Giles Fraser in The Guardian
Theresa May won’t be around in the early 22nd century when, according to Star Trek at least, Dr Emory Erickson will have invented the transporter – a device that will be able to dematerialise a person into an energy pattern, beam them to another place or planet, and then rematerialise them back again. In such a world people will be able to move as quickly and freely as an email.
The philosopher Derek Parfit has rightly questioned whether such a thing is even philosophically possible: will the rematerialised person be the same person as the dematerialised one, or just a perfect copy. (What would happen if two copies of me were rematerialised? Would they both be me?) Parfit thus raises a fascinating philosophical question about what we mean by personal identity – or what makes me me.
But, just for the sake of argument, imagine what such a device would do to Mrs May’s keep-them-all-out immigration policy. With the transporter, there could be no border controls and no restrictions on the free movement of individuals. Economic migrants would love it. People will be able to live and work where they like, beaming instantly from Syria to Sussex or indeed to Saturn. And because of this, the whole concept of the nation state will eventually wither away. People will have become more powerful than the state.
Fanciful? Of course. Forget about the technical problems. The fundamental problem is that human beings are not fungible. A copy is not the same as its original. A person cannot be dematerialised into a series of digital zeros and ones, get beamed over space and be rematerialised as the same person.
But – and here is the really big thing – money can be. For the whole point about money is that it is fungible. It can be converted into zeros and ones and it can be digitally shot across space. And since the late 1970s, when capital controls were relaxed all around the world, and then even more so since the digital revolution, money has been able to go where it pleases, unimpeded, without any need for a passport or reference to border control. Every day, trillions of dollars are economic migrants, crossing boundaries as if they didn’t exist, pouring in and out of countries looking for the most economically advantageous place to be. And, just as with the fanciful people-transporter example, this free movement of capital is how the nation state is dissolving.
This week the OECD published a report on international companies and tax avoidance. Big companies like AstraZeneca are able to pay next to no tax in the UK because they just transport their profits to a low-tax regime in another country. Indeed, some countries, pathetically prostrating themselves before the gods of finance, exist for little other than this purpose. And so the situation we find ourselves in is that money is free to travel as it pleases but people are not. We have got used to this as the new normal, and it largely goes unremarked. Yes, there are a few on the libertarian fringe who recognise this as a contradiction and argue that people should be as free as capital. But the majority on the right do everything they can to protect the free movement of capital and restrict the free movement of people.
Which is why the neoliberal right in Britain has utterly contradictory instincts over Europe – they want the free trade bit but they don’t want the free people bit. And they scare us with how the free movement of people threatens our national identity but refuse to face the fact that the free movement of capital can be seen as doing exactly the same. They talk a good game about the importance of freedom: but it’s one rule for capital and another for people.
Of course the transporter won’t happen. But with the internet, the imagination can travel where it will. And that means poor people will always see and want what rich people have. And not even Mrs May will be able to stop them crossing dangerous seas and borders to find it.
Thursday, 8 October 2015
The real ticking time bomb for the Tories is home ownership
Allister Heath in The Telegraph
There is not much that the French do better than us these days when it comes to economics. Housing is the glaring, humiliating exception: for the first time in a generation, France’s homeownership rate has overtaken Britain’s.
When I first stumbled upon this remarkable fact, I could almost not believe it. Isn’t Britain supposed to be weirdly obsessed with home ownership, unlike our happy-go-lucky continental neighbours who, we are endlessly told, are perfectly content to rent?
But the statistics are true: while we have been plunged into an intensifying housing crisis that has locked millions of young people out of the market and forced others to live in over-priced rabbit hutches, the French have been quietly building an ownership society that would have made Lady Thatcher proud. The desire to own the roof over one’s head, so powerfully described in the Prime Minister’s Conservative party speech yesterday, is a universal urge, shared even by voters in not so socialist France.
It is therefore shocking that just 63.3 per cent of English households now own their own home, down from 70.9 per cent in 2003 and back to levels last seen three decades ago. In stark contrast, home ownership has beenshooting up in France, rising from 60.5 per cent in 2007 to 64.3 per cent in 2013. British and US commentators who believe that home ownership is passe and that we must all join Generation Rent need to look beyond the English-speaking world.
The UK is now well below the European Union average: across the 28 member states, 70 per cent of households are owner-occupiers. This is an extraordinary reversal which goes to the heart of David Cameron’s vision for an aspirational meritocracy.
The Prime Minister’s speech was a powerful restatement of the small-c conservative case for an opportunity society, as opposed to the Left’s obsession with equality of outcomes: he wants anybody who works hard and behaves responsibly to get ahead in life, regardless of background or ethnicity. He wants renters to become owners, and employees to become employers, which is exactly what a Tory prime minister who cares about social mobility should be saying.
