One of the final myths holding us back from a much needed updating of corporate-consumer-growth-capitalism has now been debunked with Professor Elinor Ostrom becoming the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Ostrom’s work won the prize for the way it debunks The Tragedy of the Commons which has long been used as a crucial shibboleth of free-market neoliberal capitalism to insist that there are no alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.

Her win is all the more notable as many past winners, such as Milton Friedman , have been staunch proponents of free-market neoliberal economics. Ostrom now joins others, such as Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, in the roll-call of Nobel winners who are calling for a radically updated form of capitalism.

Importantly, Ostrom’s work greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Along with a move to beyond-growth economics, the development of a commons framework which sets resources aside from the short-term interests of both politics and business, is a vital ingredient in solutions to the problems we discuss in Citizen Renaissance. Such a framework has most famously been articulated by Peter Barnes in his book Capitalism 3.0.

Ostrom has tirelessly documented how communities around the world use cooperative behaviour to manage common resources – grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, soils, fisheries – equitably and sustainably over the long term.

Columbia University Nobel winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz commented, “Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons… What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights.”

Ostrom says “When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other’s use of the land, developing rules for behaviour. It is an area that standard market theory does not touch. What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people”.

If the Republic Blog’s reporting of Andrew Windsor’s speech about Bankers’ Bonus’ is accurate, then his words simply beggar belief:

“I was brought up to do this sort of work. It is training, experience and genetics. We offer consistency and regularity. We have been around for a long time and will be around for a long time. We are not going to disappear. I have a family pedigree that allows me time to build up relationships”.

So speaks the Government’s ‘Special Representative’ on Trade & Industry: strategic business development should be based on breeding and ‘pedigree’.

Citizen Renaissance has frequently called for a fundamental reformation of the institutions of monarchy and government – and their radical realignment to ensure relevance, accountability and citizen-centricity in the Digital Age. There can be no room in a truly civic society for anachronistic ramblings such as these from a pointless Prince.

The above quote is from Archbishop Oscar Romero. It has recently become a bumper-sticker in the US for fans of steady-state economics.

Romero was a hero of the Central American Liberation Theology movement and someone I heard about as a child because my stepfather was a Liberation Theologian and writer and was active in Central and S America. It’s a branch of theology I can relate to. It’s about justice for the poor and is very political in its nature. Romero was assassinated in 1980 whilst giving mass. He was just too outspoken in his work for justice. He is an ‘unofficial’ saint and likely to be made an official one in time.

Romero and others were outspoken in what they wrote and said about dictatorships but also about both Marxism and Capitalism. They saw the failings of both systems. It’s interesting that since the 80’s the failure of state-capitalist-Marxism and neoliberal Capitalism has become well accepted.

Politicians from the left and the right are now fighting to argue the case for a new updated ‘capitalism with a conscience’. As Professor Tim Jackson says in Prosperity Without Growth “the banking crisis of 2008 redefined the boundaries between market and state.” There is an emerging consensus that the current mania for neoliberal free-market economic solutions is dead. Jeremy Paxman has announced ‘the end of capitalism’; Martin Wolf of the FT has said that “the dream of global free market capitalism is dead. Bank of England Chair Sir Mervyn King has agreed saying Wolf’s comment “strikes a cord.”

In January 2009 Tony Blair joined with President Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and others for the ‘New World, New Capitalism’ symposium to debate the possibility of new blueprints for updated capitalism. Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of John Lewis has said recently “business leaders, policy makers, commentators and citizens have begun to reflect on what alternative types of capitalist structures might be more inclusive of all stakeholders, be more resilient in the long term and reduce the risk of future crises. And in March 2009, Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric and poster child of the ‘shareholder value’ movement, admitted that “shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.”

In 1985 the Christian Church put out the Faith in the City report attacking Thatcher’s neoliberal policies – it was dismissed angrily by Norman Tebbit as ‘Marxism’. But are theologians and faith leaders of our time as outspoken as they could be on these issues?

Richard Reeves said in his 2003 pamphlet the Politics of Happiness (pdf) that “the voice of the world’s faiths are mere whispers in the storm” and that Rowan Williams “has yet to press home his deeper attack on the culture of consumption.” This was perhaps true in 2003. But it is perhaps less so now with the various faith leaders finding a voice on these issues and really helping to encourage a deeper debate about the values shift from consumer to citizen which we discuss in our book.

