The week well-being economics went mainstream?

It is nothing new for well-being to get attention from leading establishment figures. In 2005, life peer Lord Richard Layard and former adviser to 10 Downing Street published his book Happiness which argued that ‘Happiness should become the goal of policy’. In 2006, then Leader of the Opposition David Cameron called for a ‘focus not just on GDP, but on GWB - General Well-being’. In 2008 President Sarkozy established a commission of Nobel prize winning economists which called for us to ‘shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being’.

There have been some encouraging signs of progress, such as the establishment last year of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics. But generally, after these bursts of attention, the real day-to-day business of shaping policy goals by our politicians and policy-makers tends to carry on very much as normal.

But this week, there have been encouraging signs of a shift. Two prominent leaders have talked about the fact that aiming for standard economic goals simply isn’t enough to bring about the broader things we want for our society. And it seems that this time, they might really mean it.

On Tuesday, I was in the audience as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, launched his new book Crisis and Recovery: Ethics, Economics and Justice at an event at the British Library. Dr Williams introduced the book as ‘asking the question of what growth is for’ and examining ‘the relationship between wealth and well-being’. He pointed out that while well-being clearly has an economic component, it was very odd to regard it as the most significant element of what creates wellbeing. The Church of England had not made a strong statement on this previously, he said, because it was ‘quite easily hypnotised, like everyone else, by assertion of expertise’ but now it was unclear where to look for such expertise. The clear implication was that previous economic orthodoxies were no longer to be relied upon.

Perhaps even more surprising than the UK’s foremost religious leader stating so strongly that we need to gear our economic system towards creating well-being, was the fact that there seemed to be utter consensus across the ‘debating’ panel consisting of: a Tory MP (Zac Goldsmith), the economics editor of a broadsheet newspaper (The Guardian’s Larry Elliot, who co-edited the book with Dr Williams) and a leading political economist (another peer of the realm, Lord Robert Skidelsky).

Then on Wednesday, Ed Miliband took centre stage to deliver his first speech as leader of the Labour Party. Given his narrow margin of victory and the ‘Red Ed’ name-calling hanging in the air, some may not have expected that this was the moment for radicalism. But in fact, a central passage of his speech seemed to come straight from the core tenets of well-being economics. He said:

We all care about making a living, but we don't just care about that. Here is our generation's paradox: the biggest ever consumers of goods and services, but a generation that yearns for the things that business cannot provide…. New Labour embraced markets in our economy and was right to do so. But let's be honest, we became naive about them. We must never again give the impression that we know the price of everything and the value of nothing… We must shed old thinking and stand up for those who believe there is more to life than the bottom line.

And as examples what this new approach to politics would deliver, he cited a number of causes very close to nef’s heart: saving local post offices, guarding against Clone Town high streets, and protecting small businesses from the power of the big supermarkets.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether these are in fact the latest in a series of pronouncements from leaders who recognise the appeal of aiming towards well-being yet remain unwilling to follow through with concrete action. But for me this is a moment of optimism: I’d like to believe we’ve reached the point where those of us arguing for a society which promotes well-being can take our place right at the heart of the national conversation.