Yet he understands not just the extent to which modern Britain has become an aspirational, individualistic society (a reality that Jeremy Corbyn cannot grasp), but also that aspiration without hope is debilitating (a concept that the left is more at ease with). One of the most moving phrases in his speech yesterday was his description of “children with their noses pressed to the window as they watch the world moving ahead without them”.
Given the importance of home ownership to the British dream, the government must do much more to fix our homeownership crisis. This is not just the right thing to do; it is also a matter of life or death for the Conservative party itself. With Labour firmly captured by the hard Left, it is at least conceivable that a Tory party that bestrides the common ground could return to levels of support last seen in the 1980s, and win the next two general elections.
Three main obstacles lie in the way of this Tory dream: in the short-term, the party could be destroyed by the European question; in the medium-term, it could be derailed by the next economic crisis; but in the longer-term the ongoing housing crisis could kill off Britain’s ownership society, changing our national culture and shifting the electorate back into the arms of the Left.
Politics is complicated, of course, with many variables explaining how people vote; but it is clear that housing status is one of the central determinants. When YouGov surveyed 100,000 general election voters, it discovered that the Tories led Labour by 47-23 per cent among those who own their homes outright, and by 42-29 per cent among those with mortgages. But the parties were almost tied among private renters, with Labour enjoying a 25-point lead among social tenants. Another seven-point decline in the homeownership rate would cost the Tories dozens of seats; an increase could put Labour out of power for a generation.
It used to be argued that Britain’s changing demographics and Labour’s supposed stronghold on the ethnic minority vote meant that the Tories were doomed. This is nonsense: the Tories are starting to crack sections of this electorate, with one poll suggesting they may even have won a plurality of the Hindu and Sikh vote for the first time in May. Mr Cameron’s push for a colour-blind society in Manchester can only have helped build on this extraordinary achievement. The real ticking time bomb for the Tories is home ownership.
Britain’s housing crisis is one of under-supply: for the past two decades at least, far too few homes have been built. But while the problem is easy to identify, tackling it is fiendishly difficult given the vested interests involved. Redefining “affordable housing” as homes that can be owned, not just rented, is a small step in the right direction. The deal with housing associations to extend the right to buy will also help. But more is needed.
Remarkably, 354,700 new homes were built in France last year, compared with 140,880 across the UK, a pathetically inadequate number barely half of that required. The French were actually bitterly disappointed with their own performance: their recent average has been around 400,000 homes a year.
Mr Cameron is right, therefore, to be calling for a national crusade for house-building. State-owned brownfield sites must urgently be made available for development, though this will not be a panacea. A further liberalisation of the planning laws will also be required, and one final taboo tackled: we need to accept than not all Green Belt land is worth preserving.
We shouldn’t build on forests, of course, but swathes of what is classified as Green Belt isn’t even green: plenty of derelict land, quarries and ugly, unattractive sites are also wrongly protected. Some of this could be converted into parks and homes with gardens and the right infrastructure, benefiting hundreds of thousands of families. For their own sake, Tory councillors and MPs need to start embracing sensible, well-managed development: if not, the party will soon find out that it is either on the side of aspiring homeowners, or it is nothing.
There is not much that the French do better than us these days when it comes to economics. Housing is the glaring, humiliating exception: for the first time in a generation, France’s homeownership rate has overtaken Britain’s.
When I first stumbled upon this remarkable fact, I could almost not believe it. Isn’t Britain supposed to be weirdly obsessed with home ownership, unlike our happy-go-lucky continental neighbours who, we are endlessly told, are perfectly content to rent?
But the statistics are true: while we have been plunged into an intensifying housing crisis that has locked millions of young people out of the market and forced others to live in over-priced rabbit hutches, the French have been quietly building an ownership society that would have made Lady Thatcher proud. The desire to own the roof over one’s head, so powerfully described in the Prime Minister’s Conservative party speech yesterday, is a universal urge, shared even by voters in not so socialist France.
It is therefore shocking that just 63.3 per cent of English households now own their own home, down from 70.9 per cent in 2003 and back to levels last seen three decades ago. In stark contrast, home ownership has beenshooting up in France, rising from 60.5 per cent in 2007 to 64.3 per cent in 2013. British and US commentators who believe that home ownership is passe and that we must all join Generation Rent need to look beyond the English-speaking world.
The UK is now well below the European Union average: across the 28 member states, 70 per cent of households are owner-occupiers. This is an extraordinary reversal which goes to the heart of David Cameron’s vision for an aspirational meritocracy.
The Prime Minister’s speech was a powerful restatement of the small-c conservative case for an opportunity society, as opposed to the Left’s obsession with equality of outcomes: he wants anybody who works hard and behaves responsibly to get ahead in life, regardless of background or ethnicity. He wants renters to become owners, and employees to become employers, which is exactly what a Tory prime minister who cares about social mobility should be saying.
