‘We live in a time of great political turmoil and stand at the cusp of profound technological and ecological changes. Now is a crucial moment to think about whether our political institutions are fit to face these challenges and what we can do as a community to ensure our democratic future'

Professor Ben Ansell, Reith Lecturer

If you're not already listening to this year's BBC Reith Lectures, please do so. Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Oxford University, is speaking about the future of democracy: whether it's in retreat across the world, whether citizens of wealthy countries have embraced a false sense of security, how to build a sense of solidarity in polarised societies, and how to enable continued economic growth without wrecking the environment in the process.

As Share Radio listeners will be aware, these are all issues which we have addressed at length over the past few years, and Ben Ansell brings a fresh new perspective of research and debate into this critical concern for human civilization.

Our quest for a more egalitarian form of capitalism is built on a deep appreciation for the roles of disintermediation and a sense of individual ownership with participation for all, and it will be interesting to see if these are recognised in Ben Ansell’s set of four lectures, which are all being made available through BBC Sounds, as they are delivered in the run up to Christmas.

It will also be interesting to see how he approaches the need to evolve democratic accountability from its current national constraints towards a global perspective. This becomes more and more relevant as humanity's need for long-term governance rises in order to cope with climate change, conflict and international tensions, and with the acute polarisation of wealth across the world.

Our commentary today addresses the need for an individual sense of ownership and the responsibility which accompanies it, and how this context is undergoing a metamorphosis for young people.

The link between ownership and responsibility is evident to anyone familiar with homeownership in contrast to rental tenancy. Homeowners maintain and improve their properties and generally care for their appearance and surroundings carefully; rental properties are the responsibility of the landlord, and the tenant feels no equivalent sense of responsibility beyond his/her immediate responsibilities.

This link between ownership and responsibility is at the heart of the proposals for ‘Stock for Data’, which is that customers and users of tech giant services across the world should receive equity shares in return for their data and analysed activity, and its subsequent harvesting — including the use of generative artificial intelligence. That participation in wealth creation would not only enable the receipt of dividends and capital gain for the billions of users, but it would also give them the opportunity to be actively involved in tech giant corporate governance. Meta have referred to this as ‘distributed governance’.

The ownership—responsibility link also lies at the heart of a new proposal from John Lee in the House of Lords last week. You may recall the Chancellor's announcement of his intention to sell the UK Government's remaining 39% stake in NatWest as a retail flotation, and John has seized this opportunity to bring a new appreciation for equity ownership to young people in secondary schools throughout the United Kingdom. Here's his speech, as delivered on Wednesday 29th November:

"My Lords, I want to focus my remarks this evening on the 39% stake that the Government still have in the NatWest bank. In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor indicated that the Government were considering disposing of their holding over a period, suggesting also that they might go down the “Tell Sid” route of early privatisations. 

I want to suggest something very radical. I think it is accepted that, in this country, there is near zero financial education in our state schools. I suggest that the Government gift, say, £5,000 worth of the NatWest shares that they own to the 4,400 state secondary schools, to be held for the long term. That would cost the Government only something like £22 million. That £5,000 worth of shares would annually produce a dividend income of about £350. My suggestion is that the pupils themselves could decide, by voting, how that £350 is spent. Maybe it could be on an item for the school or to subsidise a school trip, something along those lines, or maybe even go to a local charity, but the pupils would decide. Similarly, they could participate digitally in the NatWest AGM. 

In my judgment, this suggestion would raise awareness of how banks and the stock market operate. I am very pleased to say that, when I put this idea to the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, who drove the programme of introducing computers into secondary schools when he was IT Minister, he was very supportive. I was also very pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Howell, talk about wider share ownership a little earlier. 

The Government also could and should provide a little money to enable approved speakers to go into schools to talk about financial education. Parallel to all this, I hope we can encourage PLCs, particularly those in the regions, to gift shares in their companies to the state secondary schools in their area, from which they draw recruitment or will in years to come. I put this idea yesterday to a public company chief executive and FD of a company that I am invested in; they immediately said that, yes, they would sign up and thought it was an excellent idea. 

I realise that the Minister will not be able to give a reaction immediately, and I would not expect her to, but I hope that she will take this idea to the Treasury with her and that they will give it serious consideration. I hope that the Labour Front Bench will also perhaps consider this, because the opportunity may well come to them in a few months’ time."

We warmly welcome Lord Lee's initiative, and we hope it will be accepted by HM Treasury. Bringing an appreciation of the opportunity to experience ownership and responsibility to young people works well with our proposals for inter-generational rebalancing, and hopefully the new team at HM Treasury will respond positively to these ideas.

In a world which increasingly denies young people the opportunity to experience personal ownership in preference to the provision of streamed access to commodity pools of online material, this experience of participation in ownership and responsibility would provide a refreshing contrast.

Young people must, of course, also be at the heart of the democratic focus on long-term governance: it will increasingly be their world in the decades ahead. In this context, I was interested to see — but do not agree with — EU President Ursula von der Leyen's view that the ‘Young will reverse Brexit’, as reported in the Times last Thursday. Of course, the EU has been transformational in drawing European nations together after the centuries of fighting which culminated in the Second World War; but its executive structure is not democratic, its single currency results in regional poverty, and it builds too many walls around it to allow wider international integration.

The only way to move towards global governance is to introduce democratic legitimacy into the United Nations, as we proposed on 14th November 2022. This doesn’t have to be a ‘Big Bang’ process: as member countries choose to have their UN representatives elected directly by citizens, it would gradually bring a new sense of respect and authority in contrast with those nations which continued to appoint their representatives.

As noted earlier, the biggest issues facing our world are global in nature. Young people recognise this: they share Ben Ansell's concern about polarised societies, whether of the ‘Community of Communities’ variety or the EU’s federation of member states. The future for humanity lies in global democracy, and the responsibility for it — which we all share — lies in our ability to provide participation for all in the form of disintermediated ownership and the responsibility which accompanies that.

Gavin Oldham OBE

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