Food for Thought Spring 2010
ANDREW COOPER
FOUNDER AND STRATEGIC DIRECTOR, POPULUS
PETER RIDDELL
CHIEF POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, THE TIMES
GEOFF MULGAN DIRECTOR, THE YOUNG FOUNDATION
BLUE RUBICON 6 MORE LONDON PLACE, LONDON SE1
CONTENTS 4
Andrew Cooper
Founder and Strategic Director, Populus
Pete r Riddell Chief Political Commentator, The Times 16 Geoff Mulgan Director, The Young Foundation 10
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The first hundred days – challenges and opportunities in a new political landscape | 3
The first hundred days -
challenges and opportunities in a new political landscape Foreword Most businesses will be closely following the political battle that the forthcoming general election will unleash, with its prime ministerial debates, manifestos, battle buses, and relentless press conferences. The tightening of the polls presents an uncertain picture and the closest race for 20 years. But whoever wins on May 6th (that date at least looks certain) will face a political environment shaped by two major events. First, the economic crisis that has forced up borrowing and left the new government with a pressing and potentially unpopular need to reduce the fiscal deficit. And second, the expenses scandal that has created the need to rebuild trust in our political system. The incoming government will be entering a new era that will require fresh approaches, policies and tone. For businesses and organisations, this presents a real challenge. Everyone has spent the last 13 years talking to, working with and growing to understand a Labour government. We understand how the government operates, the resulting dividing lines of British politics and the dynamics that shape political debate and policy. Now we must prepare for the unknown – a new government, more new MPs than ever before or even a hung parliament. The first 100 days following the general election are vital and few understand the challenge the British political system brings to politicians who within 24 hours go from running up and down streets knocking on doors, to running the country. To help us navigate and understand this tricky political period we asked Andrew Cooper of polling company Populus to explain the lasting legacy of the themes of the election campaign; Peter Riddell of The Times to examine the shift from campaigning to governing and the challenges of a hung parliament; and Geoff Mulgan of the Young Foundation to use his experience of the 1997 Labour victory and his role as adviser to new governments across the world, to predict the priorities and actions of the new British government. The result is perhaps the best possible guide to those critical first 100 days and some very interesting food for thought.
Chris Norton Director
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A LITTLE BIRDHOUSE IN OUR SOUL? Andrew Cooper
Founder and Strategic Director, Populus We are a nation in a deep malaise. Eighty two per cent of voters think it is ‘time for a change’ in Britain. When Populus convenes focus groups of voters to find out what they mean by that – what exactly they think is in need of change – we’re frequently met with the chorus ‘everything’. Polls find 70% agreeing with David Cameron’s ostensibly hyperbolic assertion that ‘society is broken’ and nearly three quarters think that ‘politics is broken’ too. Two thirds feel that Britain is ‘going in the wrong direction’; nearly half think Britain’s best years are behind us and more than two fifths say they would emigrate to another country if they could. More than half ‘hardly recognize the country I live in anymore’ and 68% of voters believe that ‘people who play by the rules always get a raw deal’. By such metrics the polls paint a stark picture of fundamentally lost faith and vanished hope; it is a mainstream feeling in much of middle Britain that ‘ordinary hardworking people’ are the meat in a sandwich between the political parties and the powerful on one side and work-shy hand-out merchants on the other. Long before a birdhouse in Gosport became the icon of a rotten parliament, the conviction had taken root in much of Britain that there was no correlation at all between what MPs said and what they did. In October 1997 William Hague told the Conservative conference, shortly after the party’s defenestration from the corridors of power, that the Tories had been kicked out ‘because we came to be seen as divided, arrogant, selfish, conceited… out of touch and irrelevant’. It was an entirely accurate report of what people thought of the Major government. But as the years of Labour government since then have rolled on, ever more voters have come around to the view that the negative attributes they had judged in 1997 to be specifically characteristic of the Tories, increasingly seem to be generic to all of mainstream politics. New Labour certainly didn’t turn out to mean new danger – the Conservatives were wrong about that – but things did not ‘only get better’ either, in the view of most voters, and feelings of resentment at perceived unfulfilled promises have been festering for several years.
