‘The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’
John 3:8
While Makerfield voters were heading to the polls last Thursday, Bishop Dave Bull of Buckingham was chairing a meeting near Aylesbury. One of the main items on his agenda was titled ‘Leading in Uncertainty’: he was seeking to give guidance on how to provide leadership in uncertain times, and his key metaphor for this was the murmuration of starlings.
These small birds gather in huge quantities to perform a co-ordinated dance across the sky, but no-one is quite sure how that co-ordination works. It is certainly not governed by any central point, and Bishop Dave sought to interpret it at the level of the individual birds: that, while they shared an inclination to head in the same broad direction, they don't fight (notwithstanding their huge numbers) and, when they get to the edge, they come back into the dance.
We live in a world where everyone, particularly politicians, likes to be prescriptive about how other people should live. As soon as someone takes the reins of power, they assume a sense of control until a future election or appointment tells them otherwise.
But the voters of Makerfield have shown that they are more intelligent than that. In the local elections in May, they gave the Labour Party the thumbs down by voting strongly for Reform. Were they thinking ahead to the prospect of Andy Burnham standing as their MP? I don't think so.
But when presented with the opportunity to change the leadership of the Labour Party, that murmuration of Makerfield voters changed direction entirely, and they deserted Reform in order to select that new leader.
The voters of Makerfield consist of tens of thousands of intelligent individuals, and they have each been weighing up the alternatives in order to shape the future. The old concepts of Party loyalty are falling away, and they are increasingly searching for those key characteristics as defined by Thomas Jefferson 250 years ago — that they deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as unalienable rights, and that these should be equally available to everyone.
There are certainly collective features which we should all share, just like the starlings: that we should not fight with each other and, apart from those relatively few pioneering individuals who prefer to break out of the herd, to turn back into the community when you reach the edge.
But the central point is to respect each individual and their right to live their life as they wish. Unfortunately, governments of all hues have a problem with this — individual freedom does not feature strongly in their political directory.
As a result, we have government domination over almost all public services, colossal public debt built up from decades of over-indulgence, and a time frame which bears no recognition to the long-term dangers of climate change and inequality, including geopolitical instability, which threaten our children and grandchildren.
Last Wednesday, I attended a climate change documentary film called, ‘National Emergency Briefing’. It is fifty minutes long, but well worth a viewing.
Clearly this is not such a hot topic in Aberdeen South, where voters endorsed the Conservative approach of re-prioritising North Sea oil and gas; and across the United Kingdom as a whole, climate change is not top priority in people's thinking. At one point in the documentary there is a clear explanation as to why this is the case: when so many people are suffering very heavy cost-of-living burdens and so many are in poverty, there's little opportunity to think long-term.
It's all very well for wealthy people to charge their EVs from home-based pod points at the same electricity cost as switching on a light bulb, but those living in flats or terraced houses are presented with high-cost commercial charge points including the full rate of VAT. The Government has done practically nothing to address this injustice, and it’s therefore another reason why climate change is not a high priority.
You may consider that the impact of increasing the number of UK citizens using EVs is hardly going to change much in terms of the environment, but the significance of enabling first-hand experience of making a contribution should not be understated in terms raising its prioritisation for those citizens, and therefore shaping government policy for the future.
If you want the human murmuration to do something in support of saving the world for our descendants, you must therefore address not only the biological problems but also the economic ones: hence the inter-generational rebalancing conference on 14/15 May.
Let's hope that the new leadership which will now emerge following Keir Starmer's resignation on the back of Andy Burnham's challenge looks at some of these strategic issues, creating the conditions for people to influence the human murmuration in a better direction: not relying, as Sir Keir Starmer has done, on prescriptive decisions which have not been thought out properly.
And finally, returning to those starling murmurations, we would do well to reflect on the fact that starling populations have themselves reduced by 75% over the past decades, along with so much wildlife.
This is yet another reason why we should revisit how to get long-term oversight into our parliamentary system by transforming the second chamber into one of members elected on the basis of how people want to see the world in fifty years’ time.
The wind does indeed blow wherever it pleases but, over the past two thousand years, humanity has developed more influence over the future than ever before. We therefore need to learn to love our neighbour of tomorrow, not just our neighbour of today.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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