What is the importance of the Labor Party’s landslide victory in recent UK election? What is the new social and economic policy for the United Kingdom? And what will the development of postindustrial cities look like? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Jason Stockwood, a writer and a businessman who tries to help redefine the next era of capitalism to be more inclusive. Currently, he is the Chairman of Grimsby Town Football Club and a Venture investor. He was previously on the UK board members of BCorp & Global CEO of Simply Business. He also authored a book titled Reboot: A Blueprint for Happy, Human Business in the Digital Age (Virgin Books, 2018).

Leszek Jazdzdewski (LJ): We are having our conversation after the momentous elections in the United Kingdom, with the landslide win for the Labor Party and a historical defeat for the Tory party. How did this happen?

Jason Stockwood (JS): I definitely feel a lot better today than I did yesterday with that news. It has been an amazing achievement. Speaking from personal experience, people were desperate for a change after 14 years of chaos that the Tory party has created in the United Kingdom. We have had five prime ministers in seven years. It has been an absolute joke and there were all kinds of scandals – from the ‘Partygate’, to the recent gambling scandal, even during the election. All this showed the lack of morality.

This, however, does not mean there are no decent people in the Conservative Party, but at a headline level, even the promises related to Brexit – which is really why Boris Johnson was elected and why so many people gave him the mandate five years ago – were an absolute lie and a travesty. Those who voted for Brexit can clearly see that none of the promises that were made have come to fruition.

This situation represents the fact that the people are ready for a change. And again, from a personal point of view, it is a miracle, as I have been a supporter of left-leaning politics my whole life. (I had a short break for five years when Jeremy Corbyn was the leader, as he was somewhat too extreme for me.) However, after the last election, in 2019, I met with a number of friends and a couple of Labor MPs. There was a conversation around whether the Labor Party would even exist anymore. The Democratic voices of the country spoke, and they needed a change, something different.

Therefore, it is nothing short of a miracle – a from facing an existential crisis relating to whether the Labor Party was still relevant and had the right to exist, to a landslide victory and a supermajority.

This progress cannot be underestimated by what Keir Starmer has done. And so, I am very optimistic – if, however, we can keep the current trajectory. Because the challenges that we face today are massive in terms of the public finances and the economy. If Keir Starmer can really carry on the trajectory that he has been on in the last four or five years, there is a real cause for hope.

It is almost as if we were in the preseason at our football club at the moment, when we are signing new players. The time for optimism is before a ball is kicked, before we play any games. If you cannot be optimistic about the whole season today – if you cannot be optimistic about a new government today – then you are never going to be optimistic, right?

LJ: What is realistic, and what is necessary for the new government? What do you think should change and what are the main priorities?

JS: They have a mission-led government, which has been driven by five priorities for the United Kingdom. They want to make sure that the economic growth is absolutely at the center of everything they have been talking about. As a businessperson, I know that they are serious about this. They understand the need for entrepreneurship, economic growth, and stability in both our financial markets and in the conditions of our country that allow people to generate wealth and grow the economy. They are absolutely focused on that goal.

Nevertheless, there are also a couple of other policies, which are about ‘taking back the streets’, reducing crime, and rebuilding confidence in our judicial system. At the same time, it is about time we started to have conversations around the opportunity, which was one of the core pillars as well. They are talking about breaking down the barriers to opportunity. We have lost a sense of the embedded privilege of the Tory Party and how social mobility has become a thing of the past, so that is a big mission.

Moreover, people know the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK is a massive part of our identity and what people are keen to protect. Meanwhile, it has just been both underfunded and operationally inefficient for the last 14 years. Therefore, the ruling party plans to focus on that too.

Another issue (which is the big one for me) is taking advantage of the transition to green energy. We have to do this anyway in order to save the planet and bring down global warming. The new government is now basically creating a national, almost a sovereign wealth fund that is going to focus on this challenge. For me, as an entrepreneur, I love this, because there is going to be so much opportunity and wealth created as we transition to a net zero economy over the next few years.

The government has to be an investor in that process. It has to pay for the infrastructure and oversee the initiatives to do that. So, they are actually going to set up Great British Energy, a company that will be nationally owned, to oversee these projects. Importantly, it will take the benefits as well, in the same way that Norway has taken the benefit of all their reserves over the last several decades. That is what has transformed their public services – the income that they generate from that initiative is thus not going to private shareholders. We are going to see the same thing about Great British Energy.

I am really excited about this transition, as the taxpayers should benefit from it. Quite frankly, the taxpayer will be paying for the infrastructure anyway. And so, to me, that is a real sense of how we have a global-sized opportunity focused out of the UK, but actually taxpayers will benefit from that over time as well, rather than just focusing on private capitalism. Even though the government does not have all the answers today, it is a manifestation of their mission rather than necessarily a bespoke strategy, so that they can pile in experts, and they can pile in private money to help get on with some of these challenges as well.