I was interested and heartened to hear the Bishop of London’s Xmas message this year berating our current fixation on economic growth and consumerism. John Sentamu had similar things to say here and Bishops Winchester, Manchester, Carlisle, Hulme and the Archbishop of Canterbury have all said things about hyper-borrowing, unregulated financial markets, monopolistic powers of multi-nationals, over-spending and hyper-consumerism. The Pope has also said similar things and a German churchman, meanwhile, has accused Deutsche Bank of “immorality” in insisting on a 25% return from equity deals.

Last week Archbishop Rowan Williams gave a wonderful speech about the environment and politics, warning against looking for a single solution to the complex environmental challenges which face us. “Instead of a desperate search to find the one great idea that will save us from ecological disaster, we are being invited to a transformation of individual and social goals that will bring us closer to the reality of interdependent life in a variegated world”. Dr Williams urges action at the personal and local, as well as at the national and international, levels. He acknowledges “the potential of the crisis to awaken a new confidence in local and civic democracy [and] … a new sense of what is politically possible for people who thought they were powerless”. “Our response to the crisis needs to be in the most basic sense, a reality check, a re‑acquaintance with the facts of our interdependence within the material world and a rediscovery of our responsibility for it”. “When we believe in transformation at the local and personal level, we are laying the surest foundations for change at the national and international level”.

It’s heartening to hear the world’s faith taking voice and pushing for political change. Whether you are one of the faithful or not, it is time we all aspire not to have more, but to be more.

In a thoughtful recent New Statesman article, Dominic Sandbrook berated the politics of our age saying that above all “one thing is missing, perhaps the most important thing of all: the big idea…there is little evidence that the general public has lost its appetite for big ideas.” And of Cameron he said “it is almost impossible to discern any genuine ideological vision behind the tree-hugging photo ops. There is no sense, for instance, of him being informed by perhaps the only genuinely innovative political idea of the past few years, Phillip Blond’s ‘Red Toryism’, which calls for a decentralised conservatism breaking with laissez-faire capitalism and favouring traditional values, local communities and small businesses.”

Surely, if nothing else, Project Cameron’s Big Idea ought to be a vision of how we can live in a greener, leaner and fairer society?

Ask any UK observer of the ‘politics of green’ and they will say that there is an open-goal for the Conservative Party. Indeed many will also – perhaps grudgingly – say that David Cameron’s rhetoric on sustainability and wellbeing issues has been leading the debate on these issues for many years in the UK. The Conservatives led on pressure for a CC Bill. Tony Juniper – recent past-head of FOE – has said “David Cameron’s high profile embrace of the green agenda has been one of the most important recent factors in British green politics.’

Tim Montgomerie has said recently on ConservativeHome “The Conservative Party has always been a powerful political force but if it raids deeply into Labour territory over the next few years – planting the Tory message deeply into the soil of social justice and green politics we could be talking of realignment. The Left thought it had a monopoly of ‘values voters’. No longer. It should be worried.”

As The Blueprint of a Green Economy report said in 2007 “It is an unhappy reflection on the inadequacy of government that one film of Al Gore and the evident commitment of David Cameron have done far more to engage the UK public with the scale and urgency of climate change than ten years of Tony Blair.”

Elsewhere others on the centre-right have also been actively incorporating sustainability and wellbeing into their political philosophy with President Sarkozy for instance being very bullish about the need to control new airport runway developments and setting up the Stiglitz ‘Beyond GDP’ commission released last month.

David Cameron has often spoken on his views of these issues saying for instance “The Spirit of the age today demands social values as well as economic value. This means focusing not just on GDP, but on GWB – General Well-Being….Well being can’t be measured by money or traded in markets. It’s about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, and above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society’s sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our lives.”

On many of the Quality Of Life policy recommendations the Party has been strong. The Tory sponsored Sustainable Communities Bill, the position on Heathrow, on CCS emissions standards, the Low Carbon Economy, Carbon Levy and Housing consultations – all represent leadership positions.

However the Party has seemed to reduce the number of speeches on these issues over time and has been criticised for being much better on presentation and rhetoric than firm commitments or political discourse. Sustainability has also failed to be mentioned as one of the Party’s top priorities in local election campaigns and at the 2008 and 2009 Party Conferences.