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Reasonably or not, most voters feel profoundly let down. The MP expenses saga did not come as a great surprise – though some of the specific claims were shockingly brazen – but as a proof of long suspected worst fears. ‘They’re only in it for themselves’ has become the common refrain; ‘they’re all as bad as each other’. Polls have for years found widespread disgruntlement about levels of crime, the spread of anti-social behaviour and the quality of public services. Then the recession hit and the bankers, whom most voters blame for causing it, not only seem never to have been held to account but have continued to reap big bonuses, while most people struggle with the effects of the economic downturn and worrying levels of debt. Little wonder then that the overwhelming feeling is that it is ‘time for a change’. In this environment, the defining question of the election is whether the Conservative Party can convince voters that it represents sufficient change to make a real difference, while also reassuring them that the collateral damage of sorting out the economy will not fall unfairly on the working poor or harm core services. It is a cliché of politics that opposition parties don’t win elections, governments lose them, but this time it isn’t really true. The government has in that sense profoundly lost the country already. There is barely a person in Britain who hasn’t firmly made up their mind about Gordon Brown and his government; the poll readings are abject – literally as bad, or worse, than those of John Major’s hapless Tory government at the same point before their purging in 1997. Labour trails the Conservatives on almost every policy issue and every party attribute. Gordon Brown’s ratings have recovered markedly from his sub-Michael Foot nadir two years ago but he still trails David Cameron by huge margins on almost every conceivable measure of leadership. The doubt remaining in the minds of most voters is not about Labour, it is about the Conservatives: ‘how much of a risk are they and are they worth the risk?’ – is what millions of voters are asking. The narrowing of the Conservative poll lead, from landslide territory to possible hung parliament, started with a solidifying of Labour’s core vote, egged on by evocation of ‘the playing fields of Eton’ it accelerated as people who have been saying for months to pollsters that they would vote Conservative started to feel uncomfortable about what, if anything, the Tories stand for. Both sides of this equation come from doubts about the values of the Conservative Party. Labour’s campaign is playing remorselessly to those doubts: ‘old Tories, old danger’ is, in effect, their strategic proposition. The feeling, fed by the closeness of the voting polls, that the result of the election is unclear is in no part because people are coming to feel that it isn’t time for a change after all. In the key marginal constituencies where the election will be decided, 75% still say that ‘it is time for a change from Labour’. But fewer than half of them also think it is ‘time for a change to the Conservatives’. In 1997, by contrast, voting Labour was, for most that did so, as much a positive vote for the change that Tony Blair represented as it was a negative vote against the Tory government. The sum of all this is that there are millions of voters in Britain who crave change but aren’t sure if it is really on offer. Some of these people will no doubt end up voting Conservative anyway – essentially a leap in the dark and a hope for the best. But if the Conservatives are unable to assuage the widespread doubts people have about them, a lot of those who want change will look for it elsewhere – on the political fringe – or not vote at all, or decide, in resignation, that perhaps it is best to stick with the devil they know.
