Do Polls Influence Public Opinion? (Your Radical Questions with James Kanagasooriam)

0:00Amol Rajan:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, it's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire. This is Total Wolf, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. This week on Good Bad Billionaire, how Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello, it's Amol. Listen, before we get into this week's episode of Your Radical Questions, and by the way, thank you so much to everyone who is sending in the very large number of questions that we're getting.

0:47Amol Rajan:Really appreciate it. I did just want to let you know about the next guest joining us, and who's also going to be answering your questions too, and I wanted to get your questions for her. She is Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan. She has spent three decades in medicine, including 25 years as a neurologist, and her latest book is called The Age of Overdiagnosis. It has sparked a global debate about whether mental health conditions are being labelled too readily, and she argues that overdiagnosis is becoming widespread. I'm going to be speaking to her about why she believes this is happening, what it means for how we understand mental health today, and whether or not it has implications for politics and policy which we're not really grappling with to put your question to her please do send us a voice note love to get your voice notes i know there's lots and lots of people who feel very very strongly about this we're going to make sure the episode is super rigorous and i will try to pursue answers to your questions on your behalf whatsapp us so send us a voice note on 0 3 3 0 1 2 3 9 4 8 0 0 3 3 0 1 2 3 9 4 8 0 or you can email radical at bbc.co.uk with your questions for Dr.

1:56Amol Rajan:Suzanne O'Sullivan, author of The Age of Overdiagnosis.

2:07Amol Rajan:Hello and welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where I put your questions, all of them pretty radical, to our pretty radical guests. This is your chance to engage directly with the very, very clever, interesting analysts, thinkers, influential. What are you? What do we call James? Polsters. And ask them about their ideas for the future. That was the voice of James Kanagasurium. He is the chief research officer at Focal Data. He's also, I should have acknowledged this in the main episode last Thursday, an honorary professor at the University of Glasgow. What does that involve?

2:39James Kanagasooriam:Sometimes giving lectures. Okay. And writing blogs when I'm told to.

2:45Amol Rajan:Okay. including about the idea of agency and you wrote a blog about agency and why it might be one of the next big ideas in politics and that it's fair to say your inbox was groaning off the back of that not least from messages from us saying you must come on Radical and explain this idea.

3:01James Kanagasooriam:Yes, exactly.

3:02Amol Rajan:Which is what you've done rather well. And if people miss that they can hear it back on the main episode on Thursday. Just before we get through this bundle of listener questions for you for people who are coming to this episode fresh and haven't heard the main episode, just tell us, what is agency, briefly?

3:20James Kanagasooriam:Agency is the idea that you think and have control over your life. Very simple idea, which some people think they have. We think around 60 % of people think they have agency and around 25%, 30 % of people do not think they have agency.

3:36Amol Rajan:And the evidence is growing that it's a very useful paradigm for understanding our politics because?

3:41James Kanagasooriam:Useful paradigm because it basically contrasts, if you have agency and you have a sense of control, you basically are more pro-status quo, tend to have slightly higher levels of optimism, both about your community and who you are, but also about the state of affairs. And if you don't have agency, very high levels of pessimism, lower levels of social trust and a desire to change the status quo. And British politics now is not just a left-right thing. It's very much on that other axis of basically, are you for the status quo or are you for maximal change?

4:14Amol Rajan:Fascinating. Right. This is our first question. It's from Stevie in London.

4:19James Kanagasooriam:Hi, Amal. A question for James on agency. I'm particularly keen on how it might advance social mobility, where it works, where it doesn't. Does his research show any interventions that actually shift someone's sense of agency?

4:33Amol Rajan:Fantastic question, Stevie. Thank you. So what's the connection between agency and social mobility on the one hand? And also, are there particular interventions that can increase someone's agency?

4:43James Kanagasooriam:yeah difficult one there steve i haven't quite done the political science study into uh come on look it's fundamentally a thing that uh whether you believe if you have control you take different decisions over your life we know that it correlates to sense sense of optimism a sense of social trust a sense of taking control and accountability and all those other things um i think you can imagine that it would be helpful from a social mobility perspective but i guess the question comes like what are the contexts that you can be agentic in or have you know have have agency you know what are the institutions do you have the tools do you have the funding do you have the places to go to it's all very well telling someone oh you should have more agency but like for example is there a local library that they can go to is there a local club can they do certain things not everything costs money as i think you made the point in the in the first episode um but it is culturally a very helpful thing to have i don't think of that i don't think there are many downsides for example to to having agency.

