The EconomistFebruary 29th 2020 Britain 472
B
ritainisina frenzyofpopularpar-
ticipation.Itsvotershavegonetothe
pollsinthreegeneralelectionsanda
referenduminfiveyears.Politicians
attemptingto“takebackcontrol”from
institutionstheydeemunaccountable
invokethewillofthepeople.Yetinone
areaoflong-runningcontroversy,the
peoplearebeingdisenfranchised.On
February27th,it wasannouncedthat
JamesNewman,a singer-songwriter,will
representBritainattheEurovisionSong
ContestinMay.Ina departurefrom
recentform,Britonshadnosayinthe
choice;it wasimposedbythebbc—
which,unlikesomeBritons,hasappar-
entlynothadenoughofexperts.
Thepolicyisundoubtedlyelitist.Yet
thetroublewithvotersistheycanback
thewronghorse.Lastyeartheyplumped
forMichaelRice,a formertalent-show
contestantwhocamelastinthefinal,
winning11 ofa possible 960 points.That
provedthesystem’sWaterlooaftertwo
woefuldecades,duringwhichBritain
earnedtheninth-lowesttallyofpointsof
49 competing countries. In 2003, Brit-
ain’s entry won no points at all.
Apathy may be to blame. Only 1.2m
viewers tuned in to the selection show in
2019, down from 5.2m a decade earlier. By
contrast, two-fifths of Swedes tune in to
pick their contestant. That dedication
seems to have paid off: Sweden tops the
20-year chart. For a democracy to pro-
duce the right outcomes, it may require
mass participation.
Technocracy has been tried before. A
panel of bbcbigwigs and music-industry
types picked contestants between 2011
and 2015. None made the top ten. Bring-ingEngelbertHumperdinck,then76,out
ofsemi-retirementwasparticularly
questionable.Hefinished25th.“You
can’tpicka hitbycommittee,”insistsan
industrywallah.Thistimethedecision
hasbeenoutsourced.bmg,a recordlabel,
picked both song and performer.
Britain’s problems ultimately lie with
another sort of democracy, the pan-
European telephone vote which—com-
bined with the verdict of an expert panel
—decides the contest’s ultimate winner.
That Greece keeps voting for Cyprus may
not entirely be explained by the Cypriots’
undoubted lyricism. In a popularity
contest, it helps to be popular. But the
only countries who consistently back
Britain are Ireland and Malta. Brexit will
hardly have won more friends. Britain
should focus less on its routines and
more on diplomatic footwork.Takingbackcontrol
ThepoliticsofpopThebbctriestoavoidanotherEurovisionhumiliationMichael Rice went down in flamesing on applied research, it was argued,
would not only direct taxpayers’ money to-
wards an area in which decisions were best
made by the private sector, but also risked
crowding out private investment. So al-
though Britain spends around the average
in the oecd club of mostly-rich countries
on basic research, with excellent results, it
is unusually frugal when it comes to the ap-
plied variety; spending just 0.1% of gdpon
it, compared with 0.3% in America and
0.4% in Germany.
But as David Willetts, a former Conser-
vative universities and science minister,
has written, low r&d investment in the
public and private sectors provides a
strong argument for raising spending on
applied research, to which the top univer-
sities will have a weaker claim. Britain’s
poor productivity—around a fifth lower
than Germany, France and America—pro-
vides another one. The example of coun-
tries like South Korea and Germany sug-
gests that, rather than repelling private
investment, well-directed public money
can in fact prompt businesses to increase
r&dspending.
Some Tory think-tankers have suggest-
ed the government should establish re-
search institutes across the country—and
particularly in towns that have just turned
blue—in an attempt to give them a sense of
purpose. Such an approach would create
jobs supported by public money, but it
would not do much else. Richard Jones, a
science-policy expert at the University of
Sheffield whose writing has influenced
Downing Street, cites government nano-
technology investment in the mid-2000s
as an example of how not to do things.
Some £50m was split between 24 centres to
bring the technology to market. Unsurpris-
ingly, none went on to do anything of note.
There are better ways to spread the cash.
As Mr Jones notes, the regions that cur-
rently have higher levels of private r&d
than public r&d, and thus where there is
probably scope to increase public spend-
ing, include the Midlands and the north-
west. These parts of the country have theadditional benefit of cheaper property and
looser planning regimes than Oxford,
Cambridge and London, thus lowering the
cost of expansion. The National Audit Of-
fice, an official watchdog, has criticised the
government for not taking into account the
running costs of new research facilities
when deciding where to place them. Those
decisions dictate where funding goes for
decades to come. Cities in these regions
will have a good claim to new institutions.
Doubling the research budget provides
a lot of money to experiment with. A num-
ber of existing schemes are likely to grow.
ukri’s drearily-named “Strength in Places”
fund, a £236m pot which is disbursed on
the basis of academic excellence and eco-
nomic considerations, could easily bebeefed up. Another likely beneficiary, de-
spite a decidedly mixed record so far, is the
“catapult” programme. Based on Ger-
many’s Fraunhofer Institutes, albeit with
considerably smaller budgets, Catapults
require a mixture of business, university
and government investment. The most
successful one—the amrcin Sheffield—is
home to the local university, as well as Boe-
ing, Rolls-Royce and McLaren Automotive.
Putting more money into applied re-
search outside the golden triangle is un-
likely to supercharge Britain’s ability to
win Nobel prizes or suck in the world’s top
scientists. But done the right way, it might
just fulfil other ambitions more relevant to
voters, and thus to the government’s re-
election chances.^7Dismal scienceSource:OECDResearch and development spending*
% ofGDP*Public-andprivate-sector0123451981 90 2000 10 17ChinaSouth KoreaGermanyBritainUnited States