This week we’re discussing life, politics, and the power of ‘ordinary hope’ with Professor Marc Stears, the inaugural director of the UCL Policy Lab.
This week, we have a slightly different kind of episode to normal. Rather than discussing an academic publication, we’ll be looking at the ideas and career of Professor Marc Stears.
Marc is currently the inaugural director of the UCL policy lab, set up to break down the barriers between academic researchers and broader society. His career to date has included stints in academia at Cambridge, Oxford and Macquaire, being the Chief Speechwriter of the Labour Party, writing major speeches for Ed Milliband, the CEO of the New Economics Foundation, and the Director of the Sydney Policy Lab.
Marc has some big ideas about politics and political reform. Two particularly attractive and compelling facets of Marc's work, found especially in two of his books, Out of the Ordinary and Demanding Democracy, are his optimism about the prospects for a better politics, and his vision of putting citizens at the heart of change and progress. His work offers us a faith in ordinary people, and in the possibility of a non-utopian kind of ordinary hope – and these are ideas that we discuss in this episode.
Mentioned in this episode:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, speech, politics, book, labour party, ucl, crises, academic, big, ed, ordinary, community, gave, political, argument, ed miliband, ideas, writing, marc, mobilisation
SPEAKERS
Emily McTernan, Marc Stears
Emily McTernan 00:06
This is UCL Uncovering Politics. This week we're discussing life, politics and the power of ordinary hope with Professor Marc Stears, the inaugural director of the UCL Policy Lab.
Hello. My name is Emily McTernan and welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics, the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
This week, we have a slightly different kind of episode from our usual. Rather than discussing a single new academic publication, we'll be looking at the ideas and career of Professor Marc Stears. Marc is currently the inaugural director of the UCL Policy Lab, set up to break down the barriers between academic researchers and broader society. His career to date has included stints in academia at Cambridge, Oxford and Macquarie, being the Chief Speechwriter of the Labour Party, writing major speeches for Ed Miliband, being the CEO of the New Economics Foundation, and the Director of Sydney Policy Lab. All before joining us here at UCL.
And Marc has some big ideas about politics and political reform that will be the subject of today's podcast. Two particularly attractive and compelling facets of Marc's work – found especially in his books Out of the Ordinary and Demanding Democracy – are his optimism about the prospects for a better politics and his vision of putting citizens and their interests at the heart of how we make progress. His work offers us a faith in ordinary people and in the possibility of a non-utopian kind of ordinary hope. And these are the ideas that we'll discuss.
Welcome, Marc, to UCL Uncovering Politics.
Marc Stears 01:44
Thank you so much.
Emily McTernan 01:45
To celebrate your wonderfully diverse and impressive career, you recently gave your inaugural lecture at UCL. A central theme of the talk was the importance of ordinary hope, which reflects your broader research into the ordinary. Could you talk us through this idea of ordinary hope?
Marc Stears 01:59
Yeah, thank you so much.
Um, the key for me has always seemed to be connecting what we do as academics and what we do as sort of politically engaged citizens with the contours of everyday life. You know, I think too often we've separated ourselves away. So when we think about big ideas, you know, either academic ideas or political ideas, we think that they have to be sharply distinct from what it is that we do in the everyday – in our neighbourhoods or in our schools or with our friends. And I think I've always been trying to bridge that divide, or to see the stuff that goes on in everyday life as being the sort of fundamental foundation for what might go on when we're thinking, you know, more ambitiously, or what we think is more ambitiously.
So you know, community interactions; the sense of obligation that we have to each other, you know, in our own places, neighbourhoods; the feelings that go on in, you know, a really great local primary school; the opportunities that workers have when they collaborate with each other in their trade unions and, you know, on the factory floor. All of that I think provides the sort of foundation for what you've described as a sort of more optimistic sort of political and intellectual life.
Emily McTernan 03:14
Great. And how do you see that connecting to, or letting us say much about, the broader geopolitical crises that we face more globally? I mean, you might think that looking at how things are going well in a local primary school isn't going to help us very much with thinking about what to do about the war in Ukraine or with rising energy prices or cost of living crises. So how do these two sets of things link up?
