Burson-Marsteller

A Tale of Two Power Cuts

by James Ogilvie on 11th October 2011 • The Cast Blog

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

The opening paragraph of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, by Charles Dickens

On 19 September, a power cut caused by a fire in an underground electrical facility left most of the EU district in Brussels without electricity for an afternoon.  On 28 September, the President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barroso delivered his 2011 ‘State of the Union’.

As I listened to President Barroso’s impassionate plea for ‘a European renewal”, I was struck by the ominous prescience with which the 19 September power cut had taken the words out of his mouth. It seems that power, whether electrical or political, has the ability to take away our ability to reach our goals.

The root of the power cut on 19 September was electrical. The root of the crisis Europe faces, according to President Barroso, is political. And yet, whether political or electrical, both power cuts demonstrated an ability to impact lives in a similar way. Without electricity to power my computer, I could not work. Without political power to create jobs and reform labour markets, perhaps I would not work.

As the severity of the 19 September power cut became apparent, the roads around our office soon jammed with cars and the cafes on place du Luxembourg filled with workers bereft of their work due to the lack of power. As the inadequacy of political power to create work for young people became apparent in Spain in May, so the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid became a hub of protest.

Sitting at my desk listening to what state we’ve gotten into, I realised that much like the lack of electrical power left me wondering how I could progress with my tasks until things got back to normal, the lack of political power threatens to cultivate and entrench positions that scupper credible attempts to empower political responses to the challenges Europe faces.

My point is that the political power of European leaders and the future of the European Union have come to be seen in an electrical sense –on or off, in or out, all or nothing, boom or bust – “in the superlative degree of comparison only”.  

My concern is that superlatives are inherently extreme; attaching an uncompromising supremacy to the positions and options to which they relate. Whilst the irreverence for rationality and reason that this necessarily implies forms an entertaining and functional aspect of political campaigning, by casting and conducting the “European renewal” against this backdrop, European political powers are only adding to the folly and dysfunction for which they are increasingly held in contempt.

My suggestion is that we stop unnecessarily tying the Gordian Knot, thereby removing the sense that this is what leaders must be cutting with every move they make. Yes, we do need bold strokes from political powers to solve the intractable problems that we face. But, to create a sense of expectation for such singular actions is the antithesis of the balanced, compromising and incremental approach that is needed to sustain prosperity for Europe.  Sustaining prosperity for those European politicians bold enough to tackle the noisiest authorities of superlative comparison? Now that’s another question.

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