A coalition of all the major green NGOs had this to say in 2008 “In September last year, the Quality of Life Commission published its report to the Conservative Party. The report contains a clear vision and a mix of taxes and incentives that would help transform our society and economy to live within environmental limits and improve our quality of life. It has therefore been a huge disappointment that over the past twelve months the Conservative Party has not backed the ambition of the report nor made firm commitments to the policies within it. The Conservatives have said they are taking a “drip drip” approach to adopting the report’s policies, but this will not realise the report’s ambitious agenda”.

Anne Widdecombe warned In August 2009 that there were many in the party unhappy with David Cameron’s approach on climate change. She said: “It so happens that I know that an awful lot of people in our party – and by that I mean a lot – are deeply unhappy with the way that we’ve signed up apparently quite blindly to the climate change agenda. “It isn’t that they don’t want sensible things like recycling, it isn’t a silly rebellion. “But there is a deep unease that we’re rushing in virtually to a theology: those who asked questions are ‘deniers’.”

Polls by ComReS and the LGA have found that over 30% of Tory MPs question climate change – far more than the other two main party’s MPs. David Cameron has also found it difficult to explain his keenness for Nicholas Taleb’s work, despite the fact that Taleb is an outspoken climate change denier.

Many are still saying that it is yet unclear if David Cameron’s Compassionate Conservativism will be anything more than rhetoric. To paraphrase Otto von Bismarck: “When they say they agree with a thing in principle, they mean they have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.”

At the same stage of ascendency to power, Tony Blair said all the right things about ‘green’ issues. But many would say he failed to deliver. Can Britain’s citizens hope for David Cameron do any better?

Those close to David Cameron are keen to say ‘the proof will be in the eating’ and that once in power he will show that he is indeed fully committed to do everything it takes to deliver and sustainable economy. But we feel it is important that at this time we ask questions to probe deeper into the direction of travel.

The fundamental re-alignment of British politics, the death of the two-party system and the reform of both the House of Lords and even the monarchy could be an accidental by-product of British voters not understanding what the Conservative Party actually stands for.

Latest Edelman Trust and polling data, carried out by Populus for discussion at this week’s Tory Party Conference, confirmed a general swirl of support for Cameron (principally, for not being Brown) and a general sense of mystery about prevailing Conservative values. While Brand Dave exudes trust, Brand Brown speaks to disillusionment and disappointment. If Labour is ‘tired’ in the eyes of the voters, then the Tories are ‘confused’ – both in how they come across and in what the general public thinks they represent.

What this suggests is that what many think is the most enduring legacy of Tony Blair – the emergence of a Presidential-style of politics – may well in fact be the new reality. Popular opinion (or is that just the Daily Mail?) derides the Presidential construct for being, well, so very un-British. But perhaps we should take another look. The scale of disenfranchisement is such that some sort of new force is swelling and imminent. Better surely, for reform from within than anarchy from without, in the shape of the continued rise of ‘Others’… BNP, UKIP and ‘Not Bovvered’ included.

Blair was a man supposedly detached from his party – the New Labour project the dream child of a few modernisers whose pursuit of power (so the story goes) transcended Party values and abused its history. Cameron, meanwhile, looks set to be elected as a (social) liberal Tory surrounded in Parliament by a more Thatcherite mass, whose love for him – despite an occasional European blip – remains undimmed as long as he keeps on winning. Blair, however, chose a battle and fought one within the party to make change manifest. Clause 4 was as totemic for Labour as the European Union remains for the Tories. Yet that battle remains simmering, with an angry political violence currently suppressed. Britain is in effect being asked to vote for a President, not a Party, nor a set of known policies of values. Faith is being placed in the person, not the Party he leads.

This unspoken shift from Prime Ministerial to Presidential may be strangely liberating. In an age of chaotic networks, where a new ecology based on shared interests has been spawned by the digital age, we are learning to forge different partnerships and coalitions across the sphere of cross influence (an early model of which was developed in the original version of Citizen Renaissance) in all aspects of our lives – from personal interests to professional or political pursuits. In contrast, a combination of precedent and the Parliamentary system currently forces Party Leaders to choose from a generally shallow gene pool of vested interests in the formation of Cabinets. This is akin to swimming against the tide of networked reality. Prime Ministers, constrained by the system, end up repaying Party debts and rewarding internal political support with important public office, rather than genuinely delivering a Government of All The Talents for the common good. This has, of course, been one of the criminal charges levelled at Gordon Brown. National progress is thus impeded by an anachronistic hierarchy, out-dated precedent and the straightjacket of a two-party system.

