A Journey (119 page)

There are exceptions, people who in later life turn their attention to politics and enter Parliament, but they are just that: exceptions. This, in turn, has another consequence: the best ministers are often now those in the House of Lords. The gene pool for ministers and MPs is now worryingly restricted. If this continues, it will not be long before we look at whether ministers really have to be drawn from the stock of MPs or lords. People are woefully underprepared for what running a vast department entails, and it shows. You end up with people who are great at the politics and lousy at the management.

Which brings me to another issue: it is probably less likely to be fatal to a political career to be bad at management than to be bad at politics. That is also a problem. A good politician can survive being a lousy manager, but a good manager will find it hard to survive being a lousy politician.

Each time I tried to bring, for example, a person from the private sector into government, I found that a part of the media would immediately try to find some angle to show they were suspect in some way. People who were prepared to forgo a large salary to devote time to public service ended up being done over as trying to get their feet on the ladder of corruption.

The role of the media in modern democracy is an issue every senior politician I know believes is ripe for debate. Yet it is virtually undebated, because the media on the whole resent the debate and inflict harm on those who attempt to engage in it, and the politicians are scared of the consequences of challenging powerful media interests. In an era of 24/7 media saturation, the absence of a debate about the media’s impact, and how its interaction with politics affects the quality of the public discourse about political affairs, is objectively astonishing even if subjectively easily explained.

Every walk of life involving power is now subject to strong rules of disclosure, scrutiny and accountability, except one: the media. Just in the past few years, politicians have seen rules on fund-raising, earning, expenses and information revolutionised. Yet the average member of the public knows little or nothing about those who exercise far greater control over what happens in Britain than the average Cabinet minister, let alone the average MP.

Anyway I’ve made the point before. I dare say I’ll make it again! It is actually part of a far bigger question which is this (and as I write, it seems a slightly curious way to put it, and I am not sure even now I fully see its implications).

Three years out of office have given me time to reflect on our system of government and to study other systems. I have no doubt democracy is the best system. And India remains the shining example of a large nation, still developing, that manages to be genuinely democratic. But I think there is a tendency for those of us in democracies to become smug about the fact that we are democratic, as if universal suffrage and no more were enough to give us good government.

The truth is that in order to function well, democracies need to be more than simply places where universal suffrage decides who governs. They also need to have the capacity, institutions, culture and rules to make it work effectively. Sometimes this will take time, which is why a nation like China, unlike India, will only be ready for simple democracy at a certain point in development. At present what it needs is well-intentioned leadership taking the decisions necessary for it to develop faster. Four hundred million people lifted out of poverty in twenty years is pretty impressive.

But the same also applies to countries that are developed and democratic but whose political systems are not delivering effective government. In other words, democracy itself needs to mature; it needs to adapt and reform as circumstances change. I would say that the way we run Westminster or Whitehall today is just not effective in a twenty-first-century world. Many might say the same about Congress and the US. The Civil Service requires a totally different skill set today from thirty years ago, far more akin to that of the private sector. I have already discussed the position and training of MPs.

Yet the debate, though it acknowledges that the public are disillusioned and disquieted, focuses exclusively on the issues of honesty, transparency and accountability as if it were a character problem. It isn’t. It’s an efficiency problem.

Provided we see the problem as one not of people but of systems, we cease also to be so worried about it. Yet if we lack the people, we really should be fearful. Systems can be changed.

I end on a note of optimism. My new life takes me round the world. There is a common theme to what I do. My theory of the world today is that globalisation, enabled by technology and scientific advance, is creating an interdependent global community, in which, like it or not, people have to live and work together, and share the world’s challenges and opportunities. The drivers behind this are not governments, but people, and it is an unstoppable force. Its consequences, however, are a matter of choice. We can choose, in the face of this force, to co-exist peacefully, to be tolerant and respectful toward each other, to rejoice in the opportunities now available to us, and try to share them; or we can see globalisation as a threat, as displacing our traditional way of life and culture, as undermining our identity. The first leads to a world at peace; the second to conflict. Both choices are on offer.

