10 minute read
In Conversation
The Future Of
series is available in full on the OPC website
As part of the celebrations of the 150th Anniversary of the Old Pauline Club, President Ed Vaizey (1981-85) has had conversations with OPs who are leaders in their fields. So far, he has covered the Future of Politics with George Osborne (1984-89); Britain’s Position in the World with Sir Simon Fraser (1971-75); Health with Matthew Gould (1984-89) and The Arts with Simon Fox (1974-78) and Patrick Spence (1981-85). In May, his final conversation will be with Lord Baker (1948-53) and the High Master on The Future of Education.
Below are Atrium’s summaries of these conversations.
POLITICS
(30th November 2021)
“Keir Starmer doesn’t want it as much as Boris Johnson”
George Osborne was appointed one of the youngest ever Chancellors of the Exchequer in 2010 and served the full term of the Cameron administration until 2016. He left the House of Commons in 2017, having served sixteen years as an MP. Since leaving politics, he has undertaken a variety of roles, including editing London’s Evening Standard. He now works as a banker with Robey Warshaw and is Chair of the British Museum.
The conversation covered a number of topics including politics from how to navigate the PM/ Chancellor relationship through Brexit, being in Opposition, the red wall seats, the future of the Union and the two-party system in the UK as well as life as Chair of the British Museum and Culture Wars.
George touched on his time at School and the quality of the teaching which he thought was ahead of his experience at Oxford. He also ruefully reminded us that he was Vice-Captain of School in 1989.
His view was that Labour was becoming more credible. It had a Shadow Cabinet that looked like it could form a government and that it was distancing itself from the Corbyn policies. But “Keir Starmer does not want it as much as Boris Johnson. Boris will do anything to keep the job and be re-elected”.
George’s final answer, however on whether he would go back into politics was possibly the most revealing. “Being in politics is an amazing, all-consuming life but, only when you stop, do you realise the damage it does. Political life often ends in the equivalent of a career car crash. If I was to return properly it would have to be as an MP because the action is in the House of Commons and that rules out other things in your life”.
BRITAIN’S POSITION IN THE WORLD
(20th January 2022)
“Times have turned darker”
Simon Fraser is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of business consultancy firm, Flint Global. He advises on policy, political and regulatory issues in the UK and Europe. Simon was Head of the UK Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service (2010-2015). As a Senior UK Diplomat, he ran the global network of British embassies and was a member of the National Security Council. As Permanent Secretary, Simon led the UK Department for Business (2009-2010) in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Simon is Deputy Chairman of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), a member of the UK board of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Honorary President of BFPG (the British Foreign Policy Group). He has also served as a governor of St Paul’s.
It is hard to believe that Simon Fraser was ever in trouble at School but in answer to Ed’s first question he reminded us that detention at Barnes in the early 1970s involved removing stones from rugby pitches. Surely, Simon was supervising the detainees.
Later Simon commented that, “it is very difficult to quantify the economic cost of diplomacy. You know what it costs when you have a war, but you do not know what you save by not going to war”. He had earlier told us that there was some debate about whether to go to war in Iraq but “I was not listened to”. He particularly admires Tony Blair along with Margaret Thatcher, Peter Mandelson and William Hague of all the politicians he served.
The discussion and questions took the audience from geo-political stands-off and the balancing act in a world dominated by autocracies and democracies, to the disparity between rich and poor which has been accentuated by Covid and climate issues. We were shown that a month is a long time in politics as one of Ed’s questions was “what happens if Russia invades Ukraine?”. The Special Relationship, the vulnerability of Britain’s continued soft power, how to have a balanced relationship with China and the potential of AUKUS (trilateral security pact between Australia, UK and the USA) were also covered.
We discovered that Simon was never an ambassador because he was more interested in policy and issues. We did, however, learn that Paris is his favourite embassy not least because of the manhole cover on its grass tennis court.
Possibly his most haunting comment of the hour was that “in 1989 we felt liberal democracy had won but times have turned darker”.
HEALTH
(23rd February 2022)
UK healthcare is being successfully “disrupted”
Matthew Gould was the CEO of NHSX, the NHS’s digital transformation arm, where he was responsible for the largest digital transformation programme in the world. He told us that NHSX became part of the NHS in February 2022 because the argument that digital care has to be an integral part of health provision had been won. Matthew was previously the British Ambassador to Israel (2010-2015) and the Government’s cyber-security chief.
During the conversation we learnt that the CEO of NHSX was known by some as “Matt from IT”, that one of the highlights of his career was being spared Ed Vaizey as his boss and that he walks his dog with his friend since School, George Osborne. George mentioned in November that their plan on leaving School was for Matthew to be a Conservative MP and George a diplomat. The best laid plans and all that.
