Writing in a forum closely associated with New Labour, Simon Szreter proposed that social capital could “offer critical assistance to the putative Third Way by providing it with its own distinctive political economy” (Szreter, 1999, p 30). Szreter acknowledged that social capital was a “doubleedged sword”, with networks capable of excluding and dominating as well as including and emancipating. Nevertheless, the thrust of his article argued that the benefits of multiple ties – particularly weak ties – were accentuated in a modern competitive world market. The task for government was therefore to invest in measures that would produce more social capital and civic participation, as a means of avoiding the twin extremes of the free market and a strong state (Szreter, 1999). A rather more inflated assertion appeared on the front cover of the magazine in which Szreter’s paper appeared: “Social capital could come to be seen as important as the Keynesian revolution, in providing an alternative theoretical and practical guide to the economy”.

Szreter’s are strong claims indeed, and they are treated in this chapter with a mixture of scepticism and sympathy. In my own brief experience as a policy adviser to New Labour , I found that it is much easier to knock down other people’s policy prescriptions than develop your own. If I adopt a more cautious approach than Simon Szreter, this is not because I believe government should do nothing about social capital, or lifelong learning. On the contrary. Doing nothing is all too plainly a prescription for doing something, but on the basis of neglect rather than design. This book has shown repeatedly that social capital has consequences for learning, and that learning has consequences for social capital. Those consequences are not always clear cut, nor are they perhaps generally as powerful as other factors such as socioeconomic position. Nevertheless, people’s networks affect their ability to exchange ideas and information, and provide a bedding that nurtures their affective capabilities (see also Heenan, 2002; Cloonan, 2004). Conversely, loneliness and ignorance also affect the lives of those who lack social support mechanisms, who are given fewer and less reliable opportunities to acquire and build new knowledge and skills.