Yet he understands not just the extent to which modern Britain has become an aspirational, individualistic society (a reality that Jeremy Corbyn cannot grasp), but also that aspiration without hope is debilitating (a concept that the left is more at ease with). One of the most moving phrases in his speech yesterday was his description of “children with their noses pressed to the window as they watch the world moving ahead without them”.
Given the importance of home ownership to the British dream, the government must do much more to fix our homeownership crisis. This is not just the right thing to do; it is also a matter of life or death for the Conservative party itself. With Labour firmly captured by the hard Left, it is at least conceivable that a Tory party that bestrides the common ground could return to levels of support last seen in the 1980s, and win the next two general elections.
Three main obstacles lie in the way of this Tory dream: in the short-term, the party could be destroyed by the European question; in the medium-term, it could be derailed by the next economic crisis; but in the longer-term the ongoing housing crisis could kill off Britain’s ownership society, changing our national culture and shifting the electorate back into the arms of the Left.
Politics is complicated, of course, with many variables explaining how people vote; but it is clear that housing status is one of the central determinants. When YouGov surveyed 100,000 general election voters, it discovered that the Tories led Labour by 47-23 per cent among those who own their homes outright, and by 42-29 per cent among those with mortgages. But the parties were almost tied among private renters, with Labour enjoying a 25-point lead among social tenants. Another seven-point decline in the homeownership rate would cost the Tories dozens of seats; an increase could put Labour out of power for a generation.
It used to be argued that Britain’s changing demographics and Labour’s supposed stronghold on the ethnic minority vote meant that the Tories were doomed. This is nonsense: the Tories are starting to crack sections of this electorate, with one poll suggesting they may even have won a plurality of the Hindu and Sikh vote for the first time in May. Mr Cameron’s push for a colour-blind society in Manchester can only have helped build on this extraordinary achievement. The real ticking time bomb for the Tories is home ownership.
Britain’s housing crisis is one of under-supply: for the past two decades at least, far too few homes have been built. But while the problem is easy to identify, tackling it is fiendishly difficult given the vested interests involved. Redefining “affordable housing” as homes that can be owned, not just rented, is a small step in the right direction. The deal with housing associations to extend the right to buy will also help. But more is needed.
Remarkably, 354,700 new homes were built in France last year, compared with 140,880 across the UK, a pathetically inadequate number barely half of that required. The French were actually bitterly disappointed with their own performance: their recent average has been around 400,000 homes a year.
Mr Cameron is right, therefore, to be calling for a national crusade for house-building. State-owned brownfield sites must urgently be made available for development, though this will not be a panacea. A further liberalisation of the planning laws will also be required, and one final taboo tackled: we need to accept than not all Green Belt land is worth preserving.
We shouldn’t build on forests, of course, but swathes of what is classified as Green Belt isn’t even green: plenty of derelict land, quarries and ugly, unattractive sites are also wrongly protected. Some of this could be converted into parks and homes with gardens and the right infrastructure, benefiting hundreds of thousands of families. For their own sake, Tory councillors and MPs need to start embracing sensible, well-managed development: if not, the party will soon find out that it is either on the side of aspiring homeowners, or it is nothing.
US shale oil stares into abyss with Opec ready push it over
Andrew Critchlow in The Telegraph
After hanging on for almost a year, the US shale oil industry is on the brink of complete capitulation. The reason for its impending downfall is simple: the lowest cost producer always wins. In this instance the most profitable producers are Saudi Arabia and its close Gulf Arab allies, who effectively control the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec).
To their credit, shale drillers and operators in Texas and North Dakota have hung on for far longer than anyone expected after Opec launched its pre-emptive oil price war last November. However, a year of oil prices trading at an average of around $50 per barrel is finally succeeding in reversing the dramatic increases in US production that had been so troubling the Gulf’s oil-rich sheikhs.
Total US output has fallen by almost 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) since the end of the first quarter, with the biggest declines occurring recently as operators begin to crack under the financial pressure caused by Opec’s squeeze on prices. By next year, the US government expects output to decline to an average of 8.6m bpd, down from an average of 9.3m bpd in 2015.
According to Mark Papa, the former head of US shale oil specialist operator EOG Resources, this is just the beginning of the downturn in North America. Speaking at the annual Oil and Money conference in London this week, Mr Papa said: “We are about to see a pretty dramatic decline in US production growth.”
The insurmountable problem the US shale oil industry faces is that it is too highly dependent on debt and too reliant on crude trading above $60 per barrel to remain profitable. Break-even prices in America’s most productive areas, such as the Eagle Ford and Bakken, are thought to range from $54 to almost $70 a barrel, which currently means producers are operating at a loss, living in hope that Opec finally relents and cuts production.
In these circumstances the only thing keeping many US drillers afloat is debt, which up until now has been cheap and plentiful.
According to the data provider Factset, the amount of debt held by US oil and gas producers has ballooned to almost $170bn (£111bn) this year, compared with $81bn five years ago. But the cost of servicing that debt has also increased exponentially after a number of operators saw their ratings reduced to junk.