Just as we atomise our choices surrounding TV schedules and musical preferences, surely we must now be able to adopt the same principles with our politics? For some reason, we are subsisting entirely on a diet of Political ITV and are being denied the fundamental freedom to build new coalitions in support of our trusted leaders – and to address what citizens, not a political elite, determine as the most pressing issues of our times. The fourth force of British politics is there, for sure, but currently only latent.

Moving to a Presidential system will allow the Blair’s and the Cameron’s far greater freedom to manoeuvre to improve Britain for the better. Future leaders could, for instance, mix the environmentalism of a Milliband, Ed, with the economic sanity (Mansion Taxes not withstanding) of a Cable. There would be fewer concerns surrounding the Defence post and the Health Service would hopefully be safe in someone’s hands. Fiscal prudence and social reform could become happy bedfellows once again. Not every minister would have to be party-allegiate. In an age where everyone rushes to champion the Knowledge Economy, better knowledge and best skills could be properly and more efficiently deployed.

The corollary of Presidential Britain would be a dramatic re-appraisal of the voting system and, regardless of what happens with the House of Commons, the need for an Upper Chamber that properly reflects civil society would become more urgent. Giving a political voice to the postmen and the health workers, community leaders and employee trusts, teachers and mums, would provide a compelling new framework for a more truly representative citizen democracy, to whom our Presidential leaders could be held to relevant account, and which might also mitigate some of the (often testosterone-charged) industrial friction of recent times. Such a civil framework would, of course, show no mercy for the old and irrelevant hierarchies of monarchy, as Britain regenerated on lines anew. No room, in this reality, for a President and a Monarch together – replaced instead by a coherent and properly structured constitution.

Many clichés have been spoken about the world not emerging from ‘this crisis’ with either the same tired or broken business models or values with which we entered it. The same must surely go for our political system also. The Crisis of Trust is such that there needs to be a wholesale re-think and a better system built on the reality of today’s chaos and new networks of influence. David Cameron, as with Gordon Brown before him, will be forced to do deals with opposing interests in order to form internal alliances that effectively put the polarising needs of the Conservative Party ahead of the needs of Great Britain. If the trust currently being shown in Cameron is to be properly re-paid, then we must grant our leaders real freedom to operate – away from the constraints of their respective parties, as well as from the policies dogmas of a broken two-party state.

Shock news. Right-wing, neo-liberal, global multi-media oligarch Rupert Murdoch is no fan of a party that questions free markets. The Sun has come out against New Labour after many years of a rather strange love affair. It was always a fair bet that it couldn’t last forever.

Gordon Brown says markets “need morals” and that the problem is that markets are currently “not just free but values-free”. Well its taken him a while to wake up to that no-brainer. Could it be that seeing himself firmly wedged against the ropes, Brown feels his only hope is a bit of banker and market bashing? Are we to trust this new found morality? Where was it when he wanted the money the city brought his ‘project’? Did he turn his back on Blair’s rampant free-market neo-liberalism in favour of true Labour values when he came to power?

And where was the meat in what he said at the conference? Compare what he said to the right-of-centre Sarkozy railing against the markets “Laissez-faire is finished, the all-powerful market that is always right, that’s finished”. Or David Cameron’s calls for alternative measures of progress to GDP or, Liberal, FSA Chairman Adair Turner’s comments about “socially useless” city characters.

Brown will have to do far better to persuade us of this new-found critique corporate-consumer-capitalism. Yes, the jury is still out as to whether Cameron can do much better but at least his rhetoric is more convincing. What this country and this planet badly need is a new, beyond-growth, wellbeing-economics. And an economics which puts the flourishing of people and planet way ahead of pounds and dollars.

And what we badly need most of all is audacious and visionary leadership from politics. That’s perhaps the most rare resource we have these days.

As an update on the Perfect Storm a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists have just announced a ‘safe planetary operating space´ that will allow humanity to continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. See the video introduction.

The Nine boundaries include climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution. Three of these boundaries (climate change, biological diversity and nitrogen input to the biosphere) may already have been transgressed and the boundaries are strongly connected — crossing one boundary may seriously threaten the ability to stay within safe levels of the others.

