Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, James Chapman, director of Soho Communications and former Treasury comms chief, takes the notebook pen to reminisce on (almost) scrapping the penny, along with thoughts on climate change, the UK riots and the worrying drop in butterflies
For the first time, the Treasury has made no orders to the Royal Mint for new 1p and 2p coins to be minted amid a decline in cash payments, prompting speculation (officially denied) that they might soon be withdrawn.
This reminded me of the occasion when, as a communications and policy adviser at the Treasury, I came within a couple of days of succeeding in getting coppers scrapped for ever.
Officials had advised us that the UK, along with all developed economies, was moving inexorably towards becoming cashless. Figures from UK Finance, the banking trade body, show that 39 per cent of adults are living cashless lives. The majority of young people now pay for things using smartphones or watches.
Personally, I only use cash these days when betting on the horses at my local racecourse, and even this is purely nostalgic as for many years the bookies have all taken card and contactless payments.
Coppers, in particular, are pointless. Absurdly, they actually cost more to produce than they are worth. So I alighted on a plan to take the first coins out of circulation since 1984, when Nigel Lawson scrapped the half-penny.
George Osborne, who always had one eye on the future, loved the idea and agreed that 1p and 2p pieces should go. Australia had scrapped its 1c and 2c coins and following suit, as well as announcing a review on the future of cash, would put the UK at the vanguard of the move to a cashless society. With my comms hat on, I realised this would also be an enormous news story and one of the centrepieces of the 2016 budget.
In the days before the official documents were sent to press, the idea was duly taken, as all budget ideas were, to the Prime Minister for approval. To our surprise, and very unusually, David Cameron disagreed on an issue with his Chancellor. He insisted that older people still valued cash and opponents would be sure to accuse him and Mr Osborne of being posh boys who didn’t understand the need to count the pennies.
We reluctantly conceded the PM was correct and dropped the idea – leaving me with a massive hole in my budget comms ‘grid’. However, I give copper coins ten years at most. Cash overall will take longer to go, but within the next couple of decades looks almost certain to be largely obsolete.
Coming face to face with climate change
As usual, I spent some of last month in my favourite country, Greece. It was upsetting to see the suburbs of Athens threatened by the worst wildfires for some years, fuelled by sky high temperatures and high winds and casting a pall of smoke over the city. In Sicily, previously productive farmland is reported to be turning to desert. Climate change is on our doorstep and happening much faster than most people predicted.
Accountability for the riots
Keir Starmer should be praised for his handling of last month’s far-right riots. But in the aftermath there are still some profound lessons for us to learn as a society. Is this one of those rare occasions when a (carefully targeted) public enquiry might be worthwhile? It’s clear that a section on the right of our politics has inflamed public opinion on migration to such an extent that the Tories’s election slogan ‘stop the boats’ was being chanted by rioters. Shouldn’t those who have poisoned our discourse be made to account for themselves?
Bye bye butterfly?
I have seen very few butterflies in my garden this summer, so it was no surprise to hear that numbers are the lowest on record in the UK. Butterfly Conservation, which runs the Big Butterfly Count, says this year’s count revealed the worst numbers since it began 14 years ago. Experts say the unusually wet spring and summer is to blame, and warn that climate change will mean more extreme weather impacting insect populations.
My top read of the summer
The best thing on my summer reading list was The Colony, by Audrey Magee, which I highly recommend. The story follows two outsiders who arrive on a small island off the west coast of Ireland and is a brilliant examination of the nature of colonisation. Magee’s command of language is extraordinary and the book should have won the Booker, for which it was shortlisted. Most encouragingly, Magee spent 12 years working as a journalist for publications including The Times before turning her hand to novels. There is hope for us all!