No internet, no mobile phones, no global terrorist threat, but a buoyant economy in which the peace dividend from the end of the cold war continues to fund investment in health, education and international development… these are just some of the features of Britain in 2010 according to a Policy Studies Institute report published in 1990.

The predictions were the result of a serious research effort designed to help policymakers by predicting what the UK might look like in 20 years. In the foreword to the report, Jim Northcott, the principal author, wondered if there would be a conference held in 2010 to discuss what they got right and what they got wrong. I went to that very conference last week.
 
The aims of the ‘Britain in 2010’ report were to provide a best guess of what the next 20 years would hold. While some futurists would throw enough caveats at that to practically bury it, PSI did get quite a lot right.

For example, on the economy, they slightly overestimated growth, but not by much. They seriously underestimated how much imports would grow, and they also underestimated how quickly consumer spending would grow. But they picked up on the inherent instability in the global financial system, albeit without predicting the date and type of system collapse that we (nearly) experienced.
 
They called climate change, which for 1990 isn't bad. I was at school then and active in the local Friends of the Earth group. Climate change was part of the conversation but it wasn't on the campaign list. (I remember dressing up as a giant toilet roll in St Austell’s Fore Street, encouraging people to buy recycled toilet paper.) PSI said climate change would come to dominate political debate and even international relations. They had access to a group of experts - climatologists - who knew something few other people did, and were convinced of its significance.
 
I drew three conclusions from the speeches and discussion at the conference, with implications for how we do our futures work at Forum and elsewhere.
 
Firstly, the report seemed to overestimate the pace of linear or incremental change. Some of the trends already in evidence have taken more time than anticipated to develop. Policy in particular has moved slowly, climate change policy being one example of this: the report authors assumed that once the issue was acknowledged, policy would follow. That’s a bit of a groan moment.

Secondly, and in contrast, non-linear or disruptive change was underestimated or completely missed. For example, the 1990 report predicted two decades of 'important incremental progress' in technology. They considered the internet (which, like climate change, was waiting in the wings in 1990, preparing to jump centre-stage) but didn't anticipate its startling, planet-wide impacts and decided not to include it in the report. Mobile phones likewise are missing from their vision of 2010, as is the emergence of religious fundamentalism and global terror threats.

Thirdly, the study comes across as a good record of the expectations of the future that were current in 1990, rather than a set of accurate predictions. One example of this is how much attention the report gives to the cold war peace dividend – a big discussion point in 1990 which had fallen off the agenda by the mid 1990’s. The report is a valuable historical document showing the concerns of the day, which I think is inevitable: just as our interpretation of history is unavoidably political and coloured by current debates, so futures work always reflects the preoccupations of the present.

One final thought: it's obviously possible to predict and get lucky. I don't want to criticise the rigour with which the study was undertaken, or its value. I reckon their 2010 estimates were about 60% right, which is pretty good. But I do wonder whether they were fortunate with the timeframe they chose. By 1990 the cold war was over and in early 2010 the full ramifications of the financial crisis have yet to be felt. If the study had been conducted in 1980, would they have been so successful? Or, more to the point, would they be so successful if they tried it again today, and tried to predict what 2030 will be like?

Read the original Britain in 2010 report here.

Read about the Forum’s futures work here.