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We live in an age of auto-cynicism – cynicism as a reflex. Trust in established institutions has collapsed and little or nothing is taken at face value: voters feel they have learned the hard way not to believe what they are told by those in authority, so they try their best to gauge the motives behind what is said. Actions speak infinitely louder than words. Authenticity is everything – and because they want proof of authenticity, voters also increasingly demand transparency, an appetite that poses as many challenges for business as it does for political parties. The only politicians that anyone even slightly respects are those perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be ‘real’: straight-talking, unspun, say-what-they-mean types who seem to speak their mind regardless of how popular their views are or whether they reflect the official line. It is what people like about Boris Johnson and what they liked about Mo Mowlam. For a party in opposition these dynamics of the nation’s mood present serious problems. There are, for obvious reasons, severe limits on their ability to prove their authenticity by doing, so they have to rely on what they say to communicate the kind of change they represent. But most voters consciously tune out political messages and those that do get through are likely to be presumed insincere – scripted attempts to tell people what they want to hear. Changing perceptions of a political party brand, as the Conservatives have been trying to do, is therefore incredibly difficult. It takes a long time and consistency is vital: the picture in voters’ minds of what a party stands for is built of countless pixels formed from snapshots of things that the party has said and done. If these snapshots are inconsistent, in terms of the character and values that they project the result is fuzziness. This has been a key Conservative Party problem during this parliament. Their appeal to non-Tory voters depends upon the assertion that they have changed, but they struggled to communicate consistently what form that change has taken – and what they have changed into (and why). Many voters are confused by the Conservatives. Of all the things that pollsters measure about politics – the gamut of issues, attributes, leaders – the one that correlates most closely with whether or not someone votes Conservative is whether they agree with the statement ‘the Conservative Party shares my values’. In the remaining weeks before the election the critical battle between the parties will be their mutual efforts to define the Conservative Party’s values: David Cameron striving to substantiate his assertion that he is a ‘modern, compassionate Conservative’ committed to the NHS, in touch with ordinary working people and caring about the vulnerable; Gordon Brown positing a cold, uncaring party that would put the interests of the best-off first and sacrifice desperately needed tax credits and benefits to the cause of dealing with the country’s debt. How those voters who want change, but are unsure about the Conservatives – two in five of all voters in the battleground seats – resolve this argument will determine the result of the election and the contours of the next government. Andrew Cooper, co-founder and Strategic Director, Populus Before setting up Populus, Andrew was Head of Research at the Social Market Foundation, one of Britain’s leading independent think tanks, and then Head of Polling and ultimately Director of Strategy for the Conservative Party, a position he left in 1999 to found Populus. He is a member of the management committee of the British Polling Council, which he helped to found, and is also a frequent commentator on public opinion and politics on TV and radio.
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A RARE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT? Peter Riddell
Chief Political Commentator, The Times and Senior Fellow, Institute for Government Anyone aged under 48 has seen only one change of government in their adult lives. They were just too young to vote in the 1979 election which saw Margaret Thatcher’s arrival in Downing Street and were in their mid-30s by the time of Tony Blair’s ‘things can only get better’ election in 1997. By contrast, as a 61 year old, I have seen four changes of government since I was old enough to vote. This simple contrast explains why the coming general election could be so momentous and also why it will be so difficult for a new Conservative government if elected in a couple of months’ time. Few incoming ministers will have any knowledge of how government works and how to achieve change. In 1997, no members of the first Blair cabinet had ever served in a cabinet before, though a handful had been junior ministers. This time, three members of David Cameron’s Shadow cabinet have no cabinet experience, William Hague, Kenneth Clarke and Sir George Young. But most of the shadow Tory team has no experience of Whitehall. For the past 18 months I have been working on these issues for the Institute for government, producing a report four months ago with historian Catherine Haddon Transitions – preparations for changes in government, and holding a series of meetings around Whitehall and elsewhere to discuss transitions. The preparations have been more extensive and detailed this time than ahead of the changes in 1979 and 1997, both on the opposition side and in Whitehall. The implementation team under Francis Maude has both helped, along with the Institute, to inform shadow spokesmen about what being a minister involves and to get prepare business plans for each department after the election. On the Whitehall side, there has been closer co-ordination of preparatory work and of the officially sanctioned contacts with opposition spokesmen. Yet there is only so much that can be done beforehand. Campaigning is not the same as governing. It is a big leap from opposition to government. The former is about taking positions and success is measured by column inches and appearances on television; the latter involves taking decisions on issues which may require months, if not years, to put into effect. The adjustment can be quite difficult, not least starting to work with a group of people whom you don’t know. On the other side, the civil service is unsure about how to establish relations with new ministers. It is not so much their policies: often the civil service has done more work on the practical implications of policy statements than the opposition itself. The uncertainty is more about attitudes and relationships, even language.
