the new utilitarian cause. Geoff Mulgan and David Halpern were quietly encouraging the Prime Minister towards the politics of well-being, but the Labour leader was never totally convinced.
The problem was not just that the science was new, but that its findings cut across political ideologies. In fact, it appeared to turn conventional arguments on their head. The accepted wisdom in Britain was that the twentieth century had seen ‘the right’ win the economic case and ‘the left’ win the social case. Happiness science suggested, up to a point at least, that well-being was improved by conservative social policies and socialist economic policies. The left embraced findings that suggested redistributing wealth is good for our well-being; that state intervention in public services raises joy in the national heart; that policies encouraging a work-life balance are good for the general well-being. The right preferred the scientific papers suggesting that marriage (rather than cohabitation) has a hugely positive effect on happiness; and that God and the Boy Scouts add to the sum of human contentment, while entertainment TV and multiculturalism tend to reduce it.
As the Westminster party apparatchiks struggled to fit the new philosophy into old ideology, it became clear that the message of the new utilitarians was striking a chord with the public. After decades of economic growth, Britain was richer than at any point in its history. Yet, as Geoff Mulgan put it, ‘society’s ability to meet people’s psychological and psycho-social needs appears to have declined.’ Delivering almost inexorable economic growth was stubbornly refusing to create the feel-good factor politicians yearned for, and so it was that the happy evangelists were quietly able to gain access to the corridors of power.
They still tended to operate in the shadows, working in little happy cells secreted within the state machine. One group had successfully infiltrated local government some years earlier, achieving legislation stating that the ‘promotion of well-being’ was a responsibility of all councils in England. At national level, the Whitehall Well-being Working Group kept a low profile (W3G to those in the know) and few took much notice of the report published by the Department of Environment advocating that well-being be used to inform future policy development and spending decisions. Nevertheless, the new utilitarian message was feeding into the system.
Richard Layard became the public standard bearer for the happiness movement in the UK, an eminent economics professor with excellent political contacts. His power base was the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, a body that included on its board Gus O’Donnell, the man Whitehall called GOD.
Then the top official at the Treasury, O’Donnell would go on to head the civil service, a bureaucrat whose professional life was devoted to measuring progress in government. Fascinated by Layard’s claims that wealth was failing to translate into well-being, he became convinced that the arguments of the new utilitarians went to the very heart of what government is actually for, and how we can measure its success. The civil service and, critically, the Treasury were engaged in the debate. Senior officials had been persuaded that it was no longer a question of whether one could measure well-being, but how its measurement might change the business of government and the definition of social progress.
‘It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money,’ a fresh-faced politician announced in 2006. ‘It’s time we focused, not on GDP, but on GWB — General Well-being.’ David Cameron had recently been elected leader of the Conservative Party when he gave a speech that echoed the words (if not the poetry) of Robert F. Kennedy from almost four decades before. ‘Well-being can’t be measured by money or traded in markets. It can’t be required by law or delivered by government. It’s about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, and above all the strength of our relationships. Improving our society’s sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times.’
The idea was mocked in the popular press, but some commentators believed the Conservative leader was on to something. I went to interview him, to see if he was serious about putting well-being at the heart of his politics. ‘We should be thinking not just what is good for putting money in people’s pockets but what is good for putting joy in people’s hearts,’ David Cameron told me.
Richard Layard’s book
Suddenly, it was fashionable to question the hegemony of GDP. In the summer of 2007, representatives from many of the rich nations’ clubs gathered in Istanbul to do just that. The OECD, the United Nations, the European Commission and the World Bank signed a declaration committing them to ‘measuring and fostering the progress of societies in all dimensions, with the ultimate goal of improving policy making, democracy and citizens’ well- being’.
The Secretary General of the OECD stood to address the 1,200 delegates in the cavernous conference hall. ‘It is time to call for a global effort to find better measurements of progress,’ Angel Gurria told the conference. ‘In the end, what we are trying to do is not just to measure progress and well-being but to achieve it.’ There was, perhaps, a hint of urgency in his remarks: a sense that the economic architecture that supported Western society had developed dangerous cracks, but no stable alternative had yet been erected.
Governments around the world recruited the greatest minds to address the problem. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy invited no fewer than five Nobel prize-winning economists to join a panel of experts pledged to finding more relevant indicators of social progress. The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress first assembled in February 2008, headed by the former chief economist at the World Bank, American professor Joseph Stiglitz. They were not to know on that damp winter’s day in Paris that severe economic storms were gathering just over the skyline. Within months, the world’s banking system would teeter on the brink of collapse and, with the resulting recession, political focus would shift from the philosophy of social progress to concerns over how to restore economic growth.
The global financial crisis was a reality check to the new utilitarian movement, and the question was whether its ideas would survive in a climate of (relative) austerity. Stiglitz and his team of economic all-stars finally agreed a 300-page report in September 2009, their conclusions to be launched in the Grand Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne as outside, on the streets of Paris, more than a million protestors demonstrated at government plans for economic belt-tightening. The French President stood to speak, the marble faces of Descartes, Pascal and Lavoisier watching him from their pillared alcoves. Would he, in the face of mass public protest at spending cuts, support his experts’ conclusion that the measurement of progress should focus less on wealth and more on well-being? Would he agree to be a leader in a global debate as to whether we are really striving for what is important?
Yes, he would. ‘France will open the debate on this report’s conclusions everywhere,’ he announced. ‘France will fight for every international organisation to modify their statistical systems by following the commission’s recommendations.’
In Britain, those recruited to the new utilitarian cause were more circumspect but no less determined. Three months after Sarkozy’s rallying call, buried in a report on mental health strategy, the UK’s Labour government committed itself to putting well-being in all policy. The Health Secretary Andy Burnham explained how his officials would liaise with other departments to ensure that policies considered the impact on well-being, as well as using it to inform future policy and research.
Behind the scenes, a team of British statisticians had been quietly working on a measure of societal well- being for years, but it was not until David Cameron moved into Downing Street that the project won official approval. I was among sixty journalists, academics and civil servants invited to the Treasury in late November 2010. The PM breezed onto a purpose-built podium to address his audience. ‘From April next year, we’ll start measuring our progress as a country, not just by how our economy is growing, but by how our lives are improving; not just by our standard of living, but by our quality of life,’ he announced.
Was he serious? ‘People often regard the “happiness agenda” as being a bit like candyfloss; it is sweet but insubstantial,’ I suggested to Mr Cameron. ‘Will this change people’s lives, do you think?’
‘If I thought this was woolly and insubstantial and candyfloss-like, I would not be bothering to talk to you about it on a Thursday morning when I have got lots of other things to do,’ he replied.
But would he, for instance, change his politics if the well-being measure suggested he should? ‘What I believe this will do is help to provide evidence to create a debate that may encourage us to change our minds about some things we have been rather stubborn about,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘It could throw up things that might challenge politicians’ views about equality or taxation, but that is all for the good. We should never be frightened of having a debate.’