For us to choose peaceful coexistence, certain things need to happen and some of these I work on: peace between Israelis and Palestinians; respect between the four billion people of different faiths; progress in Africa; and protection of our physical environment. A global community requires values to match, values that are shared. Above all, it requires a world in which justice for the many, not the few, is the guiding light of global government.

In each area I am putting into practice something I learned and reflected upon when prime minister, but which only now I have the time to try to implement. In each case I have an unconventional view, based on my experience.

I do not believe we will see a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians based simply on a standard political negotiation. Don’t misunderstand me – such a negotiation is necessary; but the real problem is a ‘reality’ problem, not one resolvable merely by negotiation. The Israeli reality is security. The Palestinian reality is occupation. They are linked. Only when and if the Israelis are sure that a Palestinian state will be securely and properly governed will they agree to it, whatever its borders. Only when the Palestinians are sure that if they take measures to ensure proper governance and security, Israel will leave their territory, will they believe any assurances of statehood are credible. We need to build a Palestinian state not just through a process of negotiation but through building the institutions, capacity and economy consistent with a state – not one only suitable for an agreement made and then left on the shelf, but one taking shape and root in reality; one achieved bottom up as much as top down.

I have always been more interested in religion than politics, but in the work my Faith Foundation does, the two overlap. To create peaceful coexistence in an era of globalisation, people of different faiths have to learn to understand and respect each other. The Foundation is highly practical. We have a programme that uses new technology to join up schools of different faiths so that from a young age children can learn about each other’s culture and faith based on the truth, not on often deeply misguided perceptions. It operates now in twelve countries, and children of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh faiths can take part.

We have a university programme, begun at Yale but now in eight other universities, to teach a course on the issues of faith and globalisation.

We have an action programme, which is to encourage those of different faiths to work together to implement the UN Millennium Development goals, and we have begun with the fight against malaria in Africa.

Africa is, naturally, another major area of work. Here the proposition is that, yes, aid is important; but what Africa really needs is help on capacity and governance. The money may be there for health care or agriculture support, but if the government doesn’t have the capacity to deliver, then nothing happens. So we work alongside the presidents – for the moment in three countries, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia – to help them build basic effective levers of delivery. We hire teams of highly qualified young people (aged 25–35) – it may be from governments, the World Bank, McKinsey or private banks – who work on the ground alongside the president’s team and build capacity, so that in time the locals can do it. They also focus on getting in quality private sector investment, which is essential. I work closely with the presidents and political leaders so that what we propose is not only technically sensible but politically doable.

Finally I work on business solutions to climate change, and with the Climate Group have produced reports aimed at practical and business-friendly ways of achieving a low-carbon economy. My idea here is that the only way to achieve political buy-in to reducing emissions is to make business the partner of change, not its victim.

So that’s my new life. What makes me optimistic? People. Since leaving office, I have learned one thing above all: the people are the hope.

It is sometimes said that young people have lost their passion to do good; they’re all just obsessed with getting on and the latest gadget. My experience is the opposite. The young people working for me in Africa are absolutely committed. All could earn better outside. All do it out of a drive to help bring about change. There are hordes of volunteers who work with my Faith Foundation, incredibly well motivated, fantastic, interesting dynamic young people, whose religious commitment is totally without prejudice against those of a different faith.

In Palestine, even when the politics are dark, what lights the situation up is the realisation that young Israelis and Palestinians are not inhabitants of a different world, polarised irredeemably by culture, religion and politics; they are striving for the same fulfilment and chance to do well, and are held back by a situation they would love to change.

In other words, for every bad event, malign conjunction of circumstances or individual act of hate, there are changes for the better, benign possibilities and above all people of good faith, good intentions and worthy actions.

My conclusion, strangely, is not that the power of politics is needed to liberate the people; but that the power of people is needed to liberate the politics. An odd thing for a politician to say; but then, as you will gather from this memoir, it has never been entirely clear whether the journey I have taken is one of triumph of the person over the politics, or of the politics over the person.

PICTURE INSERTS

i) Me and Mum, with Dad holding my older brother Bill in the mid-1950s

ii) My dad on his way to work. Fostered by a rigger in the Govan shipyards, he went on to become an academic, a barrister and a Conservative