A new anxiety is taking hold. The social consensus about what we value and why seems to have fragmented, leaving in its wake an unpleasant cocktail of celebrity, cool, acquisitiveness and depression. The Unicef report that Britain is the worst place to grow up in the industrialised world was a bad enough jolt; the fact that it was published during a series of brutal murders of young men further underlines the pervasive sense that something has gone awry in this country in the quality of relationships - within families, between peers, in neighbourhoods.
It sounds inchoate because it is. How can one characterise social change made up of billions of human relationships? But there is an increasing perception that we have become a nasty country - aggressive, quick to judge or humiliate, and profoundly competitive. In the constant comparison with others, we either crow smugly at our own good fortune or sink into depression at our inadequacy. This gloomy diagnosis seems to be backed up by research. The British Attitudes Survey shows how we are becoming more preoccupied with our individual concerns and less with those of the community. According to Compass, the political pressure group, we are in the grip of a social recession.
This week's debate at the House of Commons, The Politics of Wellbeing, featuring two of its leading advocates will explore the political ramifications of this social recession. A younger generation of politicians are keen to speak to this malaise in the public mood, although they are careful to talk in vague terms about values rather than specific policy proposals. The aim is to project a politics that is more emotionally attuned than the Gradgrind managerialism and target-toting of Labour.
But aside from offering opportunities for political positioning, there is a serious question to answer: are politicians to blame for this social recession and can they put it right? Sure, one can point out that the biggest single cause of unhappiness is inequality, but plenty of countries with greater inequality did better than Britain in the Unicef report. So maybe there's something more at stake - some vacuum of values and, if so, doesn't that go beyond a politician's remit? If we're obsessed with celebrity, self-centred and rude, will a politician's hectoring make any difference?
Oliver James is in no doubt that the politicians are to blame for the social recession. In his new book, Affluenza, he particularly targets "Blatcher" as having missed a historic opportunity to shift the country in the direction of Scandinavian social democracy, instead of the "selfish capitalism" found in English-speaking countries from the US to Australia, where depression rates are twice those of mainland Europe. James lays the blame on a political economy of privatisation, low regulation, low taxation and valuing the success of a business only by its share price, but he never explains why these characteristics are connected - for example, how does privatisation contribute to the pre-occupation with celebrities or hyperconsumerism? But James has a point: turbo-capitalism strips out many of the social contexts which give people meaning and orientate them. International surveys show how desperately insecure the British are - second only to South Korea according to the OECD.
The most influential advocate of happiness being a proper subject for government in recent years has been the economist Richard Layard with his book Happiness. He attributed the stagnant rates of wellbeing in industrialised countries such as the UK to trends such as family breakdown, declining trust, rising crime and television eroding social connectedness. He argued for the Benthamite principle of the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" as the proper aim of government. If that was the accepted goal of society (rather than increasing GDP) it would ensure the priority of tackling inequality and improving mental health services.
But politicians are rightly wary of how Bentham translates into politics. Marriage and ethnically homogenous communities lead to higher rates of happiness while television has a detrimental effect - should government then bring in draconian measures such as banning divorce or TV? Even more crudely, apply Bentham's principle and you could end up advocating Prozac in tap water - it would certainly provide the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Despite these reservations, James and Layard give politicians plenty to think about. Layard, in particular, has lobbied hard to get politicians to take mental health services seriously. He's done that by using the carrot of reductions in the millions with depression currently on incapacity benefit - that got the Treasury listening. There are real economic costs to our social recession.
James and Layard are challenging the entrenched tradition of materialism in Labour party thinking that believes that all this airy-fairy stuff about wellbeing is a distraction from the real issue of economic growth. It also challenges the more recent managerialist grip of performance indicators and number crunching that has left Labour sounding robotically soulless.
Brown's team, steeped in the language of the work ethic, will have to find a way to talk to this theme of wellbeing. Perhaps they should take a trip to Denmark - the country that comes closest to having a politics of wellbeing that I've seen. It affects every form of public service from daycare through the educational system to looked-after children and the elderly. Denmark invests an enormous amount in training people to nurture human relationships; it has a powerful ideal of human wellbeing and how to develop it. When the Danish built their welfare state, they professionalised and properly remunerated the skills women used in raising families. What Brown won't like is that such a politics of wellbeing is not cheap, or easily measurable.
Of course it's not a panacea and Denmark is not a utopia, but this appreciation of the importance of relationship is evident throughout the social infrastructure of the country. In comparison, the British seem mechanistic, obsessed with procedure, and distrustful of each other. The costs of that in terms of social recession are beginning to become clear.
Editor's note: This is the third article in Cif's Politics of Wellbeing series. On Wednesday February 21 Oliver James will debate the policy implications of his book Affluenza at the House of Commons with Lord Layard, James Purnell MP, Ed Vaizey MP, Sue Palmer, author of "Toxic Childhood", and Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass. The event will be chaired by Derek Draper. Tickets are available from event@affluenza.org.uk.