Opec now only has to maintain its fragile cohesion and push a little harder for the entire shale oil industry in the US to fold.
However, the group of 12 mainly Middle Eastern oil producers is itself feeling the pain of lower oil prices. Its wealthiest members, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, are having to fall back on their foreign currency reserves for the first time in almost 20 years to make up for the shortfall in revenues.
Poorer member countries such as Venezuela, Algeria and Nigeria are now at economic breaking point. Without vast sovereign wealth funds and an abundance of cheap oil, they are close to buckling and are demanding that Opec meets to revise its current strategy.
Although Opec’s secretary general has called for a meeting of oil experts in Vienna later this month, it is extremely unlikely that ministers from the group will gather before their next scheduled date in December. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has continued to pump at record rates above 10.5m bpd, a strategy which is making a mockery of Opec’s overall production ceiling of 30.5m bpd.
And then there is Iran and Iraq. Combined, these close political allies in the Middle East pose the biggest challenge to Saudi Arabia’s dominance of Opec. However, both countries desperately need higher oil prices to help shore up their battered economies.
Baghdad has compensated for falling oil prices by pumping more crude. The second largest producer in Opec is now pumping around 4m bpd of crude to replenish its dwindling foreign currency reserves, which have fallen by around 20pc this year.
Iran is also champing at the bit to increase production – with the end in sight for its economic isolation from the rest of the world. According to the Iranian government, the country could increase oil production by around 500,000 barrels per day within a few months of economic sanctions being fully lifted. The Islamic republic is already laying the foundations for a return of international oil companies, which could help to boost output.
Top oil official Seyed Mehdi Hosseini told a room packed with Western executives at the Oil and Money conference that Tehran was ready to offer 50 new projects to international investors. Any significant increase in Iranian oil supply would add to the current oversupply in markets, pushing prices even lower.
After hanging on for almost a year, the US shale oil industry is on the brink of complete capitulation. The reason for its impending downfall is simple: the lowest cost producer always wins. In this instance the most profitable producers are Saudi Arabia and its close Gulf Arab allies, who effectively control the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec).
To their credit, shale drillers and operators in Texas and North Dakota have hung on for far longer than anyone expected after Opec launched its pre-emptive oil price war last November. However, a year of oil prices trading at an average of around $50 per barrel is finally succeeding in reversing the dramatic increases in US production that had been so troubling the Gulf’s oil-rich sheikhs.
Total US output has fallen by almost 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) since the end of the first quarter, with the biggest declines occurring recently as operators begin to crack under the financial pressure caused by Opec’s squeeze on prices. By next year, the US government expects output to decline to an average of 8.6m bpd, down from an average of 9.3m bpd in 2015.
According to Mark Papa, the former head of US shale oil specialist operator EOG Resources, this is just the beginning of the downturn in North America. Speaking at the annual Oil and Money conference in London this week, Mr Papa said: “We are about to see a pretty dramatic decline in US production growth.”
The insurmountable problem the US shale oil industry faces is that it is too highly dependent on debt and too reliant on crude trading above $60 per barrel to remain profitable. Break-even prices in America’s most productive areas, such as the Eagle Ford and Bakken, are thought to range from $54 to almost $70 a barrel, which currently means producers are operating at a loss, living in hope that Opec finally relents and cuts production.
In these circumstances the only thing keeping many US drillers afloat is debt, which up until now has been cheap and plentiful.
According to the data provider Factset, the amount of debt held by US oil and gas producers has ballooned to almost $170bn (£111bn) this year, compared with $81bn five years ago. But the cost of servicing that debt has also increased exponentially after a number of operators saw their ratings reduced to junk.
Opec now only has to maintain its fragile cohesion and push a little harder for the entire shale oil industry in the US to fold.
However, the group of 12 mainly Middle Eastern oil producers is itself feeling the pain of lower oil prices. Its wealthiest members, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, are having to fall back on their foreign currency reserves for the first time in almost 20 years to make up for the shortfall in revenues.
Poorer member countries such as Venezuela, Algeria and Nigeria are now at economic breaking point. Without vast sovereign wealth funds and an abundance of cheap oil, they are close to buckling and are demanding that Opec meets to revise its current strategy.
Although Opec’s secretary general has called for a meeting of oil experts in Vienna later this month, it is extremely unlikely that ministers from the group will gather before their next scheduled date in December. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has continued to pump at record rates above 10.5m bpd, a strategy which is making a mockery of Opec’s overall production ceiling of 30.5m bpd.
And then there is Iran and Iraq. Combined, these close political allies in the Middle East pose the biggest challenge to Saudi Arabia’s dominance of Opec. However, both countries desperately need higher oil prices to help shore up their battered economies.
Baghdad has compensated for falling oil prices by pumping more crude. The second largest producer in Opec is now pumping around 4m bpd of crude to replenish its dwindling foreign currency reserves, which have fallen by around 20pc this year.
