I was invited to give a talk on motivation and the European Union at the Bruge Group’s annual conference this year at the Great Hall in King’s College, London. It was for me an unexpectedly lively debate – and I met some great people and learnt a lot of new stuff. I say ‘new’, but in a bizarre way it was hardly that: more rediscovering what you knew or had known at an intuitive level for a long time. But in typically British fashion had not been too concerned about.
For example, I knew that Blair and Brown had promised the British people a Referendum on further political integration with Europe, and had seriously reneged on that promise; and that Cameron had capitalised on their failure, and now himself had failed to do anything different. Of course, the financial meltdown, the fiscal deficits are all a massive distraction. To be fair to Cameron, why would he want to put an issue divisive to his own party at the forefront of his activities when other, more pressing and immediate, problems are closer to home?
That said, the scale of the problems we are in, and the idea that being in Europe is helping solve them became patently absurd to me the longer the day went on. There I was painting a motivational picture contrasting the profiles of Europe (at least the sample from five countries that I had data on) and Britain. Not to put too fine a point on it, the British profile was more consultancy, small business orientated, whereas the European profile was more Corporate – more big business, in fact.
And big business is what has partially got us into this problem alongside big Government – the notion that central control, that being in a hive is going to work for long with human beings is exactly what I have never believed or ever wanted.
It became clear to me too that the renaissance that Cameron wants in the SME market – employing some 95% of employees, and so the only real source of salvation for the economy – could only come without Europe: its rules, regulations and absurd restrictions primarily on British businesses, especially small businesses. These cannot compete with the Corporate when the costs of compliance simply drives them out of business.
So, even clearer was the perception that Corporates are of course main supporters of political Europe precisely because it destroys the effective competition for them; and then we are left with only three or four major chocolate (or whatever) manufactures/monoliths in each sector who have a 98% market share. How nice! And the motivational profile will be similar to the bureaucrats who grab power. Wonderful! Thus, the voice of Corporates is disproportionately powerful and destabilises democracy.
Of immediate consequence is the need, then, to support in whatever way the promotion of small businesses if we are going to stay motivated, stay in business, and stay democratic. If we can’t agree on which political party to support, or whether increased political union with Europe is good or bad for small businesses and democracy, then at least let us all agree on one thing: a democratic vote on the issue would be good? Go to http://www.eupledge.com and add your name.
The Mapping Motivation Series 