How crucial is the crushing triumph of the Labour organization in the fresh UK elections? What will be Britain's fresh social and economical policy? What about the improvement of industrial cities? Leszek Jażdżewski (Foundation Liberte!) talks with Jason Stockwood, the author and businessman who tries to aid rediscover another era of capitalism for a more inclusive. He is presently president of Grimsby Town football club and Venture-type investor. He was previously a associate of the British BCorp board and global CEO of simply Business. He is besides the author of the book “Reboot: A Blueprint for Happy, Human Business in the Digital Age” (Virgin Books, 2018).
Leszek Jazdewski (LJ): We are talking after major elections in the UK, after the crushing triumph of the Labour organization and the historical defeat of the Tory Party. How did this happen?
Jason Stockwood (JS): I definitely feel much better present than yesterday after that message. It's an amazing achievement. After 14 years of chaos in Britain caused by a organization of tories, people desperately wanted change. In 7 years, we had 5 prime ministers. It was an absolute mockery and there were various kinds of scandals – from “Partygate” to the fresh gambling scandal, besides during the elections. All of this indicated a deficiency of morality.
This does not mean, however, that there are no decent people in the Conservative Party, but in the foreground even promises related to Brexit – due to the fact that that's truly why Boris Johnson was elected and that's why so many people gave him a ticket 5 years ago – they were an absolute lie and a parody. Those who voted for Brexit clearly see that no of the promises made have been fulfilled.
This situation shows that people are ready to change. For me, from a individual point of view, it's a miracle due to the fact that I've been a supporter of leftist politics my full life. (I had a short break for 5 years erstwhile the leader was Jeremy Corbyn due to the fact that he was a small besides utmost for me). However, after the last election, in 2019, I met many friends and respective Labour MPs. We had a heated discussion about whether the Labour organization would even exist. Democratic voices in this country spoke and needed a change, something new.
So it's just a miracle – going through the existential crisis related to whether the Labour organization is inactive crucial and has the right to exist, to a crushing triumph and to gain the majority.
This advancement cannot be underestimated in light of what Keir Starmer has done. So I am optimistic – if we can keep the current trajectory. due to the fact that the challenges we face present are immense in terms of public finances and the economy. If Keir Starmer truly manages to keep the course he has been following for the last 4 to 5 years, then we may have reason to hope.
It's almost as if we were in the preparatory period at our football club erstwhile we were getting fresh players. The time for optimism is before the ball kicks and before any matches start. If you can't be optimistic about the full period present – if you can't be optimistic about the fresh government present – you'll never be optimistic, will you?
LJ: What is realistic, and what should the fresh government do? What should be changed and what are the main priorities?
JS: It is simply a government led by a mission led by 5 priorities for Britain. They want to make certain that economical growth is absolutely at the centre of everything they have said. As a businessman, I know they take it seriously. They realize the request for entrepreneurship, economical growth and stableness in both our financial markets and in the conditions of our country that let people to make wealth and make the economy. They're totally focused on that.
Nevertheless, there are besides respective another policies that concern "the reflection of the streets", the simplification of crime and the restoration of assurance in our judicial system. At the same time, it is advanced time we started talking about opportunities, which were besides 1 of the main pillars. They're talking about breaking down barriers to opportunities. We have lost the sense of the built-in privileges of the Tories organization and of how social mobility has become the past, which is why it is simply a large mission.
Moreover, people know that the United Kingdom National wellness Service (NHS) is simply a immense part of our identity and what people want to protect. Meanwhile, for the last 14 years, it has been simply underfunded and inefficient operationally. Therefore, the ruling organization besides plans to focus on this.
Another issue (for me the most crucial one) is the usage of the transition to green energy. Either way, we gotta do this to save the planet and halt global warming. The fresh government is now fundamentally creating a national, almost sovereign wealth fund that will focus on this challenge. As an entrepreneur, I like it very much, due to the fact that over the next fewer years, as a consequence of the transition to a zero-net economy, we will make plenty of opportunities and wealth.
The government must be an investor in this process. It must pay for infrastructure and supervise initiatives to accomplish this objective. They intend to establish large British Energy, a state-owned company that will oversee these projects. Importantly, we will besides benefit from this, in the same way that Norway has utilized all its reserves over the last fewer decades. This has changed their public services – the gross generated by this initiative does not so scope private shareholders. We will see the same for large British Energy.
I am very happy about this transformation, due to the fact that taxpayers should benefit from it. To be honest, the infrastructure will inactive be paid by the taxpayer. That is why, in my opinion, we truly see that we are dealing with global opportunities, focused outside the United Kingdom, but in reality taxpayers will besides benefit over time, alternatively of just focusing on private capitalism. Although the government does not know the answers to all the questions today, it is simply a manifestation of its mission, not a “tailored” strategy, so that it can rise experts and private money to aid meet any of these challenges.
There is no uncertainty that the public vault has been severely depleted. However, we must besides remember that the current state has its roots in 2008 and the banking crisis, during which capitalism mocked us. We had private profits that were protected, but losses had to cover public losses. This led to a shift to the right due to the fact that the economy was not working.