Iran is also champing at the bit to increase production – with the end in sight for its economic isolation from the rest of the world. According to the Iranian government, the country could increase oil production by around 500,000 barrels per day within a few months of economic sanctions being fully lifted. The Islamic republic is already laying the foundations for a return of international oil companies, which could help to boost output.
Top oil official Seyed Mehdi Hosseini told a room packed with Western executives at the Oil and Money conference that Tehran was ready to offer 50 new projects to international investors. Any significant increase in Iranian oil supply would add to the current oversupply in markets, pushing prices even lower.
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Why life is just one big confidence trick
Matthew Stadlen in The Telegraph
It was supposed to be an event targeted at young people and I’m not that young any more; it was meant to be a campaign designed to build confidence and I don’t see myself as the timid type; and anyway, I was there to interview World and Olympic Champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, not for an education in self-help. Yet I left Sky Studios the other day profoundly influenced by a single sentence.
Find something you love and then stick to it.
These words emerged from the mouth of Melvyn Bragg, the enduring broadcaster who has reached the very top of his profession. They amounted to Lord Bragg’s recipe for confidence. He was speaking on a panel put together by Sky Academy, a bursary scheme that supports emerging talent in the worlds of sport and the arts. His advice immediately lodged somewhere deep inside me, partly perhaps because Bragg is a luminary in my own field, partly perhaps because I’ve enjoyed meeting and interviewing him in the past. Its real impact, though, stems from its essential truth. If you love something, you’re more likely to be confident at it and therefore to succeed.
Despite my self-assurance, bred in me by my privileged schooling, my parents and a childhood environment in which I was surrounded by successful role-models, I do sometimes doubt my career trajectory. The life of the self-employed can provoke uncomfortable journeys into dark corners of the mind where confidence seems a distant relative. But Bragg reminded me that I do love what I do and that there is a very strong argument for sticking at it. There are echoes of a line from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist in Bragg’s philosophy: “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”
Of course, Bragg’s winning cocktail must include a decent dose of natural ability if it’s to translate into success. Simply loving something isn’t enough, you have to have some talent or aptitude too. It's a maxim that England’s rugby players must now know only too well. They no doubt love what they do (much of the time) and they are talented; but not talented enough, it turns out.
There were plenty of confident noises emanating from in and around the England camp last week ahead of the do-or-die match against Australia. Ben Morgan, one of the 18-stone forwards, threatened to expose the Wallabies’ infamous insecurities in the scrum; Danny Cipriani, the talented back excluded from England’s tournament squad, claimed that not a single Australian would get into the England team. In the event, England crashed out of their own World Cup, the English pack was humiliated in retreat and it was hard to see how more than one or two Englishmen would make it into the Australian team.
Stuart Lancaster's England appeared to suffer a crisis of confidence during their World Cup games Photo: REUTERS
So much for English confidence. But then again, maybe they were faking it. I was in the stands to watch their disintegration, part physical, part mental, in the final excruciating minutes against Wales the week before. Could every England player really have been that sure of themselves after such a bruising defeat, facing an Australian team fresh from winning the southern hemisphere’s coveted Rugby Championship? Perhaps. Or maybe self-doubt had crept in but they decided to subscribe to the Davina McCall blueprint for confidence.
The former Big Brother host, was, together with Ennis-Hill, Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts and YouTube personality Alfie Deyes, on the same panel as Bragg. McCall is not an obvious candidate for self-doubt, but speaking with impressive candidness, she talked about her own teenage issues with a chronic lack of confidence. Her remedy was to act as if she really were confident. Fake it, she advised. If you’re not confident, teach yourself to project confidence instead and eventually you might end up believing it.
Fake it to make it: Davina McCall admits to suffering from low confidence as a teenager Photo: Andrew Crowley
Mahatma Gandhi seemed to be saying something similar when he reflected, “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
Roger Uttley, a former England rugby coach, offered advice to the incumbent, Stuart Lancaster, via an interview with The Telegraph between the Wales and Australia games. “You have got to get over things quickly,” he said. “Stuart has to look the part in terms of his body language. It is tough to do that but important. Players feed off it.” Lancaster did put on a brave face, but he had already admitted to being “absolutely devastated” following the loss to Wales. Hardly the sort of message to be sending down from on high. The scoreline worsened against Australia and this time Lancaster was “absolutely gutted.”
Just how critical confidence is in sport had already been spelt out in an ITV interview given by Warren Gatland ahead of his side’s thrilling victory over the English. England have more money, more fans, more players – yet still Wales won. “When are you at your best?” Gatland was asked. “When I'm under a bit of pressure. It's always been my biggest challenge often with the Welsh players to keep building on that confidence and that self-belief that they are good enough to compete with the best teams in the world and they're good enough to go out there and win.”