5:44Amol Rajan:Does your research show any interventions that actually shift maybe it's too soon because you've only just done this work in the last year, but any interventions that actually shift someone's sense of agency? Presumably one way of increasing someone's agency is to make them richer.

5:57James Kanagasooriam:So it did correlate to levels of income and Britain's growth problem and money problem is half the answer. We discussed that in the previous episode.

6:09Amol Rajan:But if you can't because of a lack of growth or jobs or whatever it might be if you can't give someone more money as a way of giving them more agency at the social level i mean i was talking about the impact on me of social media videos of people saying you can turn your life around and me thinking that you actually can i feel like i've got more agency over my health since i discovered kettlebells it became self-fulfilling since you yeah so but the question is why why did you

6:35James Kanagasooriam:believe it. But I love that agency. It's because I'm influenced online.

6:39Amol Rajan:And now you've lost a couple of staying. Making me feel bad. A couple of kilograms. But what can you do at the social level? I mean, especially for people from poorer communities, Stevie's questioning, which is, what interventions could actually shift someone's sense of agency? I mean, if presumably the right social capital, the right connections, relationships, bonds, finding a sponsor or mentor, that could fundamentally shift how someone feels in the world?

7:02James Kanagasooriam:I mean, certainly some of the feedback I got from the blog were people involved. in kind of aspects like that, in terms of voluntary associations, charities, people providing nets that help people on one hand but empower them on the other. And I thought that was very interesting, both in terms of crime, in terms of opportunity as well. But again, we're right at the foothills of understanding and thinking about agency. I think in the US it's been discussed a lot more. One of the things we did do is we polled how people thought they were in control of their lives between different countries. The UK had this kind of group of 25 to 30 % of people, which was quite low compared to, for example, the US, which is like the Mecca of high agency thinking.

7:47James Kanagasooriam:But France was really, really low, which, again, I thought was very interesting. So it's not like the UK is in a uniquely bad situation on agency. Europe is as well. And in some of the European countries, measures actually worse.

7:59Amol Rajan:So I think one of the interventions that you can make is by establishing a relationship with someone. So I, once upon a time, a long time ago, set up or co-founded an organization which connected people in their early 30s with people from who are having a bit of a tough time in state schools in London. And that one connection where you give someone a mentor or an inspirational talk or connection or an email address can completely transform a life. And I think that actually it doesn't cost anything, cost me a bit of my time, but it's the power of social capital, not as a substitute for, but as a supplement to actual kind of job opportunities.

8:39Amol Rajan:I think Stevie is a potentially life changing thing. In fact, I know it because I once saw an awful lot of kids lives transformed by it. Right. Thank you, Stevie, for your question. This is another one from Rosie, who has emailed to say, hi, Rosie. Rosie says, James, are people really interested in agency or are they only interested in a version of agency, which suggests even the most complicated problems can be easily solved and solved without upheaval or sacrifice on their part? I'm not sure they are. And if I'm right, then they aren't falling for leaders who offer agency. They're falling for leaders who offer the veneer of agency, a different political calculation, surely.

9:18Amol Rajan:So I think Rosie's, the core of Rosie's question there is that there are some leaders. I don't know if she's thinking about Trump, who we mentioned in this context on the main episode last Thursday. But there's some leaders who give the veneer of agency and being able to get stuff done, but actually aren't very effective at that.

9:38James Kanagasooriam:yeah so there's two questions and one point in that in that bundle i think from rosie so i'll try and disaggregate them a little bit so the first is um can someone offer uh solutions and where those solutions don't actually exist um in other words they haven't acknowledged the trade-offs um and yeah that happens across the political spectrum we see that in election from election people saying i will fix things and then they're not fixed that is just part and parcel unfortunately of a sometimes of political situations and political promises that aren't made but the point is can you basically have uh can people be told that they're going to be in control and they're going to have solutions uh and then the full thing isn't acknowledged so there isn't the trade-off that has basically been acknowledged i think that's a separate point and that's very interesting which is can people be promised solutions where nothing has to change on their part which i think is a very very good question because last you know i think about remember jfk we probably don't remember but JFK's election what can you do for your country?

10:41Amol Rajan:Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

10:47James Kanagasooriam:Apart from that appalling accent.

10:50Amol Rajan:But the words were right there.

10:51James Kanagasooriam:The words were right and mine were wrong. But again that's really interesting because that's the kind of trade-off it's not all about what someone's going to do to you, that's about how your behaviours will change. It's been a long time since we've had that kind of political argument made, right? I guess the last person in the UK context was David Cameron in 2010 with the Big Society, and that was a very difficult election campaign for him, where people are saying, you ask it, you know, he had an invitation to government. That's what the manifesto was. Yeah, Steve got the manifesto.

