viewpoint

www.themj.co.uk 11

Most councillors in local government are no spring chickens. With an average age of 60 or more, they are part of a medical triumph. In 1919, most of them would have already died in their early 50s.

Ipsos MORI has just produced its latest generational analysis on The Future of Ageing. While growing older is typically portrayed as a ‘narrative of decline’, in fact old age is much more misunderstood than are ‘Millennials’.

Our negative image of later life matters. On average, people who are pessimistic about old age die 7.5 years earlier. Our residents are collectively burying their heads in the sand about what they need to do fi nancially and physically to prepare. We vastly underestimate how much we need to save in a private pension; in order to get an income of £25,000 per annum in retirement you need to save £315,000 but the average guess is just £124,000.

As we fi nd in so much of our work, perceptions are out of kilter with reality. Older people are some of the happiest in society. Older people are also more digitally connected than ever. While there’s a gap to be closed, it is narrowing: internet use in the 65-to-74 age group increased from 52% in 2011 to 80% in 2018. In the UK, the over-50s account for nearly half of all consumer spending.

Yet we rarely see this side of later life portrayed in the media.

There are simple steps we can all take to ensure we have a more fulfi lling later life. Firstly, to dispel the myths we have about old age.

We can all start making changes now, which will improve our lives later down the line. It’s never too late to make a positive difference – whether that be eating healthily, exercising more, building strong social connections or boosting retirement savings. Research has found that even people in their 90s could improve their overall wellbeing by increasing the level of light activity they participate in regularly.

With massive under-employment of the over-55s, many of whom want to do more – and who benefi t from maintaining new social connections – it’s time local government like the rest of us woke up to older age. Most of our councillors already have. n

Ben Page is chief executive of Ipsos MORI

Full report at https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/perennials-future-ageing

By Ben Page

soapbox

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a to be a British citizen in light of the Shamima Begum case.

The Bethnal Green 19-year-old, who hit the headlines four years ago when she ran off to join IS with her friends, has been stripped of British citizenship.

Home secretary, Sajid Javid justified the decision on the grounds she was eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship through her mother, something now denied by the Bangladeshi authorities. This leaves the teenager stateless.

No doubt Mr Javid hoped his stance would make him look tough on terrorism. Instead, the Home Office stands exposed as incompetent and, even worse, guilty of risible moral cowardice. In any meaningful sense, Begum is a British citizen, even if she despises what Britain stands for. She was born, raised and radicalised here. We need to ‘own’ that, no matter how unpalatable.

Forget Ms Begum for a minute: do we really want the state to be able to rescind citizenship so easily? Can all immigrants and their children be so easily shorn of their British credentials because they have the possibility of citizenship elsewhere? Surely, a core tenet of citizenship accepts that even the most heinous transgressors stand equal in the face of their own country’s laws.

The Windrush scandal gave us a whiff of just how technocratic and cavalier our political leaders seem to have become about citizenship. The treatment of thousands of immigrants who have lived in the UK their whole lives – British in any real sense beyond not possessing the correct paperwork – was shocking: cruelly deprived of benefits, public services, even their legal rights, with many wrongfully deported. This is an affront to a meaningful sense of citizenship.

If British citizenship is so provisional, it makes a mockery of demanding loyalty and commitment from Ms Begum or anyone else.

What is the point of councils trying to create a sense of identity with public institutions, of building bonds around shared British values, if citizenship can be so easily sidelined? More worryingly, we seem strangely ambivalent about there being anything special about British citizenship at all.

Town halls are often the venues for citizenship ceremonies and we rightly celebrate when people actively proclaim that they want to be formally recognised as British. Yet those citizens who proclaim their enthusiasm for Britain too visibly are treated as a bit dodgy.

Those who voted for national sovereignty over supranational policy-making have been demonised as xenophobes.

Often, the same commentators keen to stress the special privileges that should be accorded to Ms Begum as a British citizen, also embrace globalism’s antagonism to borders or any legal differentiation between national citizens and non-citizens. With such confusions, no wonder we have trouble in socialising the young into taking their citizenship duties seriously.

But, while revoking Ms Begum’s citizenship is wrong-headed, that doesn’t mean we should sympathise with her as a hapless victim. Some prominent figures have sought to rob her of another valuable aspect

of citizenship – moral agency – by claiming she isn’t fully responsible for her actions.

Her apologists blame external forces, such as sinister internet groomers, or demand that allowance be made for her age.

Some enthusiastic supporters of votes for 16-year-olds or striking school children dictating the country’s environmental policies are too quick to portray a resourceful, A-grade student as too young to know what she was doing.

Ms Begum and her friends were savvy enough to plan a trip across Europe, to join a death cult she admits knowing was committing atrocities. Now – with a narcissistic sense of entitlement – she wants to access the products of western ideals, from the rule of law to NHS facilities.

Ms Begum and the thousands of returning jihadists present society with an unprecedented challenge. We should be humane, but we shouldn’t be squeamish that people want to punish a fellow citizen who so wilfully turned her back on democracy, community and country.

Some newspaper columnists expressed horror at the ‘record numbers’ of requests from people wanting to take aim at Ms Begum’s picture, citing this as proof of ‘seething hatred’ and Islamophobia. Do these critics think the shooting range’s target pictures of Margaret Thatcher and Donald Trump are a green light for political assassination?

I see it as a healthy sign of ‘cohesive and resilient’ citizenship that so many are rightly outraged at someone who admitted to being ‘unfazed’ by beheadings.

So, bring back this British citizen to the UK, not so much for her sake as for the rest of us. We deserve the right to hold a fellow citizen to account for betraying us. n

Claire Fox is director of The Academy of Ideas

In any meaningful sense, Shamima Begum is a British citizen, even if she despises what Britain stands for, says Claire Fox. ‘She was born, raised and radicalised here. We need to “own” that, no matter how unpalatable’, she adds

What is the point of councils trying to create a sense of identity with public institutions, of building bonds around shared British values, if citizenship can be so easily sidelined?

Should the state be able to strip citizenship so easily?