Whitehall policy people are reportedly rushing to read the Chicago-born Richard Sennett's Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality. But who is Professor Sennett, and why do his ideas now command so much - well - respect? He is, after all, openly critical of the Blair government, and what he sees as its lack of respect for public sector workers "with all [its] targets, surveillance and testing".
Mr Blair has been preaching the virtues of respect for a long time, and he was doubtless irked when Michael Howard parked his panda car on the territory during the election campaign. But the problem of yobbishness dogs this government as much as it ever did. Now that respect has become a cause célèbre for the tabloids, the PM will be anxious to set out what Labour means by respect. Is it, as Mr Howard suggested, a matter of showing arrogant youth who's boss? Or can respect be a more egalitarian concept?
This is where Professor Sennett comes in, an urban sociologist who once voted Socialist Worker (during the party's green phase rather than one of its Trotskyite periods, he clarifies in this 2001 Guardian interview). Prof Sennett is something of a Renaissance man: he plays the clarinet, is friendly with the architect Richard Rogers, has written fiction and is reportedly an excellent cook. His work at the LSE is pretty wide-ranging, but in its essence it examines how intelligent design and consultation with local people can make cities better places to live and work. Some of these ideas have already filtered through to the government's schools building programme, where architects are consulting pupils about their plans.
Like the party's rather retro election manifesto, Labour's interest in Prof Sennett's work harks back to older Labour ideas which seek to empower the poor rather than merely punishing them when they go astray. Here's Mr Blair speaking in 1994, when he was shadow home secretary, in a debate on juvenile offending:
"If children grow up in a world without hope or opportunity, with poor education or housing, with no prospect of work or training, with no stake in the society that demands respect from them, is it not common sense that crime is more likely to breed in such conditions?"
That's the kind of language Labour backbenchers like to hear, and the PM seems to be rediscovering it.