11:21Amol Rajan:An invitation to join the formation of a government in the UK.

11:25James Kanagasooriam:Right, and I think a lot of people in the media, I don't know if, you know, you're... I was at the Independent at the time, yeah. ...you're at the Independent, right? Quite cynical about, not necessarily you, but a lot of the reception around that was quite cynical, which was like, no, no, of course, why would I do anything? You're just using that as a cover for X, Y, Z. So I think it's a really good question. Who is positioning trade-offs to people about what's going to have to change about their lives? What's going to be different? I guess the other word for that is political honesty.

11:55Amol Rajan:Yeah, but I don't know if we're talking shortly after this absolutely incredible clip, which I couldn't stop watching, of Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor, going absolutely hell for leather at it, saying he'd just come back from China. And he said, you know, in China, they work incredibly hard. They don't get paid much money. And I come back, I'm paraphrasing here because Friedrich Mertz in his German accent, speaking German, sounds very different. But he said, you know, and people, I come back here and people want to do a four-day week. We're going to have to work harder. That's just the truth.

12:26Amol Rajan:You are going to have to work harder. And I thought it was, I mean, it was a very animated speech and therefore it's probably why it's gone viral. But it was a novel thing in that he seemed to sort of reckon with people. He seemed to be saying sort of, look, the world is turning Chinese. They're working harder than you are.

12:41James Kanagasooriam:Yeah, and I think if you look at Europe, I think it now accounts for like 25 % of the world's welfare spending. Europe does. Yeah, something there and thereabouts. You fact check me off. Wow. It's quite a small proportion of the world. And I think Mertz obviously is the ostensible leader of the European Union, certainly. is probably just thinking, I think it sounds like he got basically radicalised going to China. You'd be very welcome on this podcast. There are clips of him looking at the robots that have been done in robotics. And he's probably just thinking, what are we doing in terms of Europe and our politics?

13:14James Kanagasooriam:And like, how do we grapple with our, how do we grapple with the wealth situation, the lack of income growth? Is it just by increasing one bit of the ledger but not the other?

13:24Amol Rajan:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rosie, thank you very much indeed for your question. I hope you got an answer there that you find interesting, if not totally satisfactory because you agree with it or not. But we really appreciate your question. Here's another one from Joanne on the Isle of Man. Hello, I'm Orlan James. It's Joanne. I was with friends at the weekend. We're all white-collar professionals in our 50s, all very dialed into politics and current affairs and all big fans of radical. Depressingly, we concluded that with global instability, political rancour and economic turmoil, we've all had the best years of our lives.

13:59Amol Rajan:and there's only uncertainty to come. Big question then, can you cheer us up and offer us hope for a brighter future? I'm temperamentally, I think, Joanne, I should say that you and your mates around the table, all very dialed into politics and current affairs, all big fans of Radical, thank you so much. I would have been very home in your company because, I mean, maybe it's because I work in the news and maybe like Joanne, I'm dialed into politics and current affairs. I do, you know, this cultural, the cultural decline and pessimism, which people get, you know, people say, oh, it's a right wing narrative.

14:32Amol Rajan:Or people say, oh, it's all doom and gloom. It's just facts. I just saw a fact, just thinking the other day in 2028, 29, living standards in this country are going to be lower than they were in 2008. We also didn't mention the birth rate at all in the previous episode. Well, demographics as a whole. Well, I mean, people on this part, it's because I'm getting in trouble every time I do. the demographics of this country are you know in terms of I mean some people say it's a good thing for planetary reasons I get that in terms of if you want to pay 60 % tax but there's an issue which is that this country is about to all the talk about the aging population as Torsten Bell said to me a couple of years ago it's only now that it's going to hit because it's now that the people who are born in 1945 or 1960 are about to hit much older age.

15:15Amol Rajan:Do you know what Joanne there are huge huge huge causes. I'm going to answer this question before handing over to James. There are huge positive reasons to be kind of hopeful and happy. And I do actually think with this extraordinary new technology of AI, which is the most consequential technology we've ever created probably, there could be wonderful, wonderful, wonderful productivity enhancements and medical breakthroughs and scientific breakthroughs. So I always look to the field of science when I'm kind of desperate for a bit of cheer. When I'm presenting the Today programme and it all looks a bit doom and gloom, I look on the science pages and look at science journals to work out if there's anything a bit sort of optimistic happening there.