Gatland was then asked what was the one quality he had as a player that has never left him. “Self-belief,” came the reply. Together with greater skill and fitness, what Wales demonstrated in those final frantic minutes was a core belief that they could still win a game that seemed lost at half-time. The players aped the confidence of their coach.
In the eye of the storm: Wales coach Warren Gatland Photo: AFP
During the recent Ashes summer, Sky Sports ran a series of programmes profiling some of cricket’s greatest stars of the past. Listening to Glenn McGrath speak about his record-breaking career, it was immediately obvious how pivotal self-belief was to his success. Just like the Welsh rugby team, confidence was welded onto ability, in his case onto his metronomic accuracy with the ball.
“The biggest battle I ever had when I was bowling out in the middle was with myself,’ he said. “And if I won that battle the rest was pretty easy. It's about having a bit of mongrel in you. You've got to be aggressive.” His two main strengths, he said, were that accuracy and a little bit of bounce. Then he added: “And just self-belief.” Interviewed for the same profile, McGrath’s former new ball partner, Jason Gillespie, reflected: “I don't think anyone came close to believing in their own ability as much as Glenn McGrath.”
Confidence is essential in politics too. It’s something that David Cameron projects so effectively that it is rarely, if ever, questioned in profiles of the Prime Minister. Despite his pledge to end “Punch and Judy politics" when he became leader, he has often been forthright and confrontational at the despatch box and exudes an air of watertight self-confidence that borders on a sense of entitlement. To what extent this is contrived, we don’t know, but much of it may have its roots in an elite public school education at Eton.
Wherever Cameron’s confidence comes from, it now stands in stark contrast to the hesitancy of Jeremy Corbyn. Maybe the Labour leader’s indecisiveness in interviews can be spun as the supreme confidence of a man with a mandate from his party’s grass roots not to play by the long established rules of Westminster politics. Up goes the cry: 'It’s the new politics!' But, if he continues to dither, he will continue to be cast by others as un-Prime Ministerial and as an uncertain figurehead.
Margaret Thatcher came across as even more self-assured than Cameron (and she was a state-educated grocer’s daughter). No one could claim that confidence is a male preserve. But it is, perhaps, worth asking whether gender sometimes plays a role. If you haven’t heard of impostor syndrome, it’s a phenomenon thought to be particularly prevalent among high-achieving women. It is, essentially, a conviction that success, however merited, is actually undeserved.
There is also that feeling of guilt so common, we’re told, among new mothers. In my interview with Ennis-Hill, she explained how anxious she’d been ahead of this summer’s World Championships in Beijing. When training wasn’t going so well, she imagined how she’d feel if she didn’t perform as she hoped. “I would have been away from my son for two weeks and I would have been absolutely devastated because I would be so mad with myself for being away. As a mum as well you feel guilty about everything, so it’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever, ever done,” she told me. How many men would have questioned themselves in this way?
Ennis-Hill spoke openly about one of the more challenging consequences of childbirth. “Your confidence does [take a] knock,” she said. “I was thinking, 'Oh gosh, I’ve got to train now as well and fit all this in. You’re up through the night and that has an impact on how you feel about everything and whether you can do it, and your self-belief. Everything’s a million times worse when you’re tired.” In a changing world, men also travel emotional postnatal journeys and undoubtedly suffer from sleep deprivation too. But they certainly aren’t forced to battle through changes to body shape.
And then there’s the question of why there are so many more prominent male comedians. Earlier this year, I asked Jason Manford for his explanation in an interview for the Radio Times. “Audiences on a Friday, Saturday night are a bit rowdy and I always think stand-up is a bit like flirting,” he said. “So when a bloke comes out and he does his thing, he’s making people laugh, this is what you do when you’re flirting one on one.
“So it’s harder for females sometimes to come on and be on the forefront because that’s not what we’re used to in our societal rules. It’s a bloke who’s on the forefront and generally the woman’s passive. For a female to be aggressive is not what we’re used to. So I think female comics generally have to work harder because of an audience’s preconceptions.”
Handling rejection, Manford believed, is another factor. “Blokes are more used to rejection. Generally it’s a bloke who asks a girl out. I’m stereotyping but that’s what we do. And I’ve noticed it on the circuit. A girl will come off stage, she’s had a bad gig, and she’ll go, ‘I must have said something wrong.’
“A guy will come offstage and he’ll go, ‘Maybe the sound was off’ or, ‘It was definitely the audience’. He’ll find an external reason for his failure."
Whether or not there’s something in Manford’s analysis, we still live in a society where – last time I checked anyway – the onus is more frequently on the man to chat up a woman. That involves confidence. Peacocking isn’t a ritual confined to the animal kingdom.
There’s no doubt that confidence is an attractive quality in both men and women. It can transform appearances and draw in admirers who would otherwise walk on by. It can also be, as we’ve seen, a pivotal ingredient in successful careers. But overconfidence not only becomes unappealing, it can mutate into arrogance, pride and, ultimately, a fall.
