Do fiery rhetoric and extreme policies help win elections?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Kaldor-Hicks criterion
• ‘That which is seen, and that which is unseen’ (Bastiat)
• Public spending in the UK since 1900
• List of UK pressure groups

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing abolishing private schools. Chris, yeah, kick us off with this. What's all this about abolishing private schools?

Well, I was paying attention to the recent Labour Party conference, and one of the big ticket item announcements to come out of this was their plans to effectively, well, so the media reporting suggested to abolish private schools and sort of redistribute their assets in some kind of reformation style policy move. It actually turned out when you looked at the details that it was really about reducing tax loopholes. But the media reporting, and they certainly didn't do much to, the Labour Party itself didn't do much to quench this story, was about the abolition of private schools. And it was, you know, it got media headlines and it sort of grabbed my attention. And as the only sort of person here, I think, who is not privately educated and with kids in state schools, I've got no sort of vested interest in this issue. But I thought to myself, what are they going on about? Right. You know, I was like, well, you know, surely there are lots of other more pertinent issues going on at the moment that this, you know, is like a niche sort of political interest. And for them to kind of lead on this and push this struck me as being odd. But then I thought about it a bit more and I got into this idea of, well, you know, it's at the party conference. Right. And what are you trying to do at the party conference? You're trying to connect with your members. You're trying to, you know, in the political terms, you're trying to energise the base. And so I got thinking about kind of niche kind of political causes and particularly ones that are sort of oppositional, you know, antagonistic towards something and why they seem to crop up again and again and what they, why, you know, what their utility is. Do you mean that the same niche cause pops up again and again? No, I mean, why niche causes things like, you know, fox hunting, whether for or against, you know, like stuff like the Marine A who was convicted of breaking the Geneva Convention or Gurkha pensions, badger culls. These things that most of us sort of go, you know, doesn't doesn't affect me in any way in particular, but they sort of crop up and they become, they gather a lot of momentum seemingly. And yet they only affect, you know, a small or they only interest and affect a small number of people. So, yeah.

And I guess also I'm trying to think of the examples that you gave where you can say that a cause could have led to what everyone agrees is a successful change of policy. And certainly fox hunting is one that straight away springs to mind. I've got a big list, which I was going to. Well, and before we come to that, so we'll come on to that. But before we do, every year, not necessarily at the conference, but all the time, ever since I can remember, Labour's always going to be abolishing private schools. And then every time they get into power, it never happens. No. But anyway. OK, great. So, well, let's hear some of the some results. Let's hear some stats from Captain Stats over there, Nick.

Well, I was going to, to be honest, I'd rather talk a bit more about the problem first and then go into some of the data. Let's talk more about. Yeah, no, I think I think the I think this is really interesting.

Well, let's know. So define the problem, because we've, you know, we've had we've heard more or less.

I mean, let's I guess in a democracy, it's not a problem. Right. So people vote for a party and they are allowed to do what they want if they get elected. And that's that. But there is a clash between between, you know, if you have a spec, I mean, particularly sort of in first past the post, but in general, in in voting systems, people will, you know, look for a cause that is slightly supported by more people, no matter how vehemently it's opposed by other people. Because you you're you're everyone only gets one vote. Doesn't matter how much it bothers them. You know, and I would guess so if you take something like fox hunting, I think I mean, there were a lot of passionate views on both sides, but it's a lot of apathy and a lot of apathy. But it's plausible that actually the point is probably most people living in cities probably very mildly were a bit anti fox hunting. And so, you know, it's probably the case that there are more people out there who are a bit anti fox hunting than there are people who are pro fox hunting. But those people who are pro foxing, very, very pro fox hunting, big thing for them. But there is no way of taking that into account. And it's entirely rational for political parties to chase these kinds of issues because, you know, you're going to be getting more votes now. You know, whereas from an economic efficiency point of view and assuming for a minute, let's try and take out sort of just what's right for a minute. Let's see this as really we're talking about trade offs. So it might be the case that you think, well, it's just morally wrong, fox hunting. And that's that. We're going to abolish it for that reason. Regardless of who cares about it, whatever. But normally when you're thinking about evaluating policy, there's always going to be a trade off. Some people are going to be worse off. Some people are going to be better off. And basically what you are trying to do at the very minimum is kind of add up how much people be willing to pay to do one thing versus another thing. So, you know, in the case of fox hunting, how much would all these people in in, you know, don't care about it very much. Maybe we'd be able to maybe be willing to pay a pound a year for fox hunting to be illegal. Whereas, you know, people who really care about it, well, they might be willing to pay 500 pounds a year to keep it going. And it might be that actually, you know, that there is a so there's a so there's a criterion for cost benefit analysis, which is the called or Hicks efficiency. And the idea being that, well, what you could do is let's say those people did want to pay to keep fox hunting legal. And so they all subscribed to keeping it legal. And we paid a pound to all those people who are slightly annoyed by fox hunting. They get compensated. Right. And in fact, everyone's better off. Everyone effectively makes a profit by keeping it by keeping it legal. That's that's that's the foxes. They're not better off. But anyway. Yeah. If now if they could pay could be a different story. Who knows? Yeah. But what about the bloodhounds? It's more of them than the foxes. And they're richer. We all know because they're they're they're being given chum. Whereas the foxes have to scrabble for a living in the fields. Yeah. Exactly. Old McDonald's. So. So anyway, that's the so under a kind of that efficiency approach, what you would be doing is trying to trying to sort of say, well, how much would everyone be willing to pay to have it one way or another? And effectively, you want to award it to the side who's willing to pay the most. Now, in practice, that compensation effect doesn't actually occur. So this is a very minimal test. You know, it's just saying is is our people on average in total better off and and and voting doesn't doesn't let you do that because everyone just gets one vote. Doesn't matter how much they care about it.

