British Politics: Machiavelli's Memorandum

                               September 28th 2013 (From the print edition of The Economist)

Imagine that you are teaching a unit on the Renaissance and you want to begin with the essential question (What's a Machiavellian?) to help frame your unit. "Presenting historical problems as the basis for student learning," writes Edward J. Caron in Using Central Question to Design Issues-based History Units (2005), "challenges students to analyze historical events and decisions to inform their determinations about the present" (52). I came across an article from the September 28th 2013 print edition of The Economist that connects both past and present, although separated by some 500 years.

HALF a millennium ago this year Niccolo Machiavelli, a Florentine diplomat, issued a treatise, “The Prince”, setting out tactics for navigating a landscape not so different from today’s British political scene: the power squabbles within and between the principalities of 16th-century Italy. Then as now, power was fragmenting, making the arts of persuasion, coercion and image-building all the more essential. So Machiavelli’s work fizzes with relevant advice for David Cameron, the prime minister, as he prepares for the Conservative Party’s annual conference starting on September 29th. With 20 months until the next election, how can he keep his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, his MPs, his ministers and the people on side? In this memorandum Machiavelli (channelled by our correspondent) offers his advice

To: David Cameron 
From: Niccolo Machiavelli 
Date: September 28th 2013

SIR – I write to you in no little awe. In 2010 you failed to win an election in which most had assumed you would sweep to victory. You were forced to forge a coalition with your erstwhile opponents, the Liberal Democrats, as doubts swirled around the troubled British economy. Many believed that your leadership or the new government would fail within the year, but you proved them wrong. The economy is showing signs of recovery, albeit partial and imperfect ones. You are the most popular (or, to be precise, the least unpopular) of the three main party leaders, and your Conservative Party has almost closed the polling gap with Labour, whose lurch towards left-wing populism this week may yet backfire.

Yet still your position is weak. The electoral system does not favour you; your supporters are concentrated in certain pockets of the country and, with an average age of more than 60, your party members are dying off. To maintain your position in 2015 you will need a wide swathe of support. Your Labour opponent, Ed Miliband, may require only a 1% lead in national polls to obtain a majority, but without changing the current distribution of your party’s support, you need a 7% lead. Many of your MPs enjoy the benefits of incumbency, but obtaining such a lead by the election will be almost impossible.

CHAPTER I Becoming prince by favour of one’s fellow citizens

So you need to be pragmatic; for, as I have noted elsewhere, he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times. Many counsel you to pour your efforts into satisfying those who already support you: your party members and inveterate Conservative voters. But your country’s first-past-the-post electoral system will reward you little for it. Many of those people live in constituencies that your party already holds. Admittedly, the populist insurgents of the UK Independence Party are out to steal your supporters on the right. But as your poll-savvy former deputy-chairman, Lord Ashcroft, says, “constructing a UKIPesque manifesto would be not just ineffective but counterproductive, putting off potential voters who might otherwise be attracted from other parties.”

Look instead to the marginal constituencies: territories such as Dudley North, Croydon Central and Birmingham Northfield. To win a majority, you need to hold and take such seats. Most of the voters there who would consider voting for your party are relatively centrist. Increasingly, they are ethnically diverse, too. Lord Ashcroft’s polling intelligence, to which I am privy, shows that Labour’s lead in the most vulnerable Conservative constituencies has grown over the past two years. On the economy, health and education, voters in these seats trust the opposition more than they trust you. They think Labour is more concerned about people like them than you are. Changing this, surely, should be your priority. The best possible fortress is not to be hated by the people.

Moreover, if you fail to win a majority and another hung parliament ensues, you will need to be able to negotiate another coalition with the Lib Dems. Labour will make them generous offers in any negotiations (as it did last time, when it was thwarted only by the arithmetic). Between now and 2015, then, you must obtain a mandate from the voters and your party to be able to compete in such circumstances.

But how to obtain it? How to win the favour of swing voters without alienating your grassroots? How to attract supporters closer to the average voters in outlook, age and location? Permit me to offer you the following observations.