Now we have a chance to say, "Look, there are respective adults in Britain." They're serious politicians, honest. The challenges facing them are enormous, but they have the will and the ability to meet them.
LJ: That brings us to the Grimsby issue. What have you achieved with Grimsby? The takeover of the football club seems a very amazing decision for individual who wants to focus on the renewal of the city. What's your vision?
JS: When Brexit happened in Britain, I was devastated to find ourselves in specified a situation. I truly didn't realize how this country could vote for this solution. For my return to university, there was a desire to realize what happened to our policy and this shift to the right.
One of the things that truly hit me was the work of philosopher Robert Putnam. In his works, he described how capitalism “worked” for the first 50 years. The reason for this was the fact that we had civilian institutions that brought us together – regardless of whether it was religion, trade unions, education, workplaces or various social groups. We had these civilian institutions, which, regardless of the vector of the identity on which we existed, or the classes of society from which we came, allowed us to unite through this kind of common good. These things have been destroyed.
That is why I wondered if there was any chance for Grimsby, who was 1 of the largest voting communities in the UK behind Brexit. I consider Grimsby my hometown – I have lived there since I was 18. I was profoundly active with this city – there is my family, a football club that I cheered for increasing up and which I inactive support. Meanwhile, 72% of the population voted for Brexit there. I thought it was the perfect chance to come back and effort to realize how to rebuild civilian institutions.
Politics makes us increasingly divided. That's why I wanted to see if there was a way to make a common communicative about the things people want to focus on together. And so the Grimsby Town F.C. football club, which is 146 years old, seemed to be 1 of the fewer places where we could meet and share experiences, regardless of our sex or cultural policy.
It was part of the strategy. On the 1 hand, we wanted to revitalize the football club, expanding its success, but at the same time we were besides reasoning about its social objectives. On the another hand, I chaired and raised money to build a fresh youth facility in the city, which will be opened next year – at the minute we are building it. The 3rd part of the strategy was an effort to find a way to build an organisation that would be able to gather all the common interests in the city in the form of a platform, but hopefully, it will besides tell a fresh communicative about a more optimistic future. I wanted to do this in a way that would enable the pooling of resources at national and global level with the local population implementing projects to rebuild the community. This is our future.
I was fortunate to meet another entrepreneur, Emily Bolton, who has worked for the past 20 years at the interface between public policy, social finance and social entrepreneurship. Together we wanted to effort to build a platform that would combine resources at national level with communities that are trying to operate locally, thus utilizing energy and enthusiasm for a sense of space.
We wanted to make it fun and make a sense of community that unites, builds relationships, connections and friendships. We have just tried to rebuild this community, due to the fact that erstwhile people meet and experience each another at this level, a) it gives greater individual satisfaction, and b) it truly starts to look beyond any political divisions in which in the last fewer years we have had to advocate for 1 side or the other.
We are trying to do this work on the basis of data and evidence so that it can become part of public policy. We want to show that it is not just about Grimsby, but alternatively about how to build this initiative and this example in Grimsby, so that our work can be utilized in cities across the UK – and hopefully in Western-like democracies around the world.
LJ: Are your social engagement and the fact that you have so many different contacts helping to transform the city? Or is this transformation derived from humans? What lessons that can apply universally and that can prove themselves outside the Grimsby community have been drawn so far?
JS: This is definitely a work in progress. We've been doing this for 3 years. This task is in no case "finished" – it is alternatively about getting momentum and progress. As for the lessons I have learned both at the individual level and at the level of the city, I must say that there is no shortage of intelligent, energetic and willing people in our community in Grimsby who want to do this job.
When I came here a fewer years ago, I didn't know who the people were who were truly trying to face the biggest problems and challenges of our community. Grimsby has any poorness issues. It utilized to be the largest fishing port in the world. These industries have disappeared, leaving a real gap in social issues. But there are no shortages of superb people who are willing to rotation up their sleeves and get to work.
Secondly, a large partner in these works was besides local government. What has happened over the last 14 years and beyond is that local government has an increasingly shrinking resource that it can allocate to initiatives that we care about due to austerity and the disastrous state finances. But there are besides good people in the local government who are partners in this conversation. They live in the neighborhood, their kids go to school there, and they have wellness care.
We want to make certain that we break the barriers that make people frequently see each another as opponents – as resource holders. We must see them as a suitable partner with a common vision, assuming that we all want to improve our local area. That was another large observation. We must unite people who share a common desire to improve the region and make a common communicative based on collective knowledge.
The 3rd lesson is that Grimsby is synonymous with any another place. There are many people who have left this place, but they inactive care very much about it, who want to aid and who can have resources, contacts or just energy and enthusiasm. It is so an effort to reconnect this diaspora with the city.
The origin of Grimsby was a large part of my identity. It was always the place I loved. It defined me and I care about him very much. So the question is, how can we usage this feeling? We're trying to build a diaspora community. We organize 3 telephone calls a year, during which everyone just calls us, and local residents just talk about their projects. People can engage in aid or simply offer moral support, money, their networking or simply ideas. It's a increasing resource.