The concept will be the subject of an upcoming book by environmental author Mark Lynas, whose previous climate change book Six Degrees won the Royal Society prize in 2008. Katherine Richardson, co-author of the scientific article, emphasises the huge potential for mankind to be more proactive and prevent us doing irreparable damage to the environment. If we respect these boundaries then all will be well. If we don’t then collapse is inevitable.

A group including my Citizen Renaissance co-author Robert and myself recently wrote two provocative letters to the Queen and the British Academy. The 22 signatories included intellectual architects of New Labour such as Matthew Taylor, now chief executive of the RSA, and academic Lord Giddens, as well as progressive-Conservative thinker and ResPublica CEO Phillip Blond, Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, and author of Trust and Philosopher Alain de Botton.

We wrote these letters because we were underwhelmed by a letter the British Academy had written to Her Majesty about the current economic turmoil. The good and the great of the British Academy had missed some of the most consequential and world-changing issues of our time. The crux of our argument is similar to ideas in Citizen Renaissance and summarised by the below excerpt from the letters:

Our premise is that our current economic malaise is symptomatic of a far more serious systemic failure to acknowledge what Archbishop Rowan Williams has identified in saying “It has been said that ‘the economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment’. The earth itself is what ultimately controls economic activity because it is the source of the materials upon which economic activity works”.

Energy underlies everything – Scylla and Charybdis of peak oil and climate change. The underlying cause of the current economic meltdown is a multi-generational debt-binge inextricably linked to a concomitant multi-generational energy-binge. The Academy’s letter focuses on some “imbalances in the global economy”. However, the key to addressing our current situation is to recognise the far more serious imbalances between our insatiable hunger for energy, its finite nature and the environmental pollution in its use.

The response to our letters has been positive. The Queen welcomed us raising our concerns and the British Academy have agreed that a public debate between some of their members and the signatories of our letter is needed.

The letters were covered in the press by papers such as the FT as well as actively discussed on the blogosphere in places including TreeHugger.com.

With President Sarkozy having just announced that he plans for France to include wellbeing into standard measures of ‘progress’ and GDP, its clear that we live in times of change. Who would have thought that world leaders would be racing to be the first to sound-bite views on the selfishness and excess of bankers and our current form of capitalism?

The economic meltdown which the British Academy wrote to the Queen about has been a wake-up call to us all. No longer can we sleep-walk towards some vague idea of progress and prosperity. We are running out of planet and of time. And – as Alastair Campbell pointed out to Anne Robinson on Watchdog last week – all this consumerism ain’t making us any happier.

We don’t expect the Queen to join the debate but are confident that we can shift the thinking of the British Academy to take on board the far wider and deeper concerns which our letters raise. Watch this space.

I have not flown for many years. I don’t fly because I feel that for me, knowing what I do about climate change and equity, it would be immoral to fly. I try and encourage others not to fly also. I believe very much in the ‘be the change’ philosophy of Gandhi. I believe its my responsibility to reduce my footprint as much as I can. And for many of us flying is by far the biggest single chunk of our carbon footprint.

So I was interested to read this piece which suggested that cutting out flying was somewhat irrelevant to the changes we need. The piece rightly points out that most of us are encouraged to inhabit the consumer rather than citizen end of the spectrum we write about in Citizen Renaissance. It suggests many of us have been conned into focusing on our own ‘small’ impacts so that we don’t bother business and politics with calls for systemic change.

But I don’t think its about either/or. The fact that I do not fly does not undermine my ability to act as a citizen and to lobby politics and business for change. In fact I think it does the opposite. The fact that I am willing to forgo the ‘pleasures’ of flying surely merely underlines how passionate I am about the kinds of changes we need. So when I work with politicians and companies I can point to actions I myself have made which have actually increased not decreased my wellbeing – at the same time as massively reducing my footprint.

Indeed far too few ‘greens’ seem willing to cut out flying. I take the things such ‘greens’ say with a large pinch of salt. Why should I have the right to lobby Governments and the opposition against building new runways if I still insist on jetting off whenever the weather looks unpromising here at home? With such democratic rights come responsibilities.

Being an active citizen means acting at all levels, personally, in community, locally, regionally, nationally and globally. So I will stick to my low-fly policy. But I will also keep pushing business and politics to play their role in the systemic change we so badly need.