CHAPTER II That one should avoid being despised or hated

First, you need ministers with the loyalty and verve to carry out your mission to win over new parts of the country. Yet some members of your cabinet concentrate more on appealing to their colleagues and party members; they are positioning themselves for your political demise. In the past year your home secretary, Theresa May, and defence secretary, Philip Hammond, have looked particularly mutinous. Other ministers simply look tired and lacklustre.

At the same time MPs who share your outlook, and who understand the challenge your party faces, feel undervalued. Being in coalition means you have fewer powers of patronage. Do you ever wonder why your younger, fierier backbenchers, many of whom were first attracted to the party by your “modernising” project, are so disillusioned? They have too little to do! Throw out the disloyal and the underachieving and advance this new breed. Make allies of them before it is too late.

Such sweeping changes may cause fear. Good. It is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Patronage is one of your levers of power; you should be more prepared to pull it. If you use it consistently it will cause MPs to think twice before disobeying you. But you must avoid the impression that you wield it arbitrarily or unjustly. A prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred.

Your recent efforts to charm your backbenchers have been noted. Many of them proudly brandish handwritten letters from you. Your advisers are listening to them more readily, they report. But the odd kind word is not enough. Spend more time with your MPs; listen to their concerns. Talk to your party’s whips more often. Because if one is on the spot, disorders are seen as they spring up, and one can quickly remedy them; but if one is not at hand, they are heard of only when they are great, and then one can no longer remedy them.

Give loyal MPs jobs in devising policy, recruiting supporters and communicating with the people. Anything with a nice title usually does the trick. Better understanding your parliamentary party will help you overcome embarrassments such as your recent defeat on intervention in Syria, when 61 of your MPs did not vote for a government motion deliberately designed to win their support. One final piece of advice on winning over your MPs: do try to learn their names.

CHAPTER III Concerning the secretaries of princes

The first opinion one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them. Preparing your government and your party for the battles ahead is the job of your advisers and closest allies. They need to be three things: able, loyal and in clear roles. Too often, those working under you in Downing Street have not been the second or the third of these.

You have yourself to blame for the shortage of loyal consiglieri. You arrived in office touting a nice-sounding but ill-advised promise to reduce the number of political appointees in Downing Street and Whitehall. But civil servants were too hands-off—they were not committed to your political project (and why should they have been?). That led to debacles such as the 2012 budget, when a lack of political judgment in Downing Street forced you to reverse several policies. Putting a Conservative MP, Jo Johnson, at the head of the Policy Unit has helped avoid any further such embarrassments since, but still—insiders tell me—too few senior figures are working on the business of pushing your policies through in Whitehall.

They also complain about the lack of a clear hierarchy. Journalists, MPs and advisers alike receive conflicting messages from the three people planning your 2015 election campaign: George Osborne, the chancellor; Lynton Crosby, your chief strategist; and Grant Shapps, your party chairman. Rumours abound of a turf war between Mr Osborne and Mr Crosby. Who, exactly, is in charge? You need to make that clear. If not, your party’s pitch to the voters will be confused and weak.

And a prince’s closest advisers must be a mixture of two types of people: the sort who understand things for themselves, and the sort who understand what others can understand. You have too few of the former: plenty of field-marshals and wordsmiths, but too few big brains. The departures of radical thinkers such as Steve Hilton have accentuated this and contributed to the lack of new policies that Mr Johnson is valiantly attempting to correct. Voters like governments that have verve and ambition. Hire people who can ensure that yours does.

CHAPTER IV Concerning the way in which princes should keep faith

Obtaining and holding the widespread support of the public means winning their trust. As you are painfully aware, voters have little faith in you or your opponents. Winning it back requires you to do two things.

The first is that you need to be (or at least appear) authentic. People do not support leaders they believe to be saying things purely in order to be elected. Consider the issue of the European Union (EU). The public is broadly hostile to it, but swing voters do not vote for parties that “bang on about” it (as you once put it) for electoral reasons. Your party’s failed attempts to win power in 2001 and 2005 are evidence enough of that. It should not have come as a surprise that when you announced a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, support for your party barely moved in response.

