There was something a bit daft about the transport minister Tom Harris using his blog to pose the question: "Why is everyone so bloody miserable?" But not for the reason claimed by the Tories.
As Harris told Ed Stourton on the Today programme this morning (with just the right mix of humour and indignation), his comments have been grotesquely misrepresented. Harris was making a serious point about the way growing prosperity has not led to an overall increase in levels of happiness.
What was naive was to suggest that that there is any sort of mystery about this. It's a subject that has been extensively researched for years, and as far as I'm aware there's a reasonably clear consensus as to what the answers are.
For example, I've just been flicking through a report that the government's strategy unit published in December 2002 called Life Satisfaction: the state of knowledge and implications for government.
Despite large increases in national income (and expenditure) over the last 30 years, levels of life satisfaction have not increased commensurately. Three explanations have been put forward for the failure of life satisfaction to follow the increases in national income, that:• the role of hereditary factors might overshadow any effects of income,
• while GDP my have risen, other trends such as rising crime or divorce rates may have had an offsetting impact on life satisfaction, and
• while an increase in an individual's income may increase their satisfaction it may also cause envy and reduce that of others (if people's happiness is determined by relative rather than absolute status) or the increase in satisfaction may be temporary (if people adapt to their new circumstances and their aspirations rise).
The report mentions the various factors that correlate with happiness: being healthy, being in work, being married, having friends, etc. Most of these are well-documented, although I didn't realise that high levels of inequality are associated with low levels of satisfaction in Europe, but not in the US, or that (according to Swiss research) having lots of referendums seems to cheer people up too.
The strategy unit suggested some of the things government could do to improve happiness. Labour has taken some of them up (like legislating to improve work-life balance), although "a more positive appraisal ... of progressive taxation" (which could make us happier by making society fairer) hasn't been a particular priority for Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.
But David Cameron does seem to be taking this agenda quite seriously - which makes the decision by Philip Hammond to issue a statement denouncing Harris almost hypocritical.
In a speech two years ago Cameron said:
Too often in politics today, we behave as if the only thing that matters is the insider stuff that we politicians love to argue about: economic growth, budget deficits and GDP.Wealth is about so much more than pounds or euros or dollars can ever measure. It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general wellbeing.
Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times.
And last year the Tories followed this up with the publication of a report from their quality of life policy commission, suggesting that the nation's performance should be measured by the "happy planet index", as well as GDP.
Hammond must remember this. And I presume he read Harris's blog before he commented on it.
It's easy to understand why he chose to put the boot in. Most politicians would. But he would have emerged with more credit if he had praised Harris for raising legitimate concerns shared by the Conservative party.
Only it wouldn't have made much of a headline ...