The ancient Greeks knew about nemesis following hubris thousands of years ago and I’ve always thought Piers Morgan’s Twitter profile is brilliantly clever. He is one of the most confident men on social media, but he’s carved an indemnity clause into his online presence with a simple, biographical bon mot: “One day you’re the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.”
It was supposed to be an event targeted at young people and I’m not that young any more; it was meant to be a campaign designed to build confidence and I don’t see myself as the timid type; and anyway, I was there to interview World and Olympic Champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, not for an education in self-help. Yet I left Sky Studios the other day profoundly influenced by a single sentence.
Find something you love and then stick to it.
These words emerged from the mouth of Melvyn Bragg, the enduring broadcaster who has reached the very top of his profession. They amounted to Lord Bragg’s recipe for confidence. He was speaking on a panel put together by Sky Academy, a bursary scheme that supports emerging talent in the worlds of sport and the arts. His advice immediately lodged somewhere deep inside me, partly perhaps because Bragg is a luminary in my own field, partly perhaps because I’ve enjoyed meeting and interviewing him in the past. Its real impact, though, stems from its essential truth. If you love something, you’re more likely to be confident at it and therefore to succeed.
Despite my self-assurance, bred in me by my privileged schooling, my parents and a childhood environment in which I was surrounded by successful role-models, I do sometimes doubt my career trajectory. The life of the self-employed can provoke uncomfortable journeys into dark corners of the mind where confidence seems a distant relative. But Bragg reminded me that I do love what I do and that there is a very strong argument for sticking at it. There are echoes of a line from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist in Bragg’s philosophy: “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”
Of course, Bragg’s winning cocktail must include a decent dose of natural ability if it’s to translate into success. Simply loving something isn’t enough, you have to have some talent or aptitude too. It's a maxim that England’s rugby players must now know only too well. They no doubt love what they do (much of the time) and they are talented; but not talented enough, it turns out.
There were plenty of confident noises emanating from in and around the England camp last week ahead of the do-or-die match against Australia. Ben Morgan, one of the 18-stone forwards, threatened to expose the Wallabies’ infamous insecurities in the scrum; Danny Cipriani, the talented back excluded from England’s tournament squad, claimed that not a single Australian would get into the England team. In the event, England crashed out of their own World Cup, the English pack was humiliated in retreat and it was hard to see how more than one or two Englishmen would make it into the Australian team.
Stuart Lancaster's England appeared to suffer a crisis of confidence during their World Cup games Photo: REUTERSSo much for English confidence. But then again, maybe they were faking it. I was in the stands to watch their disintegration, part physical, part mental, in the final excruciating minutes against Wales the week before. Could every England player really have been that sure of themselves after such a bruising defeat, facing an Australian team fresh from winning the southern hemisphere’s coveted Rugby Championship? Perhaps. Or maybe self-doubt had crept in but they decided to subscribe to the Davina McCall blueprint for confidence.
The former Big Brother host, was, together with Ennis-Hill, Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts and YouTube personality Alfie Deyes, on the same panel as Bragg. McCall is not an obvious candidate for self-doubt, but speaking with impressive candidness, she talked about her own teenage issues with a chronic lack of confidence. Her remedy was to act as if she really were confident. Fake it, she advised. If you’re not confident, teach yourself to project confidence instead and eventually you might end up believing it.
Fake it to make it: Davina McCall admits to suffering from low confidence as a teenager Photo: Andrew CrowleyMahatma Gandhi seemed to be saying something similar when he reflected, “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
Roger Uttley, a former England rugby coach, offered advice to the incumbent, Stuart Lancaster, via an interview with The Telegraph between the Wales and Australia games. “You have got to get over things quickly,” he said. “Stuart has to look the part in terms of his body language. It is tough to do that but important. Players feed off it.” Lancaster did put on a brave face, but he had already admitted to being “absolutely devastated” following the loss to Wales. Hardly the sort of message to be sending down from on high. The scoreline worsened against Australia and this time Lancaster was “absolutely gutted.”
Just how critical confidence is in sport had already been spelt out in an ITV interview given by Warren Gatland ahead of his side’s thrilling victory over the English. England have more money, more fans, more players – yet still Wales won. “When are you at your best?” Gatland was asked. “When I'm under a bit of pressure. It's always been my biggest challenge often with the Welsh players to keep building on that confidence and that self-belief that they are good enough to compete with the best teams in the world and they're good enough to go out there and win.”
Gatland was then asked what was the one quality he had as a player that has never left him. “Self-belief,” came the reply. Together with greater skill and fitness, what Wales demonstrated in those final frantic minutes was a core belief that they could still win a game that seemed lost at half-time. The players aped the confidence of their coach.