Even immigration, which surveys suggest is one of the most important issues for voters, is more complicated than it looks. Voters know that you are not as hard-line as they are (69% want to reduce net immigration to zero, according to YouGov)—and they can tell when you are pandering. You may lose more votes for appearing inauthentic than you gain by edging fractionally closer to their views. Moreover, though many say that immigration is bad for the country, few reckon it affects them personally. Concentrating on it at the expense of topics that do—health, education and jobs—is not wise.

The second way to restore trust is to avoid making commitments that you may be unable to keep. Your promise to eradicate the deficit within one parliament (one you have since admitted you will break) is one example. Your pledge, made in 2007 and later reversed, to match Labour’s spending plans is another. So resist the temptation—however great—to make grandiose promises. In economically volatile and coalition-prone times, you need to make clear how negotiable a policy is and how prone to circumstances. Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but she still leaves us to direct the other half.

An entreaty

There you have my advice. Reach out to the centre, not your existing supporters; make allies of your young backbenchers; surround yourself with more big brains; strive for authenticity, or at least the appearance of it. I leave you with one final entreaty. Your task between now and 2015 is to reconcile party and country. That means grasping the world as it is, not as it should be. Some within your party are disloyal, and others hold unelectable views. The average voter is not as conservative as you or your MPs. Bridging the gap between the two requires persuasion and coercion on both sides. It means appealing to different audiences at the same time. So if, in the coming months, you find that your enemies call you Machiavellian, do not be disheartened. It means you are doing something right.

Using Google Apps to “Empower Students”

This evening (Sept. 26^th) we had a guest lecturer from Skyline High School, IT specialist Peter Pasque. 100% of the students at Skyline, Mr. Pasque informed the Secondary MAC cohort, use e-portfolios. In addition to learning how to use Google docs, every student also learns how to create a Google site. I was really encouraged to learn how the students used technology when working together on “their collaborative projects.” This is an important, although often overlooked, component of education – it helps to bolster students’ social-emotional learning. While some parts of his lecture was laced with technical jargon (think of “high quality RSS feeds”), there was a lot of information about how to better connect with a generation of students who are “Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction” to quote from The New York Times (published: November 21, 2010). “All of this is to help our students stay organized,” concluded Pasque, who continues to teach his students some much-needed 21^st century skills through state-of-the-art technology such as Google Apps. As far as my own pedagogical practice is concerned, I would like to learn more about this sort of “digital information” as I, too, look to the future, both personally and professionally.  

Prezi Presentation

I've posted below a screen shot from my first Prezi presentation. I welcome any and all feedback; it's currently under construction. The smaller circles in 3 of the 4 outer circles are collections of primary source materials, which, during the course of the presentation, will be the focus of discussion.

Teaching with Technology

I return to the blogosphere after a 6-week hiatus. I began this semester with some great ideas of how to incorporate technology in my curriculum. But, unfortunately, I am placed at a school where the use of technology is, well, not exactly state-of-the-art. In fact, the use of cell phones (one of the many forms of technology) is forbidden during class. (Some of my fellow interns have suggested that, due to the dearth of personally-owened laptops in my field placement, I could incorporate texting into my teaching.)

In sum, how does one reconcile "teaching with technology" at an institution where the use of technology in the classroom (e.g., SmartBoard, PowerPoint, Prezi, ChromeBooks, to mention only a few) is nonexistent? In fact, it has been my observation that there are some internal struggles between the "old school"educators and those of us who, having been schooled in the 21st century, are more technologically savvy.

Field placement aside, I really appreciated Rory's ChromeBook exercise on the first day of class. I would very much like to try that in my field placement during the course of my internship. Laptops are available for the students to use in the school library. But since there is no centrally-located Smartboard, or its equivalent, there, it would be difficult to share the slides with the students. The culminating community slide sharing event was a very important exercise: It was lively, entertaining, and helped create a shared sense of solidarity; it created a shared belief that we, as 21st century learners, are in this together. It also helped bring us together, as a cohort.

I welcome any suggestions on how I might incorporate technology in my current classroom. This will require a lot of preparation: I will have to usher the students down the hall to the school library, where I might have to reserve space several days in advance, in order to do so.