There is no doubt that the public coffers are severely depleted. However, we also need to remember that the current state dates back to 2008 and the banking crisis, where capitalism ran a mock. We had private gains that were protected, but the losses had to underwrite the public losses. This led to a shift to the right wing, because the economy was not working.

Now, we have a chance to say, ‘Look, we have some grownups in the room in the UK’. They are serious politicians with integrity. And the challenge is huge, but they have the appetite and the ability to take it on.

LJ: This brings us to the issue of Grimsby. Can you give us a glimpse of what you achieved with Grimsby? Taking over a football club seems to be a very surprising move for someone who wants to start restoring the city. What is your vision?

JS: When Brexit happened in the United Kingdom, I was devastated that we dd ended up in that situation. I did not really understand how the country could have voted for it. Part of me going back to university was that I wanted to understand the diagnosis of what had happened to our politics and this lurch to the right.

One of the things that really struck me was the work of philosopher Robert Putnam. In his work, he talked about how capitalism ‘worked’ for the first 50 years. The reason for that was because we had civic institutions that bound us in communities in a common life – whether that was religion, unions, schooling, workplaces, or social groups of any type. We had these civic institutions that – irrespective of the vector of identity that you exist on, or the class of society that you come from – allowed us to come together through this sort of common good. Those things have been eroded.

Therefore, I was wondering if there is any opportunity for Grimsby, which was one of the largest Brexit voting communities in the UK. I consider Grimsby my hometown – I lived there since I was 18. I was deeply connected to the town – my family is there, the football club that I grew up supporting and still support was there. Meanwhile, 72% of the population voted for Brexit. This felt like the perfect opportunity to go back and try and understand how to rebuild the civic institutions.

Politics is making us more divisive. This is why I was interested to see if there is a way to create a more common story about the things that people want to focus on together. And so, the Grimsby Town F.C. football club, which is 146 years old now, felt like one of the few places we could come together and share an experience irrespective of our politics on gender or ethnicity.

This was part of a strategy. On the one hand, we wanted to revitalize the football club by making it more successful, while, at the same time, also thinking of its community purpose. On the other hand, I have chaired and raised the money to build a new youth facility in the town that will open next year – we are building it at the moment. The third part of the strategy was an attempt to figure out how to build an organization that can bring all the common interests in the town together as a platform, but then hopefully, also tell a new story about a more optimistic future. I wanted to do it in a way that can connect resources at national and global level into the local people that are doing the projects that are trying to rebuild the community. This is our future.

I was very fortunate to meet a fellow entrepreneur, Emily Bolton, who has worked in the intersection between public policy, social finance, and social entrepreneurship for the past 20 years. Together, we wanted to try and build the platform that can connect the resources at a national level with those communities that are trying to do the work locally, thus utilizing the energy and enthusiasm for a sense of place.

We wanted to make it fun and create a sense of the community coming together, building relationships, connectivity, and friendships. We were just trying to rebuild that community, because when people meet and experience each other on that level, then a) it is more fulfilling on a personal level, and b) you really start to see beyond some of the political divides that we have been told to select over the last few years.

We are trying to do that work with data and evidence, so that it can become part of a public policy. We want to show that it is not just about Grimsby, but rather about how do we build this initiative and this exemplar in Grimsby, so that that our work can be utilized in towns up and down the United Kingdom – and, hopefully, in Western-style democracies around the world.

LJ: Does your social involvement and the fact that you are so well-connected help transform the city? Or does the transformation come from the people? What are the lessons so far that might be universal and could work outside the Grimsby community?

JS: It is definitely a work in progress. We have been doing this for three years now. This project is by no means ‘complete’ or ‘done’ – it is more about building a momentum and making progress. When it comes to the lessons I have learnt on both a personal and a town-wide level is that there is no shortage of smart, energetic, and willing people in our community of Grimsby that want to do the work.

When I showed up back here a couple of years ago, I did not know who are the people that really trying to address the biggest problems and challenges in our community. Grimsby has some legacy issues around poverty. Back in the day, it used to be the world’s biggest fishing port. Those industries have gone away and left a real gap in terms of societal issues. But there is no shortage of brilliant people who are prepared to roll their sleeves up and do the work.

The second thing is that the local government has been a big partner in this work as well. What has happened in the last 14 years and beyond is that the local government has an increasingly shrinking pot of resources to share on the initiatives that we care about because of austerity and because of the fact that national finances have been so poor. And yet, there are good people also in the local government who are partners in this conversation. They live in the area, their kids go to the school there, and they use the National Health Service.

We want to make sure that we break down those barriers where people often see each other in an adversarial role – as the keepers of resources. We must view them as a proper partner with a shared vision that we all want to improve the local area. This has been another great insight. We need to get people who share a common desire to improve the region together and create a common narrative across everyone’s expertise.

The third lesson is that Grimsby is a synonym for any other place. There are many people who have left the place but still care deeply about it, who want to help, and who might have resources, networks, or just energy and enthusiasm. It is, therefore, about trying to connect that diaspora back to the town.