Marc Stears 03:36
I think we live at a time of enormous crises. I mean you're absolutely right in that. And I think many of us get understandably sort of fixated on the big – you know, on the climate crisis, or the geopolitical crisis or, you know, sort of economic inequalities and injustices. And then we sort of... You know, our eyesight or our focus is on them and what might be the global solutions to them.
But then what we aren't doing is we're not thinking about the process by which change might actually occur. So, you know, we're imagining that we are a sort of global dictator able to push one button or a different one that will, you know, or a prime minister able to pull one lever and suddenly something happens in Burnley.
Whereas, in fact, the realities of our politics are that what goes on in the micro – in the everyday, in the community, in the places where we live – is actually at least one of the major determinants of what eventually goes on in the macro.
And to make that a little less abstract. You know, as you kindly mentioned at the start, I wrote a book called Demanding Democracy about radical movements in American history. And the thing which becomes abundantly clear when you do that is that the civil rights movement – you know, probably the most successful transformative political movement of the last century in advanced democracies – you know, started with community action, not starting with action on Capitol Hill. You know, eventually of course it got to big bits of legislation and major, you know, judicial decisions from the Supreme Court. But it all started with African American citizens refusing to be segregated in their workplaces or in their community cafes or in their schools through action that often began through everyday conversations on people's front doorsteps, or, as I've said, in primary schools, or around the corner, as it were. And I think, you know, once you see that – and you recognise that it finally got to extraordinary heights, but beginning as I say as a kind of small or local – then you kind of think that there isn't a trade-off between these two things, but they're actually part and parcel of the same endeavour.
Emily McTernan 05:40
And the thought you have is that we should be thinking in terms of hope rather than anger in these contexts. Is that right? Because you might think, particularly the example you've just given, that a really strong motivation for this kind of political change from the micro up to the macro would be something like rage or anger. And of course, a lot of philosophers recently have defended the importance of these motivations in reaching some kind of justice and progress. But your focus is very much more on the hope aspect.
Marc Stears 06:03
Yeah, look, I think there's no doubt that there are things to be angry about and that there are moments in sort of political and social life where a sort of explosion of indignation gets something going, you know. But I guess I come from a school of thought which distinguishes between what we call 'mobilisation' and sort of 'organising'. And sort of mobilisation can happen, I think, with a big bang of anger: you get millions of people on the street to just kind of shout. And that can have important consequences and long-term impacts. But it's different from what we call 'organising', which is a sort of long, slower, drawn-out process whereby people get used to working with each other, come up with new solutions, put things into practice, experiment, try things out, and then do it all over again.
And I think, you know, my sense is that in order to solve those big, complex problems of the kind that you've described, you were going to need at least a large part of that sort of organising philosophy as well as those occasional explosive moments of mobilisation.
So, you know, again, I wouldn't want to see them as a straightforward 'either/or', but I think sort of hopeful action – which takes a long time and which is grounded in people's everyday experiences – is at least, you know, part of the solution to the challenges that we face.
Emily McTernan 07:22
Swinging back to your inaugural lecture, you mentioned in that lecture that the idea of ordinary hope you think it's apparent in the thinking of Kier Starmer. And you mentioned that Kier Starmer's upbringing to some degree reflects your own, growing up in the tail end of the golden age of capitalism where ordinary optimism was found, for example, in your personal experience of your family's economic progress.
Emily McTernan 07:42
So I wonder if we could swing to that. Would you maybe talk to us a bit about how you see these ideas potentially influencing the Labour Party as it gears itself up towards an election? And maybe also about your childhood? Was that what kick started your interest in politics, this experience of growing up at this optimistic moment? Or was it something else?
Marc Stears 07:59
Yeah, no, look. I think yeah, I mean, definitely ages me, but you're spot on. You know, when I was very young, I remember it was the tail end of what we call the golden age of, you know, sort of post-war British capitalism. You know, I was in South Wales in the 1970s, early 1980s. And, you know, before the miners' strike hit in, you know, sort of '83, it had been a period of, you know, 20, 30 years of growth, of new social services, of people starting to live longer, have more aspiration. You know, I went to, you know, a local comprehensive school which had been built in that period of time. And there was a wonderful NHS surgery in our little suburban village which, again, had emerged from that sort of post-war boom and that sense of optimism and the community coming together.