Re-reading Milton Friedman’s September, 1970 article in The New York Times Magazine or watching him interviewed on US TV offers a comforting sense of personal, philosophical and political re-assurance – and an affirmation that years of unfettered Thatcher-Reagan economics really were that destructive on the material wellbeing of the planet and its people. The Gordon Gekko mantra that ‘Greed is good’ is now oft-repeated in casual conversational references to an era passed, but those who still cling to the Friedman obsession with free markets and the doctrine that the social responsibility of business is to maximize its profits, appear about as relevant and convincing today as Nigel Lawson on the subject of Climate Change. Gekko provided the soundbite to enable us to avoid reading tomes of Friedman’s economic theory (while still getting the point), while Lawson famously claimed that environmental campaigners were forcing us all into an ‘age of unreason’. However, like Friedman before him, it was Nigel’s own adherence to a near-blind faith in the market mechanism that obfuscated the truth and a more reasoned approach to the world around us. Theirs is – and was – unreason without bounds: a determination that market principles must apply anywhere and everywhere; that there should be no limits to the rampant and rapacious nature of the individual; that companies (and Governments) just get in the way.

Citizenship, however, demands responsibilities from individuals. And such responsibilities are rooted in principled and virtuous actions that protect collective wellbeing, not just personal advancement. Hence there is such a thing as society, Maggie, and – yes – we are all very much part of it. Our first responsibility is to our fellow citizens and to our one planet, north and south.

In recent weeks, I have been party to a wide-ranging discussion about whether (metaphorically, at least) Milton Friedman is dead. I took issue back in February with the FT’s Stefan Stern when he wrote about ‘the hot air of CSR’ and while we should abhor the tick-box approach that certain companies now take to the Responsibility agenda, we should also recognize and embrace the fact that corporations can – and must – become agents for change. Furthermore, recent Trust data confirms that companies now need to consider the interests of their employees and those of their customers ahead of the interests of the shareholder – proof-positive of the shift from a singular shareholder to a multiple stakeholder focus for businesses and business leaders today. This move, in itself, puts the Friedman doctrine to the sword. In a global economy, even those nations thrilled at their liberation from centralized economic control will yet need to find a new harmony between freer markets and responsible, corporate actions.

While Trust data may provide reasoned statistical support for the argument, though, there is also a point here about higher principle. Where is the moral justification for putting money before people; or corporate profit ahead of the customer that helps build success; or the interests of the company ahead of the finite resources of the planet? The Economist hailed Friedman as the most influential economist of the second half of the Twentieth Century, but his theories were essentially as transient of those of Keynes before him. More enduring is the concept of co-operative ownership, mutual behaviours and active citizenship, as articulated on Citizen Renaissance before and which find greater historical precedent as well as greater modern relevance. Those who today advocate the economics (really, politics) of Friedman lack a historical perspective and shun their obligations to fellow-citizens and to the environmental economics of mother earth. They are also just not in tune with contemporary corporate thinking or, indeed, structure.

Business leaders today of course worry about ‘more regulation’ and all rush to agree of the preferable nature of ‘better regulation’ instead. But more principled (ie. more adult) behaviour will transcend the need for such regulation altogether – a new and progressive consensus will understand new boundaries of principle, not just the parameters of scale. Markets may be informative, but civic virtue can speak to a higher moral order. In this context, jostling around how / whether / to what scale regulation should contain the size of a Bankers’ Bonus (the scrap du jour) fundamentally misses the point. Regulation is a mere – and weak – manifestation of a rule compliant culture, where we have to put (childish) boundaries in place to stop (childish) people offending. Responsibility – not regulation – needs to be the watch-word of the Stakeholder society. And that can start from within.

Make no mistake – Milton Friedman is dead. The social responsibility of business today must be to address the new ecology of interests within business on a more equal footing. Business must speak no longer to only the individual or the shareholder – but must embrace the customer as citizen; the employee as citizen; and the corporate entity as a collective citizen of the community and the planet which it serves. No-one is trying to undermine the profit motive, per se – but Profit without Principle has no place in the new business ecology. Companies and brands including Quaker, Marks & Spencer, Cadbury and, of course, The Co-Op are mainstream, not maverick – but maybe the late Mr Friedman might disagree.