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All that argues for a gradual period of adjustment. But the British system is highly unusual in having an immediate handover of party, usually on the day after the election. This means that important decisions on appointments and on policy priorities are made when the new leaders are exhausted from the rigors of election night and the campaign. While it is too much to hope for a phased handover over, say a week, as in comparable parliamentary democracies, such as Australia or Canada, there is a strong case against expecting or wanting a dramatic first 100 days. Of course, a new government wants to show that a new regime is in charge, though its mere existence does that. A new prime minister will want to announce a few symbolic changes quickly: about his or her style of governing, or unveiling striking new policies (remember the announcement of Bank of England independence within days of the 1997 election). But, otherwise, there is a strong case for a new government reflecting rather than rushing, if only for a few weeks, before announcing detailed plans. New ministers need to take time to get to grips with their new departments and work out their policies in detail. It is certainly true that the first, long, parliamentary session is when a new government is likely to take its most controversial decisions and introduce its most controversial legislation, even if implementation is likely to take some time. For instance, while the Conservatives have promised an emergency budget within 40 days of an election (the emergency is redundant since all new governments have budgets then), this will basically signpost a new direction with some initial measures to cut public spending. But the key will be the spending review which will report in the autumn looking at plans for three to four years ahead. That will look at which programmes can be cancelled, and which pared back or financed in a different way. A hung parliament would obviously be different but not as much as is popularly supposed. Recent opinion polls point to the Tories being near or only just above the 326 threshold needed for an overall Commons majority. David Cameron could quite easily govern as head of a minority government in these circumstances, not least because the Tories would be 70 to 80 seats ahead of Labour, and the chances of all the various other opposition groups voting against would be slim. If the Tories were 20 or 30 short of an overall majority, and Labour correspondingly higher, life would be more difficult but not impossible.
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Even if it took a few days or even a week to form a government, while Gordon Brown tested out possible alliances, as is his right, David Cameron would still end up as prime minister if the Tories were clearly ahead of Labour. Only if the two main parties were close together in numbers of seats could there genuinely be an extended period of instability and uncertainty. Nick Clegg has already promised that the Liberal Democrats would back deficit reduction measures, not least in order to present themselves as a “responsible” opposition party. I doubt if the Lib Dems would join any coalition and they might only be willing to agree to a very limited informal arrangement to back a minority government, on primarily deficit cutting measures for a specified time. The paradox of a hung parliament is that, in our majoritarian culture, everyone involved will behave as if this is just an interim stage before another general election – as between October 1964 and March 1966, and between February and October 1974 – yet the only way that a minority government can operate is by behaving in a non-majoritarian way. This means defining the issues that really matter for survival – votes of confidence and budgets – and negotiating, and accepting occasional defeats, on other measures. For a minority Cameron government, all that would really matter would be its handling of the economy and deficit reduction measures. Everything else would be secondary and would have to await a second election. So questions such as redefining Britain’s relations with the EU and a British bill of rights would no doubt be kicked into touch for further consultation. So many of the more controversial Tory plans would be deferred. That is not just a question of parliamentary majorities. Deficit reduction would be the absolute priority, regardless, for a new government of any majority. But that does not mean that plans for reform of public services should, or will have to be, put off. A period of restraint is just when innovation and change should be introduced. While the gimmicky slogan, the post-bureaucratic age, is now less often heard, the Conservatives have talked of being less centralist– devolving responsibility within Whitehall more to departments and, outside, more to local providers while involving the voluntary and private sectors more as suppliers of services. Whether that will be truly post-bureaucratic is a matter of doubt – it may just involve devolving responsibility for pain.