And one of the stories I always tell is I remember as a six or seven year old, you know, sort of having to go to the doctor and asking my mum, like, you know, who pays for this? And like, her pride in telling us well, we all pay, you know, this is the community coming together to look after each other, and whoever you are, the doctor will see you and try his or her best to get you back to health. And I just remember the thrill of that as a kid, like suddenly realising that people were looking out for us. That was just magical, really.
And then, of course, all of that started to evaporate as the '80s wore on and Thatcherism took hold and, you know, a kind of harder form of life sort of prevailed. And I think you know, what, often when I'm looking back to my childhood or to the earlier years from our politics, you think like so little of that sense of optimism and collective endeavour has survived. You know, there have been upturns: you know, there are things in the Blair and Brown years which were good, like the introduction of the minimum wage and all things like that. But nonetheless, that spirit of social cooperation, and the hope that it gave ordinary families like my mum and dad, I think has long been missing.
So then when I turn to contemporary politics and what might be possible, that's what I'm always looking for. I'm looking for sort of politicians that understand that too often life is not hopeful for ordinary people – you know, working class people, middle class people across the country – but that it can be, and collective effort is what we required to make it so. And so when you see glimmerings of that it sort of makes me smile and gives me a bit of a spring in my step and hope that better times might be ahead.
Emily McTernan 10:27
And you see some hope then for those better times. Do you think that there's prospects that the contemporary incarnation of the Labour Party might lead us back to that?
Marc Stears 10:36
The truth is it's, like, still a mixed bag, isn't it? I mean, like, you know, we... I think we've grown; we've gone through a period – let me put it this way, a sort of 10-year period I think – of anger and indignation of all kinds. And again, some of it justified and some of it not, you know, from the far right to the far left, and a kind of populist politics. Very noisy, very sort of agitational, occasionally giving glimpses of a better world, but often, I think, just leaving people feeling stressed out and probably more powerless than when they started.
And I think what we're heading into is a period of slightly more calm heads and thoughtful and considered responses. The challenge, though, is, you know, are those calm heads just going to be sort of boringly orthodox, like not actually taking on the problems of the last four decades, or are those calm heads going to be sort of seriously engaged in the hard work of reform and change that I think we require?
And you know, and on a good day at the moment, I think we might well get the latter. And there are bits of what Joe Biden has been doing and bits of what Anthony Albanese has been doing that make you think, well, there's a social democratic politics emerging which is serious, considered, a little bit slow sometimes, but nonetheless, like, dedicated to making things better. Yeah. But then occasionally, they fall back into, you know, sort of risk averse, technocratic politics and it doesn't really look as if the big change is actually happening anytime soon. So, you know, I tried to be hopeful, and there are definitely glimmerings, but I don't think it's a sort of done deal yet where we can all sort of sit back and, you know, sort of celebrate their success.
Emily McTernan 12:16
Let's turn then to talking about your experience working for the Labour Party as a speechwriter. So we fast forward quite a few years, I guess, from the upbringing questions. The next stage of your career – writing speeches for the Labour Party – sounds fascinating. Did your academic work in political theory impact your work as a speech writer, do you think?
Marc Stears 12:34
It did in two ways.
I mean, the first way is I worked for Ed Miliband. And Ed is wonderful man and he's also, you know, a highly intellectual politician. So many of those speech writing sessions with Ed were very familiar to any academics listening. You know, so those of you who've written essays or papers or lectures, then, you know, it was often very similar process with Ed: you know, we'd read some books, we'd talk to some clever people, we'd kind of think things through, we'd like go backwards and forwards and relitigate arguments. And, yeah, it felt oftentimes being in an academic setting. And I know that some of his critics listening will say you can tell that from the outputs, you know – you know, often more carefully considered logical argument than sort of soaring rhetoric, because that was very much sort of Ed's style. So that helped.
