Is that about to change under Andy Burnham? Barely weeks into office and many, particularly in the Labour Party, are projecting on to him their various hopes.
Suggested Reading
Burnham’s How To Fail episode teaches us all a lesson
After the Starmer years, a dose of optimism is healthy. What comes of it is another matter. But if my experience is anything to go by, people around the PM are showing a certain interest in hearing more about global best practice, and what might be transferred into a British context.
Not in everything perhaps. Of the 10 countries and cities I identified in my book Brave New World, each of which is tackling one of the great challenges, they’ve already closed the door on one.
Burnham has given a resounding thumbs-down to plans for digital ID, perhaps because the UK interpretation of the plan came from the Tony Blair Institute, and the original announcement last year was classically botched by Starmer. He couched the initiative as a means of nabbing irregular migrants, failing to explain that if properly implemented it would hugely improve the provision of state services and give citizens ownership of their data. That will end up as a missed opportunity, particularly as in other areas Burnham seems interested in modernising the state.
Nevertheless, from social care to housing and education, even to aspects of immigration policy, his people are beginning to listen to and possibly adopt some of the examples. Here is what they appear to be thinking about:
Housing is the most public manifestation of inequity. In Vienna they’ve been thinking differently for a century.
Some 60% of residents live in subsidised public housing; social status does not depend on ownership. Underpinning the system are shared responsibilities. Housing collectives designate jobs to match residents’ skills – the plumber, the IT specialist, the teacher. Such is the prestige of these developments that famous architects compete more keenly for contracts than they do for private projects.
It starts with the provision of land. One of the most far-sighted decisions taken by the city, around 40 years ago, was to earmark a “land procurement and urban renewal fund” to buy up brownfield and greenfield sites exclusively for social housing.
As a result, some 3 million square metres, including farm or fallow land, disused rail tracks and empty hospitals, have been stockpiled. They call it an early investment in the market.
Kathrin Gaál, the deputy mayor in charge of housing, calls it “systematic stockpiling”. She adds that, unlike Germany and other nearby countries, “we would not sell land to fill budget holes.” This is something UK cities would love to do – if given the political power.
As Gaál points out, a well-planned neighbourhood with a sense of aesthetics and respect for its inhabitants has a direct link to tackling crime, antisocial behaviour, mental health and other social ills. The lesson for all cities is that it pays to be ambitious and imaginative. Communities are not created by accident. They take a long time to take root but can be destroyed in an instant.
And it is not too late for cities in Britain, the US and elsewhere to adopt elements of its success – to secure land, to plan and not to allow the market to hollow out communities.
The most admirable of Finland’s many positive attributes is the priority it gives to education. Teaching is highly respected; to enter the profession, even as a primary teacher, you need a master’s degree – even then, qualifying is tough.
Teachers have considerable freedom; they are not graded, and nor are schools. The atmosphere in the classroom is unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. There is only one major exam and almost no homework. Pupils and parents contribute to lesson planning.
Education is about the rounded pupil and lifelong skills. Children are taught democracy, business skills and digital literacy. The emphasis is on resilience, self-responsibility and a strong sense of social equity.
But Finland’s schools are not a soft substitute for rigour; they are ahead of the game, providing essential tools for survival in a new world of political uncertainty and seemingly tradeable truths – and for the many future skills and employment opportunities and challenges of AI.
The aspect that seems to have caught Burnham’s early attention is the focus on vocational education. As I saw for myself in the Finnish city of Tampere, pupils can decide between further academic work or more vocational study. A teaching position in a vocational school is particularly prized.
“There is no social stigma, no preference for the purely academic route,” Anita Lehikoinen, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Education, told me. Unlike countries such as Britain and France, where technical training is somewhat frowned upon, “here in Finland, social mobility remains strong. People can do well in whatever chosen field and wherever they start out from.”
In Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, as governments lurch from one failed policy to another on immigration, panicking in the face of “public outrage”, they seek solace in ever more shrill rhetoric – as the recent crisis in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta shows.
By contrast, in Canada, they have focused less on the principle, more on the practical. Two aspects of policymaking deserve special scrutiny. One of them is already receiving it.
From a humdrum building in central Ottawa, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is responsible for recommending to the government what are called the “levels”, a three-year set of targets for legal, long-term immigration. Three main criteria are used: economic immigration, family reunion and refugee status.
Public consultation and road-testing are key. The IRCC regularly conducts pilots of immigration programmes to see how they land. In everything it does, it tries to secure public buy-in, holding regular round tables across the country with citizens to hear what areas of the economy they feel require input from abroad and how much extra capacity there may be in health services, schools and housing to accommodate new arrivals.
In the jargon it’s called “input legitimacy”, and it applies far beyond immigration. It’s about being candid with voters and bringing them on board.
The most impressive aspect of Canada’s immigration policy is its sponsorship programme. Under the 1979 Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program, individuals and groups are invited to apply to mentor new arrivals as they look for work, schools, language teaching, accommodation, even taking them to the local bank branch to open an account. Within months of its introduction, dozens of groups had been set up. It’s still over-subscribed.
Suggested Reading
Devolution isn’t a magic fix – ask the rest of the world
Immigration is not something that was done to a passive citizenry in Canada, hoping they won’t notice. It was an active process. It’s harder to be hostile to refugees when you, or someone you know, has helped bring someone in. Other countries, including Argentina, Australia, France, Germany, New Zealand and Spain have undertaken similar schemes.
Mark Carney, the prime minister, has cut overall numbers, particularly of temporary workers, but he is doing so without resorting to bombast. The main principles underpinning Canada’s approach to migration are not being tampered with. The foundations of the multicultural state, the various forms of sponsorship, the onus on community-based assimilation – all this will stay.
Burnham has declared one of his top priorities to be social care, as he should. It’s a complex subject. I’ll return to it another time, looking at the Japanese model of financing and of mixed-generation housing (which the Dutch, the Basques and others have copied).
It’s reassuring that he’s asked Whitehall’s solver-of-all-problems, Louise Casey, to move far more quickly than Starmer did. Successive PMs have called for change and yet run away from it, fearful of a public backlash at the costs involved in establishing a fully fledged system. Britain’s broken system won’t be prepared during a single election cycle, which is why the invitation to other parties to work with the government is politically astute.
Burnham has already shown that he knows how to do instant communications and retail politics, from the £2 bus fares to the help for pubs. His biggest test will be to ensure that he has the resilience, imagination and courage to see through the most intractable of the UK’s many long-term challenges.
Interest in examples from elsewhere is a good start.
John Kampfner’s latest book, Braver New World, is published by Atlantic.
Subscribe to The New World and get a copy of the book FREE here