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One certainty is that the face of British politics will change dramatically. A record number of MPs have already announced their retirements, regardless of any switch of seats. So it is possible that around two-fifths of the new Commons will be first-time MPs, most of whom have little or no knowledge of Westminster. That will be a big challenge to the Conservative whips, especially if there is a hung parliament or a very tight majority. The Conservatives are likely to go into the new parliament with the fewest number of experienced MPs than any new potential new government since Labour in 1945. The Tories won 198 MPs in 2005–against the 271 which Labour won in the comparable election in 1992. But the expenses row and retirements have taken their toll and only 160 Tory MPs are likely to survive into the next parliament. That will narrow David Cameron’s choice of new ministers – hence we are likely to see a few more ex-ministers return to the fold, if only for a year or two, while the newcomers find their feet in parliament. And there are likely to be quite a few Tory goats as Lords ministers. The class of 2010 will probably have to wait for a short time. Looking back, the obvious early stars do not always shine for long– though there are occasional exceptions. In 1945, the only new MP to become a minister immediately was an obscure economist and wartime civil servant called Harold Wilson. Who will be the Harold Wilson of the class of 2010 – hardly an eagerly sought title? Peter Riddell, Chief Political Commentator, The Times, and Senior Fellow, Institute for Government Peter Riddell worked for the Financial Times for 21 years, writing on the economy, politics and the USA, and has been on The Times since 1991. He is a frequent broadcaster and has written six books on British politics. He chairs the Hansard Society, the leading non-partisan charity for promoting understanding of representative democracy. Peter currently splits his time between The Times, where he is Chief Political Commentator, and the Institute for government, where he is a Senior Fellow, and has co-authored a report entitled Transitions, preparations for a change in government. He has recently worked on hung parliaments, helping to advise the Cabinet Office on the section of the proposed new cabinet manual on the formation of governments.
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Being or Doing? Geoff Mulgan
Director, The Young Foundation The very idea of a first 100 days might be thought to be unconservative. It dates to Roosevelt’s administration in the early 1930s that came to power with a blizzard of radical initiatives in the context of the Great Depression. Whoever is elected in May (and as Einstein pointed out, politics can be far more complex and governed by far more variables than physics) is unlikely to do anything comparable. There may be a protracted period of negotiation if there’s a hung parliament. Even if the Conservatives win a clear majority they may want to signal a tone of steely determination, of rolling up the sleeves in an unusually difficult climate, rather than hyperactive new programmes. So what can we forecast? First, we can have some confidence about the shape of the election result. In 1950 the two main parties won almost 98% of the popular vote. In the last European election that had fallen to around 40%. The figure in May will be higher but we will nevertheless see more clearly than ever a fractured political landscape, in which the main parties are surrounded by others – UKIP, BNP, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Respect – as never before, meaning that, even if there is a majority in parliament, the sense of a decisive mandate is likely to be tempered. We can also be fairly confident that the next decade will be different in tone from the last thirty years. A long period of one party rule, first Tory after 1979, then Labour after 1997, is coming to an end. Although preponderance of this kind has been the pattern in some other periods of British history, at other times – including the 1960s and 1970s – there was much fiercer competition, and regular alternation between the parties. My sense is that the lack of clear ideological difference between the parties, and the absence of any clear ideological wind, makes it more likely that we are entering one of those periods than the beginning of a period of prevalence for the Conservatives. Perhaps the recent fashion for retro-1970s chic, and perhaps even the return of stagflation, are also pointers in this direction. What of the style of a new administration? We can try guessing what a Cameron administration would look like by studying his speeches and public relations. But we would do better to analyse the rather similar governments which have come to power in recent years, in particular the centre-right governments in Canada and New Zealand and Boris Johnson’s administration in London. John Key in New Zealand and Stephen Harper in Canada came to power not promising any major change of direction. They were certainly not Thatcherites or Reaganites. Instead they promised a slight change of orientation – a bit less redistribution, a bit less government activism, and a bit more of a pro-business stance (though the governments they replaced were by historical standards very pro-business). The big difference, however, has been in the tone of how they have governed. There have been no big promises; no targets; no major programmes. Indeed they haven’t really promised to fix anything very much.