In the eye of the storm: Wales coach Warren Gatland Photo: AFPDuring the recent Ashes summer, Sky Sports ran a series of programmes profiling some of cricket’s greatest stars of the past. Listening to Glenn McGrath speak about his record-breaking career, it was immediately obvious how pivotal self-belief was to his success. Just like the Welsh rugby team, confidence was welded onto ability, in his case onto his metronomic accuracy with the ball.
“The biggest battle I ever had when I was bowling out in the middle was with myself,’ he said. “And if I won that battle the rest was pretty easy. It's about having a bit of mongrel in you. You've got to be aggressive.” His two main strengths, he said, were that accuracy and a little bit of bounce. Then he added: “And just self-belief.” Interviewed for the same profile, McGrath’s former new ball partner, Jason Gillespie, reflected: “I don't think anyone came close to believing in their own ability as much as Glenn McGrath.”
Confidence is essential in politics too. It’s something that David Cameron projects so effectively that it is rarely, if ever, questioned in profiles of the Prime Minister. Despite his pledge to end “Punch and Judy politics" when he became leader, he has often been forthright and confrontational at the despatch box and exudes an air of watertight self-confidence that borders on a sense of entitlement. To what extent this is contrived, we don’t know, but much of it may have its roots in an elite public school education at Eton.
Wherever Cameron’s confidence comes from, it now stands in stark contrast to the hesitancy of Jeremy Corbyn. Maybe the Labour leader’s indecisiveness in interviews can be spun as the supreme confidence of a man with a mandate from his party’s grass roots not to play by the long established rules of Westminster politics. Up goes the cry: 'It’s the new politics!' But, if he continues to dither, he will continue to be cast by others as un-Prime Ministerial and as an uncertain figurehead.
Margaret Thatcher came across as even more self-assured than Cameron (and she was a state-educated grocer’s daughter). No one could claim that confidence is a male preserve. But it is, perhaps, worth asking whether gender sometimes plays a role. If you haven’t heard of impostor syndrome, it’s a phenomenon thought to be particularly prevalent among high-achieving women. It is, essentially, a conviction that success, however merited, is actually undeserved.
There is also that feeling of guilt so common, we’re told, among new mothers. In my interview with Ennis-Hill, she explained how anxious she’d been ahead of this summer’s World Championships in Beijing. When training wasn’t going so well, she imagined how she’d feel if she didn’t perform as she hoped. “I would have been away from my son for two weeks and I would have been absolutely devastated because I would be so mad with myself for being away. As a mum as well you feel guilty about everything, so it’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever, ever done,” she told me. How many men would have questioned themselves in this way?
Ennis-Hill spoke openly about one of the more challenging consequences of childbirth. “Your confidence does [take a] knock,” she said. “I was thinking, 'Oh gosh, I’ve got to train now as well and fit all this in. You’re up through the night and that has an impact on how you feel about everything and whether you can do it, and your self-belief. Everything’s a million times worse when you’re tired.” In a changing world, men also travel emotional postnatal journeys and undoubtedly suffer from sleep deprivation too. But they certainly aren’t forced to battle through changes to body shape.
And then there’s the question of why there are so many more prominent male comedians. Earlier this year, I asked Jason Manford for his explanation in an interview for the Radio Times. “Audiences on a Friday, Saturday night are a bit rowdy and I always think stand-up is a bit like flirting,” he said. “So when a bloke comes out and he does his thing, he’s making people laugh, this is what you do when you’re flirting one on one.
“So it’s harder for females sometimes to come on and be on the forefront because that’s not what we’re used to in our societal rules. It’s a bloke who’s on the forefront and generally the woman’s passive. For a female to be aggressive is not what we’re used to. So I think female comics generally have to work harder because of an audience’s preconceptions.”
Handling rejection, Manford believed, is another factor. “Blokes are more used to rejection. Generally it’s a bloke who asks a girl out. I’m stereotyping but that’s what we do. And I’ve noticed it on the circuit. A girl will come off stage, she’s had a bad gig, and she’ll go, ‘I must have said something wrong.’
“A guy will come offstage and he’ll go, ‘Maybe the sound was off’ or, ‘It was definitely the audience’. He’ll find an external reason for his failure."
Whether or not there’s something in Manford’s analysis, we still live in a society where – last time I checked anyway – the onus is more frequently on the man to chat up a woman. That involves confidence. Peacocking isn’t a ritual confined to the animal kingdom.
There’s no doubt that confidence is an attractive quality in both men and women. It can transform appearances and draw in admirers who would otherwise walk on by. It can also be, as we’ve seen, a pivotal ingredient in successful careers. But overconfidence not only becomes unappealing, it can mutate into arrogance, pride and, ultimately, a fall.
The ancient Greeks knew about nemesis following hubris thousands of years ago and I’ve always thought Piers Morgan’s Twitter profile is brilliantly clever. He is one of the most confident men on social media, but he’s carved an indemnity clause into his online presence with a simple, biographical bon mot: “One day you’re the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.”
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