Servants of the People: The Remaking of the British Working Class?
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Bank of England Deputy Chairman Philip Hammond put on a brave face for the cameras after an allegedly furious row over fiscal policy, January 2018
Despite an increasingly chaotic international situation, notably the ongoing African Wars of Independence but also the continuing carnage of the Second Yugoslav War, Cooper was fortunate to preside over a relatively pacific domestic scene. Perhaps the most significant aspect of her premiership came in 2015, when it was announced that the UK had, five years ahead of the schedule in the Shanghai Protocol, achieved a fully carbon neutral economy. The UK was not the first Commonwealth country to do so - for reasons of self-preservation, the Bahamas, the West Indies and the Pacific Islands had taken the lead on the issue within the Commonwealth - and the three words ‘full carbon neutrality’ should be taken with a pinch of salt - the government’s carbon capture scheme and repurposing of abandoned coal mines as ‘carbon dioxide storage facilities’ was especially controversial - but it was nevertheless taken as an important step for one of the permanent members of the Security Council to have meet their obligations this quickly.
On the domestic front, the main reforms of the period were driven by the Commonwealth Assembly. The most pressing problem that was emerging was one of over-productivity: simply put, Commonwealth economies were becoming too efficient at producing goods with the concern that they would soon be producing consistently too much stuff for the world, let alone the Commonwealth, to consume. The initial drive under the Ken Clarke speakership had been to decrease working hours, theorising that this would hold down the amount to goods that could be produced and, at the same time, increase demand for leisure goods and services to be utilised during this increased time off work. This had been a stopgap but macroeconomists in the Bank of England remained concerned about the direction of the economy. The political journals of the chattering classes in London, Ottawa and Karachi were filled with articles speculating about the future crisis of over-productivity. In 2016, the New Zealand futurist Alan Marshall published a celebrated book arguing that the Commonwealth was approaching the limits of what was possible with a terrestrial market economy and that its citizens would have to develop new modes of relating to each other.
The response of political elites, however, was altogether less theoretical. Following a prime ministers’ conference in late 2014, the Commonwealth Assembly passed the Updated Commonwealth Working Time Directive 2015, which reduced the length of the maximum working week to 25 hours, with the promise of a review in 2029-30 to decide whether there might be further reductions to the working week, with a limit of 15 hours being mooted. At the same time, the Bank of England announced a tightening of interest rates, cutting Commonwealth growth rates over the course of 2016 and 2017. Pakistan tipped into negative growth in the last quarter of 2017, prompting a furious Nawaz Sharif to demand a change of course. This lead to a loosening of fiscal policy, even as the general course remained unchanged.
Outside of economics, perhaps the largest challenge that faced the Commonwealth was the response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and the West Indies in September 2017. Cooper was closely involved in the Commonwealth relief effort, which was praised for its speed and effectiveness.
Other British domestic changes in this period included minor constitutional tinkering. Most notable was a reform to the rules surrounding the appointment of the Speaker, requiring that the MP elected to the role would cease to be an active MP. If he or she was a constituency MP then there would be an immediate by-election and if they were a list MP then the person next on the relevant party’s list would become an MP. This ensured that, not only did it mean that no longer would one party would effectively lose an MP (not to mention constituents potentially lose their representation) but also that the Speaker could continue in their role even more insulated from party pressures. Elsewhere, there was a significant advance in space, with the Maui VII blasting off in January 2018, containing the first manned mission to one of the moons of Saturn.
In February 2016, the SWF facility at Bletchley Park was finally closed, with the apparatus and inhabitants moving to a newer facility in Cork, pursuant to an announcement made in 2011. Originally the site of the British codebreaking team during the World War, Bletchley Park had been purchased by the SWF in October 1948 and turned into the world’s foremost industrial research centre. As well as serving as the cradle for much of the British computing industry (Keynes allegedly ordered the purchase of the site after a discussion with Tommy Flowers about his Colossus computer) that had exploded into life in the 1950s and ‘60s, research done at Bletchley is credited with making major advances on transistors, lasers, mobile phone technology and digital signal processing. Its closing (albeit that the research continued, just elsewhere) was the end of an important chapter in British industrial history and the event was commemorated with a wide range of events, including documentaries detailing life at the facility and its associated breakthroughs.
Throughout this time, Labour had largely stood aside - periodic jokes at PMQs aside - as the Liberal Party imploded on the other side of the aisle. As such, many pined for Labour to take a tougher, more radical stance and there began to be mutterings on the backbenches about Cooper’s apparent timidity. Nevertheless, she continued to chart her moderate, calm course until 2018, when a series of propitious local county elections in England and Ireland encouraged her to dissolve Parliament and go to the country in the summer.