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They appear in the media a lot; they present themselves as likeable people; they’ve worked hard not to appear too right-wing. But at the heart of their administration is what I would call ‘being not doing’. Compared to Thatcher or Blair these are leaders who do not promise a lot of action, or that they’ll cure society’s ills. They are more content to preside than to lead. Very much the same has been the case in London under Boris. We’re told that Boris has a seat waiting for him so that he can depose David Cameron when he stumbles. But regardless of whether they do turn out to be deadly rivals, my guess is that their styles of government would not be so different. In a way both are classic small c conservatives. Neither believes in taking power in order to change the world. Instead they believe that they are simply very well-suited for holding power. Now this style of ‘being not doing’ could well be obscured in the early days of a Conservative government. Initially we will see plenty of action. There has certainly been a lot of serious discussion with the civil service on many fronts. There will be a budget within 50 days. There will be some restructuring of Whitehall (though not much), with new units for civil society, national security and probably social justice. Promises to open up transparency – and make all public contracts over £25,000 available on the web will be, at least partly, implemented. In some areas there will be a sense of radicalism – including schools – and a ratcheting up of what had been a Blairite agenda. There may even be some attempts to prove Bismarck’s famous comment that in Britain conservative parties do progressive reforms while progressive parties carry out conservatives ones (though I’m doubtful whether the ‘Broken Britain’ message will survive long in office). There may also be some genuinely new directions. In David Cameron’s recent Technology Entertainment Design (TED) talk he promised plenty of activity around behaviour change, as well as an explicit goal to promote public happiness. However, so far one senses there isn’t all that much substance behind the rhetoric. Having just completed a review of what really works in behaviour change around the world (I also did similar exercises in the mid 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s) I’m still struck by how vague the Conservative ideas in this field are. For all the enthusiasm for ‘nudge’ solutions, it’s very hard to see how the modest ideas they float would have much impact. Similarly on happiness. Over the last few years the Young Foundation has helped run what is one of the world’s only programmes testing out policies to help people to be happier. So I’m delighted at the words promising a serious engagement with how policy can influence wellbeing: but I’m still unclear whether anything lies behind them. If the words don’t in fact translate into a new style of governing, the default will be to gravitate closer to the more traditional conservatism of ‘being not doing’: filling the media with comments and visits, but probably less with initiatives and programmes. The big question, then is how long this could last. The stance of Key, Harper, Johnson and possibly Cameron, may fit the mood of modern electorates who are rather distrustful of politics and tired of hyperactive government. But it may not be so well suited for having to implement savage cuts in public spending. Margaret Thatcher managed rather less severe cuts
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than the next government will have to implement only by having won a clear mandate for tough action, and only through taking great care about which battles she fought and when. If it hadn’t been for the Falklands War she would almost certainly have been a one-term prime minister. When over the next few years doctors, teachers, parents and patients queue up to protest (as they will), when taxes rise sharply (as they will), and when riots start breaking out (the simmering signs are already present in some cities) this ‘being not doing’ stance of centrist conservatism will be put under intense strain. The same may be true of the economy. The misjudged response to the financial crisis has already cost the Tories a good deal of credibility with the electorate, a symptom both of inexperience but also of the lack of a clear account of economics and economic policy. Many others misjudged the last few years: but at least some of the people who got things most dramatically wrong (like Ben Bernanke) showed that they were able to learn quickly. No one knows how a Conservative government might respond to a second dip, and it is of course inherently hard to be a traditional conservative during economic crises, when politics cries out for governments to act, and when all the pressures will be for doing not being. Both of these points highlight that we may be about to elect a government that really will have to make it up as it goes along. Unlike Thatcher in 1979 or Blair in 1997, Cameron hasn’t benefited from a wave of ideas, thinktanks and thinkers acting as outriders and pioneers. Indeed Cameronism remains remarkably ill-defined. In some respects this has been a great advantage, allowing many to project their wishes onto him. It could even be seen as the mark of a true conservative, who is ready to respond pragmatically to events. But in the face of what could be a very troubled few years it’s also rather scary. Geoff Mulgan, Director, Young Foundation and former Director of the Government’s Strategy Unit and Head of Policy in the Prime Minister’s Office (1997-2004) Geoff Mulgan is director of the Young Foundation, one of the world’s leading centres for social innovation, social enterprise and public policy, with a 50 year history of creating new organisations in the public, private and non-profit sector, as well as pioneering ideas in fields as varied as ageing, education, healthcare and poverty reduction. Between 1997 and 2004 Geoff had various roles in the UK government including director of the government’s Strategy Unit and head of policy in the prime minister’s office. Before that he was the founder and director of the think-tank Demos. He has also been chief adviser to Gordon Brown MP; a lecturer in telecommunications; an investment executive; and a reporter on BBC TV and radio. Geoff has worked with many governments around the world and has lectured in over 40 countries, as well as advising the current prime ministers of Australia and Greece.
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