But the second thing I think which really made a difference was, you know, I had been fortunate to work in my political theory life with some extraordinary thinkers. So I collaborated with Danielle Allen, who some people will know from her fabulous book Talking to Strangers, and with Bonnie Honig. We were writing together about political realism and compromise in politics and democratic challenge and all the questions we've just been talking about, really. And what I took from Danielle and Bonnie really flowed into every part of that political endeavour. I mean, they are political thinkers who show that, you know, very, very high-powered political philosophy or political theory need not be detached from very everyday political concerns. And so I tried to channel as much of that as I possibly could into the work that I was doing,
Emily McTernan 14:12
And what lessons did you learn, do you think, or should we learn perhaps in general from Ed Miliband's unsuccessful 2015 general election campaign?
Marc Stears 14:19
I think everybody probably takes the same lesson in a way from Ed's time now – you know, whether they are criticising him from the left or from the right – is that there were too many moments of indecision probably in that five years that Ed was leader, that there were competing ideas about what the future of Labour or social democratic or left politics ought to be, and that Ed was such an open-minded and creative person that he sort of gave some indication that he might go in all various different kinds of directions. You know, so sometimes a big aggressive speech attacking predatory capitalism; another a very communitarian speech, you know, using some of my ideas here about sort of ordinariness and the possibility of change from below; you know, at other times very technical arguments about what's required for tackling climate change. And all of them kind of good in their way, but never probably being sustained enough over a particular period of time.
And I don't blame Ed for that because, you know, what we were doing was we were emerging out on the other side of the financial crisis, the collapse of a long-standing Labour government, trying to reimagine the party, whilst also trying to run an opposition. And so I think his instinct was to try ideas out and see where the energy might be. But I do think at the end of the day that meant that you hadn't been prosecuting a single argument loudly enough or with, you know, sort of confidence and determination over the long period of time, which you probably do need to do to win an election.
Emily McTernan 15:49
Great. And that leads us neatly onto the next question. So the next section was going to be: what do you think is a fundamental elements of a good speech? And it sounds like in this context perhaps consistency is one of them.
Is there anything else that any budding or aspiring speech writers might want to think about as they construct-?
Marc Stears 16:04
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I do love the process of speech writing. I mean, you know, one of the great things about being able to step out of academia into speech writing for the years that I did was you work with people who can do things with words which are just magical, you know, like, you never get taught as an academic, you know. And so I worked with theatre directors and movie directors and script writers, and they taught me all kinds of amazing things about writing.
I mean, I think probably the big thing which I take away – an obvious point, really, but it's important – is that speeches are stories and not just logical arguments. And so they've got to have character in them. And often that's the character of the person giving the speech, you know. So they're telling their own life story, or they're making sense of, you know, important determining moments in their life, or they're giving a sense of some deep, profoundly held values or vision that they might have. But, you know, they are the primary sort of actor in the story, and they are describing themselves as much as describing the argument that they're trying to make.
And obviously Barack Obama is the most recent genius in that vein. I mean, every Obama speech is really a little bit of autobiography as well as a sort of, you know, description of a policy proposal or what have you.
So I think that's probably the biggest lesson that I learned. And I've always tried to share that with anyone trying to write a speech, which is, you know, if you hold yourself back, or you don't allow yourself to be part of what it is that you're sharing, then your audience says, well, what's the point of listening to you, you know, I could just read this in a textbook. Whereas what they want to do is connect with the character who's making the argument in front of them.
Emily McTernan 17:45
That's a really interesting insight into a speech. I wonder, is there any worry that this leads more towards a sort of personality politics or a big man politic because you're centring the individual in those speeches so much rather than the-?
Marc Stears 17:56
Yeah, I mean, that's right. I mean, I think that the challenge always – and again, I think Obama was very good at this – is to connect the very personal, very particular story with the grander argument or bigger narrative that you want to be developing. And it really takes us back to the start of our conversation today, which is the sort of small and the big shouldn't be in opposition to each other, but they are actually mutually reinforcing. So telling a story from one's life or from your own set of values ought to be the sort of emotional underpinning for something else, which is a logical account of what's going on in a country or in the world and what actions are required to turn things around.