But but I think what's interesting is that given given that's the case, you still get political parties adopting causes which are minority causes. Right. And which which maybe don't even drag anyone else, you know, along along with them. So it's not like they get all the sort of people are prepared to pay a pound as well. They they sort of latch onto this. And you might say, well, that's just about the culture of the party and their values and what they want to promote. But I also think there's an element which is that if you if you capture passion and you particularly if you capture sort of like hatred or anger, you you sort of create an energy that enables you somehow to you know, if you're if your party members are the ones who go out and distribute leaflets for you and so on and, you know, do a lot of the campaigning for you. If they're particularly motivated, that then gets them doing more of that. And, you know, that potentially has an influential effect on the election overall because they really believe in this thing. So if you can get like a small bunch of disciples, you know, and, you know, one of my interests is how the niche causes tip over into being, you know, majority majority views. Things like, you know, environmentalism and veganism, which were once very little niche things are growing. You know, Christianity and Islam, you know, at some point we're a small bunch of people. You could say policy on homosexuality, for example. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, the shift in opinion. How do you get these these small group of highly motivated people to turn a population into a much larger population of slightly motivated? Yeah, I mean, I think so.

This is the this is the the big question. Well, and also is does it come from a small group of people or is it kind of latent? Is it created by, you know, by larger interests? So in other words, you know, does the Labour Party. I don't think there's a pressure group out there seeking to abolish private schools, for example. I doubt there's a pressure group, you know, mums against private school. I don't think such a thing exists. So this is something which is not coming up from below. But if we do just looking at those pressure groups, I was trying to I made a list. I tried to took a big list of Wikipedia of all the British pressure groups. And I sort of over time. It's not a very good sample. It's just what happened to be on this page. And I know there are some which are definitely successes. So League Against Cruel Sports, Welsh Language Society, founded, I think, in the 60s. And now, of course, Wales is practically bilingual. You know, it's certainly street signs and, you know, official material and Welsh lessons in schools and all that. The granddaddy, I guess, of all British pressure groups, the good old fashioned Chartists, who, you know, were largely seen as a failure at the time in that they, you know, there was the sort of the old protest, which quite sizable, but nothing, never any, no, any sort of giant reforms at the time. But actually, almost every single one of their, I think, I think they had six demands or something and five have been implemented, you know, universal suffrage. And what were the other Chartist demands? Oh, secret ballots, various other things, you know, electoral reforms. And I think the only one that hasn't been enacted is annual parliaments. Thank God, because we'd have an election every year. Surfers Against Sewage. We have that anyway, in effect, don't we? So, yeah, we have at the moment. We're practically Italy at the moment. So Surfers Against Sewage, you know, campaign for cleaner beaches from the 80s onwards. The whole pro-choice movement, Mary Stokes, all of that kind of thing. CAMRA, campaign for real ale, you know, massive improvement in the availability of beer, whether they're responsible. You mentioned it earlier, Stonewall. There's the No to ID campaign, which stopped ID cards, of course, the Leave campaign, leaving the EU. Action on Smoking and Health, who successfully campaigned for the smoking ban. And of course, the suffragists and their ilk. Then we got the failures. I was about to ask, yeah. Plain Stupid, who are campaigning. They don't want airport expansions. Well, there's going to be one, isn't there? So Lesbians Against Pit Closures. They didn't succeed in stopping the pits closing. And of course, the CND. You know, they've been going for several decades and have not yet successfully got us to abandon, to unilaterally disarm. Make Votes Matter and all of that ilk, all of the kind of electoral reform, including Charter 88. Charter 88, very well known, of course, lots of actors and things signed up to it. But almost nothing. What is Charter 88? Oh, that's that. I think it was it was kind of it's basically a kind of constitutional reform group of people. And they want things like a new Bill of Rights, proportional representation, directly elected House of Lords and a written constitution. Well, none of that's happened. Hey, there's a group called Republic who want to abolish the Queen. The Stop the War Coalition, massive at the time, failed to stop the war.