In answer to how being at St Paul’s had prepared him for such a varied career, Matthew replied that the School gave him the chance “to have real intellectual curiosity, the ability to think broadly, develop massive over self-confidence and not speak to a girl until I arrived at university”.
Matthew’s starting point when arriving at NHSX was that he had to view “the NHS not as an organisation but as 10% of the UK economy”. He realised that it therefore needed a safe and mature approach to and use of data, technology that was ‘easy’ not ‘hateful’, and a workforce that was comfortable using that technology.
It became clear during the conversation that digital developments at the NHS led by Matthew and accelerated by Covid were going to transform health and social care in the UK. The NHS App is now on 25 million phones whereas it was on 2m at the start of the decade. Until this happened, the health care model in the UK had hardly changed since 1948. It had remained a face-to-face process for patients and doctors and other medical staff.
The last two years has shown that it can be changed and made more efficient with services accessed including triage, consultations and results of tests provided quickly and efficiently over phones. Easy to access, better data provision is leading to improved diagnosis and therapy. He said that UK health care can and is being “successfully ‘disrupted’ to make it a ‘pleasure’ for all involved”.
Digital care is no longer a tech project but is at the core of the UK’s health and care provision with virtual wards becoming a reality in care homes and across the community. They can provide the equivalent of 42 district hospitals in the UK through remote analysis of long-term conditions with constant, convenient and efficient monitoring. There is a distinct possibility that ‘bed blocking’ could become a thing of the past and we might possibly even have the resources available to mitigate the mental health tsunami of which we are warned.
Simon Fox Patrick Spence
THE ARTS
(3rd March 2022)
It’s all about streaming, digital and the weather
Simon Fox is Chief Executive of Frieze, a contemporary art magazine which runs arts fairs in the UK, USA and Asia, since 2020. Previously, he was the Chief Executive of Reach plc (2012-2020), publisher of the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, OK! and 80 other regional news brands. Simon spent most of his career in retail and e-commerce. He was the Chief Executive of HMV Group (2006-2012), which operated the HMV brand in the UK and overseas, MaMa Group (live music) and Waterstones bookstores. His non-executive roles have included the Guardian Media Group and the RAC and currently he chairs the Good Business Charter.
Patrick Spence has worked in television for thirty years. He started as a Script Editor working on Cracker, Waking the Dead, Silent Witness, Line of Duty and Five Minutes of Heaven. In 2010 he became a Producer with his own company, Fifty Fathoms. Recent credits include Adult Material, The A Word, Fortitude, Peaky Blinders and Marvellous, for which he won a BAFTA. Patrick joined ITV Studios last year as Creative Director. Current productions include Alex Cary’s adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s Spy Among Friends, starring Damian Lewis, Guy Pearce and Anna Maxwell Martin; George Kay’s Litvinenko, starring David Tennant; Gwyn Hughes’ People vs Post Office, and Pete Bowker’s Ralph and Katie, a romantic comedy starring, written and directed by people with disability.
Neither Patrick nor Simon have been back to St Paul’s since they left and were disappointed that a London Underground strike had forced the conversation online. They both enjoyed their time at School but The Arts in the 1970s and 1980s seemed to be viewed as an add-on and not core. St Paul’s had however helped them in other ways particularly by preparing them for the ferociously competitive arts world.
The creative industries in the UK are huge contributors to the economy at 6% of GDP or £120bn a year and are also significant in the UK’s soft power so their future matters. Patrick questioned what that future might be. He highlighted his shift in job title from TV producer to content provider. Streaming is the future and the screens we look at might or might not be called a television. The mega global players are squeezing out national champions and will either achieve this through acquisition or by raising production and crew costs to levels that are prohibitive.
Simon commented that Digital Art with NonFungible Tokens as certificates of ownership, so artists benefit on each resale rather than only the first one, is taking hold. This could, however, mean that physical art becomes even more attractive as digital takes market share.
Both Patrick and Simon saw their creative spaces becoming more global with concerns about carbon footprints driving the use of virtual reality. Until 2020, UK only television had a role. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 could produce relatively low budget programmes without being concerned about whether they attracted a global market, reminding us that Emmerdale had more viewers in the UK than Game of Thrones. The developed (Netflix and Apple) and developing (Disney and Amazon) global providers want product for global markets.
Both saw a future for the BBC but with it concentrating on what it does well – radio, drama and documentaries – and with a much-reduced cost structure. We will probably watch the Queen’s funeral as a community on a terrestrial channel (though not with a Dimbleby commentating) but almost certainly not King Charles’s.
Though a decade apart at St Paul’s, Patrick and Simon came of age when families and communities still gathered around the television to share great events and favourite dramas: the Arts was still viewed through an elitist and often national lens. They now find themselves at the height of their careers facing global creative markets blown by winds such as cancel culture. It is not unusual for families to watch different content on different devices in the same room. (Editor: Really)
