In Kemi Badenoch the Conservatives have a new leader. Who comes from a radically different upbringing and background to typical Conservative party leaders. She says ‘It’s time for a fresh start’. ( Sunday Telegraph, 3 November). Yesterday on hearing the news the Prime Minister welcoming Kemi Badenoch as the new Conservative leader Sir Keir said ‘The first Black leader of a Westminster party is a proud moment for our country. I look forward to working with you and your party in the interests of the British people’ ( BBC Live Reporting, Adam Durbin and Rory Bosotti, 12.57 2 November). And, from the same source Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey is reported as having congratulated her on the significance of her victory, adding ‘The election of the first Black leader of a major UK political party is a historic moment for the country’.
We can enjoy a rare moment in English politics of unity and goodwill. My hunger is to learn if these mature sentiments are the start of a move away from confrontational yaboo politics. Infantile point scoring bedevils Westminster by its adversarial nature. It stops adult policy making. Ideological priorities, whether on the right or the left of the political spectrum have very little relevance for residents whose overwhelming fear is spatial change. . Where will the new homes go? Where will the the new infrastructure go? Why do we need lots of new homes in any event? Yes, there are political decisions to be made about future housing. How much will be market dependent? How much will be social need dependent. But they come second. Before these issues are asked and answered someone must decide where the new homes will go, regardless of their tenure: for sale, to rent private or to rent social. Location is contentious. And that someone must be following a spatial policy which has sufficient local support to be deliverable. So far, since the general election in July very little evidence has emerged that these long term problems are receiving long term, enduring support. Because enduring support needs cross-party policy alignment. And this is impossible in a world of yaboo politics.
But I would like to believe we are now entering a new era of collective responsibility for the nation’s future prosperity, spatial needs, and infrastructure distribution. Yet I fear yaboo confrontational politics is deeply ingrained and hidden away in the British persona. And if I am correct we will not build the homes needed. We will continue to destroy England’s green and pleasant land with haphazard building. We will continue to over burden our roads and will not introduce the rapid, reliable and low carbon public transport future generations will deserve. We will continue farcical land use policies which keep large areas of open countryside free of building but tightly closed to the public, as pressures to enable open air activities on green belt, grey belt and ANOB areas remain in the sole gift of the landowners concerned. All these concerns are legitimate worries. But they are not political or ideological divisions. So why are they so often viewed in ideological terms?
Why am I downbeat? Adversarial attitudes to problems in England are rarely spotted but widespread. They lie at the heart of the Westminster political model. They also lie at the heart of England’s legal profession and method of dispute resolution. They also, I suggest lie at the heart of Nimby opposition to change and why overcoming this left and right ideological mind-set may be impossible. Some legal examples of of exposure of errors revealed might do harm. But they help to offer a measure of the damage done to the quest for truthful outcomes. The expert on the failures of the adversarial system of enquiry, rather than the French inquisitorial seeking the whole story is revealed in Ludovic Kennedy’s autobiography ‘On my way to the club’ published in 1989. He examined in depth several acknowledged infamous miscarriages of justice. In his own book Kennedy quotes the conclusion in his earlier book ‘The Trial of Stephen Ward’ (page 297, Fontana / Collins, 1990) and it is worth quoting to highlight the challenges ahead
‘Let no one pretend that our system of justice is a search for truth. It is nothing if the kind. It is a contest between two sides played according to certain rules, and if the truth happens to emerge as a result of the contest, then that is pure windfall. ………The result is that verdicts are often are often reached haphazardly, for the wrong reasons, in spite of the evidence, and may or may not coincide with the literal truth. ……It is time not only for the rules of the game to be revised, but also, if people like Stephen Ward are to have a just trial in future, to ask ourselves whether the game we have chosen is the one that we wish to go on playing’.
Why is this brief examination of two systems of enquiry into the truth and the failures of the adversarial model relevant to our search for new homes? Because the existing system is broken. I suggest a key reason for system failure is that planning decisions in England are based on a similar black or white method of assessment. Whilst the long term, futuristic necessitities of spatial planning which seek to deliver outcomes must do so with the support of vested interests need to be made within a framework which capture the entire spectrum of options. By looking at all the options together, within an agreed long term spatial framework will remove much of the unpredictable aspects of the current system.
I may need to return to this another time.
Ian Campbell
4 November 2024