Being from Grimsby has been a big part of my identity. It has always been a place that I loved. It has defined me, and I care deeply about it. So, the question is: how can we tap into that sentiment? We are trying to build a community of the diaspora. We hold three calls a year where we just get everyone on a call and people locally just talk about their projects. People can commit to helping or just offer moral support, money, their network or just ideas. That is a growing resource.

The single unifying thought for all these stakeholders is the love of a sense of place, an individual place – not in the sense of nationalism – at a very micro level, which is the place that you are from. The town you are from is a big source of pride and identity for all of us, even if we do not live there anymore. Trying to connect to that feeling has been beautiful. It has also just been beautiful for me, personally, to reconnect with a place that I love and people I care about – with my brothers, my school friends, and many new friends in the town.

Everything that is good in life begins and ends with the quality of your relationships. And that is the fundamental thought behind our efforts. This is a relational way of trying to create a new story where we all bring our own unique skills and talents to the table. We all benefit as well, because we are building and strengthening our sense of connectivity and relationships to a place and our love for each other.

These connections are very tangible on a human level, as they really reinvigorate your own relationships and a sense of connection to something, which we have lost a little bit in the last 20 or 30 years. This is the time when individualism and neoliberalism have told us that we should focus on personal success. But now we know, from years of psychological observation, that happiness and joy comes from the quality of your relationships and your sense of purpose. This is why working on this issue in Grimsby has definitely given me both, which is very rewarding on a personal level as well. All towns have that opportunity.

LJ: How would you connect your personal story to what you are doing now?

JS: It may sound very linear. It is always difficult looking back, but you try to make the story sound more logical than it is. I grew up very poor, as a member of a working-class family in Grimsby. My mum had four boys by four different fathers. I do not know who my father is to this day. We lived on welfare, but we had a happy childhood, even though we did not have much money. But it was a childhood full of love, community, and connection.

I was bright, but I failed out of school. I went traveling for a number of years. And then, in my 20s, I started to read and educate myself. I went back to university to study philosophy, just because it was interesting to me. This was at a time in the UK when you could get free university education as well. I would probably not have been able to afford that today, because you have to pay for it. But back then, I started my education. I was really proud when I got accepted to Oxford, in my late 40s. For someone who grew up with no qualifications, it was amazing that I ended up at the top university in the world.

I once said to my kids, ‘You know, the pace of your life is up to you, but everything is possible. But you do not need to rush to do everything in the traditional way’. Then again, I had a massive stroke of luck. I have written a lot about this in my The Guardian articles. I used to believe that the harder you work, the luckier you get. And you can make your own luck in life. But it is not the only way, as I had an amazing stroke of luck myself.

I was born at a time when the internet was invented, in the late 1990s. I was in London, and I got involved with some businesses that ended up being the first wave of the internet (the so-called ‘dot com boom’). I found myself in the right place at the right time and ended up building internet businesses in the early days of the internet revolution, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before anyone really knew what it was going to be. I created lastminute.com, which was a travel business, and then match.com, a dating business. I worked really hard, I do not deny this. But there is also no denying that I was really lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

There is a great book called The Rise of the Meritocracy written in the 1950s by Michael Young. The idea it conveys is that if you work hard, you get on. However, it was meant as a satire. Meanwhile, it was taken as a Bible by many. Still, this premise is just not true. What the author was writing about was a way to tell the story to working-class people when actually the truth is, and we know this today, that the privilege of your birth and how lucky you are at birth (from the point of view of geography, gender, or ethnicity) is the biggest determinant of your success.

I am a product of a socialist upbringing, but I had a capitalist career. I love building businesses and making money, but it only makes sense to me today if I do something useful with it. I know that I have been lucky, but I have also worked hard. I do feel a moral obligation which drives me and energizes me to do something useful with the good fortune that I have had in life, because I know that I do not fully own it.

You might remember from philosophy classes the works of John Rawls and the idea of the veil of ignorance – as a means of a thought experiment, before you are born, you could be born into any life. If you are born into a life of privilege and success, then knowing that, there is chance of that happening. Therefore, you have an obligation to do something with that. I definitely feel motivated by that.

I know I have been fortunate. It is important to do something with that. It is definitely my upbringing and the relative poverty I was brought up in, which makes me a product of the welfare state, so I have benefited from that. In light of these events, I cannot really work out whether I am a socialist who learned to be a capitalist or a capitalist who is now pretending to be a socialist, but you know, both parts of my mind are alive, and I need to acknowledge both of them. However, it has to be done in service of relationships and doing something useful.

I have never been motivated by money alone. The capitalist model of earning lots and then just being a philanthropist does not make sense to me. Your energy, enthusiasm, and networks are more useful, as they allow to personally apply yourself rather than just write check. In fact, I think the former it is probably more important. So, yes, my upbringing definitely informed where I am today and how I think about the world.

Nonetheless, the education I have been able to catch up with as I have gone through the years and understanding the philosophical underpinning of how and what I think about the world have been really helpful. The best things are yet ahead of me. All in all, I am really well, I still have energy and enthusiasm, and I intend to try to be as useful as possible.