And I think the problem is – the problem we actually face is that – as you say that people tend to be good at one or at the other, and it's very rare that you get people who combine the two. And that means the sort of emotionally powerful speech givers tend to be the populists or, you know, the folks who actually don't really have anything to say. But then the people who do have something technical to say are often so dry and so sort of abstract that they're unable to get an audience to sentimentally connect with them, and people sort of glaze over and turn off. And, you know, I think the challenge for us always ought to be: how can you reconcile or bring these two things together so that people's pulse quickens when they're listening, they get excited, or their eyes start to water, they feel the sentiment of the emotion; but at the same time, they're engaging practically and properly with the issues at hand? And, as I say, it can be done, but too often I think people revert to one end or the other of that spectrum.
Emily McTernan 19:33
And turning now to your current role with the UCL Policy Lab. You're seeking to bring together diverse people – citizens, scholars, policymakers and others – to improve politics and policy. What lessons do you draw from your career up to this point about how best to achieve that? Perhaps we've tackled some of that already. I guess getting that story centred as we try and talk to people outside of the academic bubble?
Marc Stears 19:54
It's all for me... That's right. It's all about the humanity essentially which is, I think, partly just because of how we're trained as academics. What we tend to do is to lean on the sort of evidence or the arguments or the technical detail, our sophistication, our toolkit, and think that that's what ought to get us an audience. Whereas in fact, you've got to do the human work first, which is to establish the connection, find the areas of common interest, and as my old friend Arnie Graf always put it, remember that relationship precedes action – you know, that people will only ever do something with you once they like you, or trust you, or believe in you, or, you know, have some sense of what it is that you're trying to achieve.
So what I'm trying to encourage our academics to do, and sort of work with folks on, is to build those connections, you know, with all kinds of people – policymakers, journalists, community campaigners: spend time with each other, understand each other's points of view and perspectives and where people come from, and then genuinely collaborate by bringing our special academic skillset into a conversation with different kinds of skillsets.
And you know, often when I say all that it often sort of frustrates people in the sense that it does sound slower than just turning up and giving a paper and hoping to have an impact, you know. And there are definitely people in university administration all around the world who kind of hope that all an academic needs to do is to give a lecture or send it off, print off to somebody, you know, and change will happen. But in my experience, you know, you've got to do that sort of proper human work first. And then all kinds of things become possible which weren't previously possible.
Emily McTernan 21:34
It's a very optimistic picture of the important work that the Policy Lab will be doing.
What do you see its role being in an era of perma crisis? So are you optimistic that this will be of real assistance to people who are trying to make the kinds of change that we've been discussing today?
Marc Stears 21:48
I think I've become even more optimistic since arriving at UCL. You know, so we launched the Policy Lab seven, eight months ago, and I thought it would take a long, long time to open people up to the kind of possibilities I've just been describing. But what I've actually discovered is because of the crises we face – you know, because these problems are so intense and so scary, you know, climate, you know, economic injustices, etc. – policymakers of all kinds, and including in parts of the ideological spectrum you might not imagine, they come into these conversations open to learn and to think and to get to know people.
And we've had, you know, it's been amazing. We've had cabinet ministers and shadow cabinet ministers, their teams, you know, high-brow journalists, you know, heads of trade unions, community campaigners, like, always not just responding to an email, but like turning up to start a conversation over coffee with research teams in UCL and to develop those kinds of relationships that we've just been talking about. And that, I think, comes from an eagerness to work out what can we do about these crises that we're confronted with and a sense that, you know, what we're currently doing doesn't work. And what we're currently doing doesn't work, you know, partly because there are too few voices around the table or there are too few perspectives being taken into account or someone out there with a fantastic solution has never been invited before, you know, into the room.
So, you know, I'm very, very confident that we are making headway and that relational work, bringing people into discussions with each other, is the sort of fundamental precondition for coming up with new answers to things that we all want resolved.
Emily McTernan 23:29
And I take it that your upcoming book England, Whose England? is very much about examining the challenges and possibilities that we face. So I've heard that you've been travelling around the UK, including places like Blackpool, to try and get a sense of those challenges in more concrete terms. I wonder if you could tell our listeners a bit about the book and about what you found on those visits around England?
