Up the Down Escalator: Why the global pessimists are wrong by Charles Leadbeater, Penguin, 拢20.00, ISBN 0670913227 Reviewed by Michael Cross
Charles Leadbeater tells us that he works from his bedroom. He should get out more.
For all the 鈥済lobal鈥� of the subtitle, Up the Down Escalator displays some curiously local preoccupations. The editorial policy of the tabloid Daily Mail and the organisation of Tony Blair鈥檚 policy-making team are of great significance to London think tanks, but possibly not to the fate of the planet. Leadbeater, a research associate at voguish London think tank Demos, presumably knows his market. He鈥檚 writing for Britain鈥檚 political classes about that British disease, political pessimism.
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Margaret Thatcher once labelled her critics 鈥渕oaning minnies鈥�. Tony Blair, now at a similar stage in his premiership, shows similar frustration with the chattering classes who do not all share his bright-eyed optimism. Leadbeater identifies the culprits: a 鈥減essimists鈥� alliance鈥� of nostalgic conservatives and disillusioned radicals who see the England of their respective dreams going to the dogs.
Hooray, says Leadbeater, who believes we should celebrate the death of utopianism, with its ideological certainties, and revel instead in a messier age of 鈥渋magination, dissent, dispute and creativity鈥�. Unfortunately, this argument for pluralism is not by itself enough to set the political classes chattering. Plenty of others have reached similar conclusions: Karl Popper springs to mind, not to mention Alexis de Tocqueville.
So, in search of his big idea, Leadbeater broadens his brush to cover reasons to be cheerful about environmental change, the post-dotcom economy and globalisation. His message: don鈥檛 panic. We鈥檙e richer, healthier and better governed than at any time in history. Science, technology and the human spirit will get us out of any holes we鈥檙e currently digging. This argument relies on the assumption that because every apocalyptic prediction up to now has been wrong, current ones probably will be too. But we鈥檙e only in a position to make that argument because those previous predictions were wrong.
Leadbeater鈥檚 supporting evidence is equally thin: a ramble through some recent books blended with cheery domestic anecdote: 鈥淭he only people who come into my room and boss me around are my kids.鈥� At times it resembles a monologue from an unusually chirpy London cabbie. Give me a moaning minnie any day.