Still goes strong, though, as a, you know, as a group, a very militant left wing organisation.

And then you have the Remain campaign and Forest. And there's a few where the jury is out and into that category. I put the kind of animal cruelty environment. I think there's a battle still being fought. So environmental policy. Fathers for Justice. I think it looks like they're making some head in roads, but, you know, it's probably not achieve what they want. Amnesty International and sort of Oxfam and charities like that, where they maybe they are doing something, but they're not. They haven't exactly, you know, abolished world famine. But so here's my analysis of all this. Yeah. If a cause is big enough to merit a mention on Wikipedia, right, it's going to have about a 50 percent chance of succeeding on average if you know nothing about the cause. It's about 50 50. So so basically there must be a zillion pressure groups you never hear about, you know, the tooting popular front style groups who don't appear at all once it gets big. Even then, once it's big. I mean, these are all groups we've heard of. There's still only 50 50 chance of success. And I think if you want to push it in your favor, you've got to make the cause. You've got to make the aim a thing that can happen, because otherwise you get all these groups like, you know, the Occupy movement where what is banned? Yeah. No one knows whether it's what it looks like if they succeed. No one. You know, there's no kind of aims. It's got to be realistic. Right. This aim. So and I think and mainly, right, I think it's about things that are effectively about social policy, about who's allowed to do what, when to who. And I think campaigns that are about economic or constitutional foreign policy have got a very low chance of succeeding. So that's that's my recommendation. Pick a social policy. Get big. OK, make it make it realistic. I mean, interestingly, so we've got one now.

So so one of the one of the things that I kind of picked up on from what you were saying there.

Nudity. That would be. See, if we wanted to start a campaign, we'd say it would be make it legal to be nude in public. That's the kind of thing I think could have a chance.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is, isn't it? I think it's not. There's going to be a law preventing you from exposure. But yeah, you can definitely be naked in public. But I don't think you'll be naked anywhere.

And you're going to have to put your pants back on, I'm afraid. Again, yeah, yeah.

Because there was that ex-Royal Marine who hiked up to Scotland. The naked rambler guy. Naked rambler, him, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he kept getting arrested. Yeah. Especially in Scotland. They didn't like him up there.

Yeah, he's quite an interesting thing because one of the things I was looking at is a lot of, a lot of causes, niche causes are about opposition to something. So take Brexit. It's very much formed about, you know, what do you stand for? Well, nobody has yet been able to properly define Brexit, but they sure as hell knew what they stood against. Right. And that that was the sort of very unifying force behind that, behind that movement. And I was looking at a study, a big sort of meta-analysis of negative campaigning in politics and the effectiveness of it. And overall, it found that it was very difficult to determine, you know, depending on how you what you looked at, whether you looked at the party political material or whether you looked at press coverage would give you different findings. It's very difficult to find an effect of a positive or negative effect of negative political campaigning. But what they did find was that in coalition political systems, negative campaigning was actually greater because it was a way of, you've got a bunch of people who might be forming something. They might have to join together at some point. But during the electoral process, they need to say, well, we're not those guys and we're not those guys. We we hate those guys because of whatever. And we hate those guys because of something else. And so. So, yeah, actually, while, you know, niche causes might that sort of supports this idea, I suppose, that niche causes will will benefit from a more coalition environment. And that, you know, they're making themselves as distinct and niche as possible is actually potentially a competitive advantage.

Well, I was just I was just going to say, you know, if you've got a niche cause, you know, obviously what you're trying to do from the point of view of the holders of that niche cause if they really want to execute it and they don't just want to be an in group that, you know, continues to be fashionable in some way, then you want to mobilize everybody else. And I suppose, you know, you know, what are the what are the what are the ways that you're doing that? And what are the sort of examples you can you can look at? And I suppose, you know, group dynamics are really critical. It's like, you know, Nick was saying the more exciting thing often wins wins the day. And if you can make your cause as exciting and visible to as many people as possible, perhaps that's that's that's the way of doing it. But, you know, kind of just this this idea of creating an in group and expanding that that in group, you know, if you can if you can solve that issue, then, you know, you can obviously achieve achieve your aims.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Okay, I've got three questions for you. You can choose one or all of them. Okay, so here's my questions for you. One, have you ever been have you ever taken part in a demonstration? Or riot, I guess? Two, have you ever pursued or been part of a niche cause? And third question is, what would you like to change? Do you have a niche thing that you'd like to change? Is there something you'd like to abolish or something that you'd like to be enacted? So you could answer none of them. Sorry, you can answer one of them or all of them up to you.