The only thought that unites all these stakeholders is the love for a sense of place, an individual place – not in the sense of nationalism – on a very micro level, that is, the place where you come from. The city you come from is simply a large origin of pride and identity for all of us, even if we don't live in it anymore. Trying to connect with that feeling is beautiful. For me personally, it was besides a beautiful experience to be able to reconnect with the place I love and the people I care about – with my brothers, friends from school and many fresh friends in the city.
Everything good in life starts and ends with the quality of our relationship. And that is the basic thought behind our efforts. This is simply a relational way of trying to make a fresh communicative in which we all bring our own unique skills and talents to the table. We all benefit from this, too, due to the fact that we build and strengthen our sense of connection and relation with the place and our common love.
These connections are very tangible at the human level, due to the fact that they truly are reviving our own relationships and a sense of connection to something that we have lost a small in the last 20 or 30 years. It was a time erstwhile individualism and neoliberalism told us that we should focus on individual success. But now, from years of intellectual observation, we know that happiness and joy come from the quality of our relation and our sense of purpose. That is why working on this issue at Grimsby surely gave me both, which gives me large satisfaction besides on a individual level. All cities have that possibility.
LJ: How would you connect your individual past to what you're doing now?
JS: It might sound beautiful linear. It is always hard to look back, but we effort to make past sound more logical than it is in reality. I grew up in a very mediocre working household in Grimsby. My mom had 4 sons with 4 different partners. I inactive don't know who my father was. We were surviving on a benefit, but we had a happy childhood, even though we didn't have much money. But it was a childhood full of love, fellowship and bonds.
I was smart, but I didn't graduate. I've been traveling for a fewer years. And then, erstwhile I was 20, I started reading and learning on my own. I went back to university to survey doctrine just due to the fact that it was interesting to me. This was at a time erstwhile free university education could be obtained in Britain. I most likely couldn't afford it tonight, 'cause you gotta pay for it. But I already started studying. I was truly arrogant erstwhile I got admitted to Oxford after 40. For individual who grew up without any qualifications, it's amazing that I'm at the best university in the world.
I erstwhile told my children: “You know, the pace of your life depends on you, but anything is possible. But you don’t gotta rush to do everything in a conventional way.” True, I was very fortunate. I wrote a lot about this in articles in The Guardian. I utilized to believe that the harder you work, the more luck you get. And you can make your own luck in life, be the smith of your fate. But it's not the only way, due to the fact that I was lucky.
I was born erstwhile the net was invented in the late 1990s. I was in London and became active with respective companies that became the first wave of the net (so-called "Internet boom"). I found myself in the right place at the right time and ended building online companies at the beginning of the net Revolution, in the late 1990s and in the early 21st century before anyone truly knew what it would be. I created lastminute.com, a travel company, then match.com, a dating company. I've worked truly hard, I'm not denying it. But you can't hide that I was truly fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
There is specified a wonderful book entitled “The emergence of the Meritocracy” written in the 1950s by Michael Young. Its guiding thought is that if you work hard, you can handle it. However, the book was to be satirical. Yet, many have recognized it as the Bible. However, this presumption is simply false. What the author wrote about was a way to tell the communicative to people of the working class, while the fact is this, and present we already know that the privilege of birth and whether we are fortunate at the time of birth (from the point of view of geography, sex or cultural origin) is the top determinant of our success.
I'm a product of socialist upbringing, but I did a capitalist career. I love to build businesses and make money, but present it only makes sense for me to do something useful with it. I know I was lucky, but I worked hard too. I truly feel a moral work that drives me and gives me energy to do something useful with the happiness that has happened to me in life, due to the fact that I know that it is not entirely my property.
Perhaps you remember from John Rawls' doctrine classes and the thought of the veil of ignorance – as part of a thought experiment, let us presume that before you are born, you can be born in any life. If you were born in a life full of privileges and success, then knowing that, there is simply a chance that you will. That's why you have a work to do something about it. It definitely motivates me.
I know I was lucky. It's crucial to do something about it. It's surely my upbringing and the comparative poorness I've been raised in that makes me a product of the welfare state, so I benefited from it. In light of these events, I am not truly able to find whether I am a socialist who has learned to be a capitalist or a capitalist who now pretends to be a socialist, but both parts of my head live and I gotta accept both. But this must be done in the ministry of relationships and in doing something useful.
I've never been guided by money. A capitalist model of making large money and then being a philanthropist makes no sense to me. Our energy, enthusiasm and networking are more useful due to the fact that they let you to engage yourself personally and not just compose checks. Actually, I think the first is most likely more important. So, yes, my upbringing definitely affected where I am present and the way I think of the world.
Nevertheless, the education I managed to catch up on over the years, and the knowing of the philosophical foundations of how and what I think about the world, was truly helpful. The best is yet to come. Overall, I feel truly good, I inactive have energy and enthusiasm and I intend to effort to be as useful as possible.
This podcast was produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with the Movieno Liberal Social and the Liberté Foundation!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are liable for the content of the podcast nor for any way of utilizing it.
Podcast is besides available on platforms Sound, Apple Podcast, Stitcher and Spotify
Dr. Olga Łabendowicz translated from English
Read English at 4liberty.eu
