No wonder nationalisation is popular when capitalism has delivered for too few (original) (raw)

The British public believe that capitalism is greedy, selfish and corrupt — at least according to a report released by the Legatum Institute which attracted much attention this month.

The Populus polling on which the report was based finds, among other things, that the public want key utilities to be nationalised, chief executives’ wages to be capped, and the government to rein in big business.

This has started a debate – particularly around high levels of support for nationalisation – about whether this represents a change: has the centre ground shifted? Is Jeremy Corbyn really the new mainstream?

In answering these questions, we rely partly on comparisons with historical polling data which, unfortunately, is limited. However, research from NatCen offers some clues. As the Legatum Institute noted, NatCen’s British Social Attitudes polling has shown that the proportion of the public who want to “increase taxes and spend more” is at its highest point for a decade.

In the United States Gallup has found that the proportion of the public who say they lack confidence in big business has risen significantly since the turn of the century.

High levels of support for nationalisation in Britain are not altogether new: polls by Angus Reid/Sunday Express in 2012 and YouGov in 2013 showed majority support for public ownership of railways and energy companies. Going back to 1999, an ICM/Guardian poll showed that a majority wanted Railtrack, the predecessor to Network Rail, to be renationalised.

It would be foolish to argue that the financial crisis, wage stagnation, globalisation, and rapid advancement in technological capabilities have had no effect on the way the public think about capitalism and how the economy works — or does not work — for the public benefit.

By the same token, neither should a tendency towards anti-free market sentiment be attributed to Jeremy Corbyn having shifted deep-seated public attitudes wholesale in little over two years.

Can the political establishment dismiss these findings as perennial grumblings that will never find their way to the ballot box? Absolutely not.

Advocates of capitalism say that it works because it rewards success and penalises failure without sentiment.

But the same strictures apply to capitalism itself. In the past decade it has simply delivered too little and for too few to make its continuation unreformed the certainty it once appeared to be.

Will Clothier is a senior research executive at Populus