In 2016 the OED Chose Post Truth As Its Word of the Year Defining It As an Adjective Relating

In 2016 the OED chose “post truth” as its word of the year defining it as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

Recent books by Evan Davis, Matthew D’Ancona and James Ball have all explored this concept further.

Essentially the argument is as follows, propaganda, spin and downright mendacity have always been part of political discourse.

But in the past these phenomena existed in a certain relationship to truth. We worried about whether political statements were true or not; now we do not care.

Truth is no longer the gold standard, instead we are more concerned with how statements make us feel and how far they reinforce what we already think.

President Trump is the key example of this - e.g his inauguration crowds

This echoes American philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s famous distinction between a liar, who knows what the truth is but tries to conceal it and a bullshitter who doesn’t know and/or doesn’t care if what they are saying is true.

In this analysis, we now live in bullshit world

We do not have to believe in a golden age of truthfulness or to believe in an uncomplicated idea of “the truth” to think that there may be something in this.

In part it is a product of technological change and the ways in which social media changes how we consume and, crucially, share information about the world.

A growing number of people access news though social media (six out of ten adults in the US) but social media is all about giving us more of what we like, that’s how the algorithms are set up, and about sharing within our network: generally, though not always, like minded people.

Thus we get stuck in a filter bubble: we are not exposed to views that challenge us and the analytical muscles that weigh up, and adjudicate between, different claims about the world begin to ossify.

But “post truth” is also part of a much broader collapse of trust in institutions encompassing politics and the media.

Around the world people who feel let down and left behind by globalisation or contemporary culture or capitalism or the way in which their society is changing are rejecting politics as usual.

And politics is now contested in the spaces between a new set of oppositions: open vs closed; rooted vs cosmopolitan; local vs global; evidence vs emotional resonance and institutions vs networks.

What the British writer David Goodhart has recently described as a culture war between "somewhere" and "anywheres".

Brexit, Trump, Macron, all in different ways are both symptoms and causes of a post institutional politics: a politics in which a trust in networks replaces trust in institutions.

But this is really challenging because:

1) these spaces are easily filled by irresponsible populists

2) they create a leadership vacuum at national level as politicians struggle to define themselves against these new forces and are pulled this way and that by populist impulses

Donald Trump or Theresa May mimic the postures of strong leaders but are strategically weak, caught between the demands of a populist base and the exigencies of governing.

Where does local government figure in all this?

Councils cannot stand apart from these broader trends. but they also have their own trajectory.

Councils in the UK have had seven years of dramatic cuts and have had to grapple with shrinking resource and rising demand

But they also have to deal with long term changes

to the population - ageing in UK growing in Aus

to the economy

to technologies

to climate

All of which drive a need for more coproduction, more engagement and more trust than ever.

Just when there is less trust than ever to go around.

So post institutional politics look like it is bad news for local government, which is an institution after all

But local government may also have an opportunity here.

The essential task is to develop a new politics that reforges a bond of trust between citizens and government. That can be achieved more readily at a local level. In large part the claims of local government are verifiable.

We have to take GDP growth on trust for example, but we can see whether pot holes in our street are being fixed. We know if our elderly relatives are receiving the right care. Local politics, by virtue of its proximity to us, can build trust (or lose it) much more rapidly.

Of course that depends on delivery and on the right kind of leadership.

And I’d like to suggest five elements of the sort of leadership we need

all very easy for me to say but very hard for you to do

1. reframe: it’s not a problem with “them”: if people feel let down by institutions that is at least to some extent because institutions really have let them down. We need to take their concerns and aspirations seriously even if we do not agree with them
2. you can’t beat post truth with “better” truth: evidence and data however compelling do not break through by themselves. They need to be couched within a compelling political narrative that resonates emotionally.
3. focus on place: at a national or international level people can feel adrift and the challenges too great to grasp. But we can begin to have sensible grounded conversations about place. What do the people who live here now aspire to? How can we live together effectively? What is the relation of this place to the wider world? What are our priorities and what compromises are we willing to make to achieve them?
4. think non-institutionally: we need to focus on outcomes for people and places not on our institutional structures or processes.
5. relentless focus on participation and dialogue in everything you do!

That is the task for political leaders, - and by the way leaders are not just people with leader in the job title.

If we can articulate a compelling vision for the communities and the places we want and support this with observable, verifiable facts on the ground and a real process of participative engagement, then we can begin to move beyond the epistemological quagmire of post-institutional politics and create a scenario in which people can shape institutions around their needs and aspirations. That starts to design trust in.

The flexibility and responsiveness of local government allow this in a way that national governments will always struggle to match. This implies an inversion of our traditional political hierarchy. For too long we have structured local government as a reflection of the nation state. But in a post truth, post institutional world it is local government that must lead the way.