Yeah, well, when I was about 12, 11 or 12. Yeah, 11 or 12. I had a friend from a very alternative background. And his mom was a massive CND person. And so yes, I attended a CND march one Saturday afternoon through the through the streets. And I then had to cough to this during my when you work for the MOD and you sort of how old were you at 10 years old or something? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so so yes, they say, you know, are you committed to because obviously, the nuclear deterrent is a key part of MOD policy, and they don't want, you know, random subversive anarchists in there trying to disrupt it. So I had to say yes, when I was when I was, when I was a young child, rabble rousing CND, and got bored and went and had a pasty halfway through. So that's my that's my demonstration. niche causes. No, I reckon I'm susceptible to them, though, potentially. I mean, I don't really believe in anything. I've got to say I don't like I don't have any, any beliefs, ethical or moral beliefs. But if somebody's, you know, if it involves like marching and, and like a hearkening back to historic romanticism, I'm sort of, I'm sort of in anything that looks like probably best to keep you away from precisely. Yeah, definitely not anything involving German mythology. Yeah, no, you're not allowed. No, exactly. So, so I'm aware that I've got a vulnerability there, which I kind of.

Would you go on a big march for nihilism and apathy?

No, I would sit on my sofa and protest about it. And then, of course, about the only thing I feel very, very strongly about is dogs shitting on the pavement. I would, I would properly burn down parliament for to get that. It's a simple change. I want people and their dogs impounded, maybe capital punishment brought back. Yeah, it is just unspeakably wrong.

But you remember when we were kids? I mean, there's dog shit everywhere. There's dog shit everywhere. Every time you went outside the house, you'd tread in some. No, I agree. Good job you don't live in France. My solution is, is more is in any way, if anything, a bit more sort of bestial in that I would, I would simply get them. Smear it in their faces. Put all the dog poo in their house. Yeah. The dog poo that they're putting in our streets. We just put it into their house.

Yeah, and then it would be felt and seen because it's the dog. The dog poo that's out there that nobody sees is the one that's the problem. Yeah.

You're turning society's problem into an individual's problem.

Yeah, it's perfect. Brilliant. I want to come to me. Then I want to come to you, Nick. So past demonstration. Yeah. When I was at university, Bill Clinton was visiting the university and there are about five different demonstrations going on at once. And it was just after my final exams. And so me and my mate went down there and we were at the front of this demonstrating crowd.

He was a Rhodes scholar, wasn't he? So he was.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And he was coming back to see his alma mater. Exactly that. And there were about four or five different causes that they were demonstrating for or against. But we were found ourselves at the front of this. We were sort of just sightseeing effectively. We were at the front of the crowd and it was really exciting. My friend bumped into a friend of his from school who happened to be the chief rabble rouser. At one point, the police grabbed this guy and chucked him in the back. It was it was massively exciting. And I really enjoyed it. That was my one. And did you successfully bring down Bill Clinton? We did. Yes. Yes.

He was nearly impeached. Yeah. Yeah. Just a year later.

So that was the demonstration. Niche cause. I was part of, I don't know, part of, but I was sort of plugged into the summer born campaign, which is children who are born in the summer are disadvantaged in certain ways academically and and and in sporting life as well because of the annual cutoff. Just read. I think it's Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it. Yeah, I know. It's well established. And which for my sons particularly make sense because they were born three months prematurely. So they should have been born in November, but were born in August. And so it affected and quite locks us straddles that cutoff period thing that I would campaign against. Niche thing. I don't know. I don't think it's niche, but I would campaign against is I think there's too much bloody maths in schools. There's nowhere near enough. No, no. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. It's all right for some weird geeky type person like yourself. But so my daughter, like your son, has just started a secondary school and I'm appalled at the amount of maths they do. So they do seven hours of maths a week compared to an average seven hours a day, seven hours of maths against half an hour of music, for example. Well, in Tom's school, they do a lot of music. Right. So we do almost no math. Sorry. Almost no music. Almost no RE, for example. Almost no drama. Almost no art. And it's just depressing. And if I was following that curriculum when I was that age, I would bloody top myself. So, yeah, that's what I would feel quite het up about.

Yeah, well, I look forward to it. You should write a letter to your MP. I look forward to seeing the response. So yeah. Okay, brilliant. We'll finish off there. I really enjoyed that. Thank you very much to listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.