Marc Stears 23:50
Yeah, so I collaborated on this book with my great friend and sort of inspiration, Tom Baldwin. And Tom was a journalist in earlier life, and then he came to work with Ed Miliband with me, and then he helped run the People's Vote Campaign, the sort of anti-Brexit campaign. And after all of that time, Tom and I sort of sat down and everything had been so hard: we'd lost the Brexit referendum, you know, we'd lost the election with Ed, and so many people were bleak about the future of the country. And so we kind of wanted just to, again, investigate the sources of optimism or hope – what might be out there that would make us feel better about the potential for, you know, for a fairer future. And Tom, being a journalist, just said that the thing you've got to do, obviously, is to talk to people.
And so at that point, when we started, I was still in Sydney, and he just started going around the country talking to, again, council leaders or heads of voluntary organisations or people like really making change in their own neighbourhoods. And the stories were just so inspiring. I mean, it sounds cliché to say it but the uplift that we felt from hearing what people are able to do in extraordinarily difficult circumstances gave us a sense of a country which we wanted to share more widely, which is why we wrote the book.
And so, the book really is a discussion between two ways of looking at the country. One, very grandiose, very abstract, sometimes very angry, you know – just full of a sort of bigness that is not rooted in people's actual lives or in actual places. And we contrast that with what we find when you take this more community-oriented perspective and try to see the changes that people are making.
You know, Tom spent some time at Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club and saw the work that their charitable foundation is doing on developing sort of racial integration, racial harmony in parts of Wolverhampton. And, again, the most unlikely sort of source for social change, but the most wonderful stories of people coming together across difference in a community which has been riven by social hatreds in the past. It's just fantastic stories.
But also the work in Blackpool that the council leader is doing trying to negotiate with both the Tory Party and the Labour Party to get support for very basic social services in an extraordinarily challenged town. And just that level of dedication and eventual success gives you a sense that there is something for all of us to do when we're confronted by the difficulties that we see all around us.
Emily McTernan 26:18
So I take it this one's much more focused on contemporary change, contemporary politics, whereas your previous books – is this right, is this fair to say – have been looking at the past to get potential solutions for the future?
Marc Stears 26:29
I couldn't... Exactly right, exactly. I mean, I think basically Tom made me braver. I mean, not to have a go at historians because I think I am a historian really. Like I always feel really comfortable in a library surrounded by archives or old books, you know. I've got them all around me in my office at home like, you know, sort of very dusty books you pick up in second-hand book shops about the Labour Party in the 1920s. And that's my, like, natural home. But Tom would say like, come on, like the country is facing contemporary challenge and it needs some of us to turn our minds to what we ought to do about it, or you know, especially those of us who have been in roles advising politicians – like what would we say if we were sat in a room with Kier Starmer tomorrow, you know?
And to answer that you have to talk to people or see people or research with people who are making change right now. And so, you know, he gave me the energy and the impetus to do that. And I hope people will enjoy the kind of product which I think takes the sort of ethos, what I've tried to have in my historical work, and brings it up to date.
Emily McTernan 27:32
When should we expect this book? When does it hit the shelves?
Marc Stears 27:35
Who knows! it's off with the publishers. I would love... The manuscript is done and it's with its publisher right now and we are going through the process – but again, any academic listening to this podcast will know – of waiting for comments and feedback and then publication dates. But hopefully sooner rather than later.
It's already had three prime ministers in the drafting, you know, so every time that somebody resigns you have to re-edit it. So goodness knows how many there will be before it finally arrives on the bookshelf.
Emily McTernan 28:05
There's a less optimistic vision of the future right there in the number of prime ministers to come.
Thank you so much, Marc, for joining us today and giving us such a positive vision of politics and of the possibility of reform and a fairer future.
We've been exploring the career and research of Marc Stears. Remember to make sure that you don't miss out on that or other future episodes of UCL Uncovering Politics, all you need to do is subscribe. You can do so on Apple, Google Podcasts or whatever podcast provider you use. And while you're there, we'd love it if you could take a moment of your time to rate or review us too.
I'm Emily McTernan. This episode was researched by Alice Hart and produced by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann.
This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.