The right's intellectual decline

It is sometimes through small windows that we can see a big picture. So it is with the Times’ recent attempt to compare how other songwriters match up to Bob Dylan as a poet.

The thing here is that if I were looking for rivals to Dylan on this point, I’d not look to David Bowie or Joni Mitchell, much as I love them, but to Dar Williams, Jolie Holland, John Prine, Josh Ritter or the incomparable Townes Van Zandt.

That the Times didn’t do so, preferring more famous names, is an insight into a bigger feature of the latter-day right – that it has a very narrow cultural and intellectual palette.

I don’t mean by this that they are uncultured and ill-read: many are far from it - although Nigel Farage has boasted of not listening to music or reading books. Culture, however, is not merely a consumer good. It is something that creates us. Even a big diet of political biography or second-rate literary fiction need not create very much.

What I do mean, though, is that there seems to have been a decline on the right in its intellectual referents.

Thatcher, for example, would often pepper her speeches with talk of Hayek, Popper or Friedman. And that wasn’t mere showboating: such men formed her worldview. It is not at all clear that Johnson has any equivalents (at least not since Juvenal) or even that he and his colleagues are interested in acquiring any*. 

We see this too in the right’s attitude to Marxism. It uses this merely as a boo-word, oblivious to Marxism’s intellectual content. Contrast that to my formative years, when the right could call upon thinkers who had seriously engaged with Marx such as Kolakowski, Berlin or Hollander**.

A lack of interest in Marx is part of the right’s indifference to economics generally. As Stian Westlake has said, “Tories, both in government and more generally, seem to have stopped talking and thinking about economics.” That’s an astounding change since my formative years when think-tanks like the IEA or Adam Smith Institute provided at least intellectual energy***.

Which is part of a wider philistinism: yes, dear reader, economics, done properly, is a cultured science. One example of this was the government’s advice that ballet dancers take up careers “in cyber.” I suspect very few government ministers know how to code, but they know that it is Not Art and therefore a Good Thing. The crassness of that advert was not, however, the nadir: new depths have been reached by the “strong Britain, great nation” song and the ahistorical motive behind it.

Such philistinism is also evident in the government’s taking a “wrecking ball” to the music industry by failing to support technicians though Covid and by putting barriers in the way of touring.

And it’s evident in the attempt to suppress academic freedom. Thatcher disliked universities because they were part of the public sector. This government dislikes them because of the sneaking feeling that they might contain intellectuals.

Which is one reason, I suspect, why it is so keen on culture wars. The problem with debates about economics, welfare policy, foreign affair and so on is that you need some knowledge to participate in them. Culture wars, however, have no such barriers to entry. Hence the endless parade of gobshites on LBC, TalkRadio and GB News: yes, the latter has had an expert guest, but this greeted on Twitter in the same way that people share videos of a dog doing a cute trick.

Now, you might object here that I’m being unfair in singling out the Tories. To some extent, I am. The intellectual decline of the Tory party is part of a general decay of intellectual standards in public life. Where, for example, is the Labour equivalent of Tony Crosland today?

What’s notable, however, is that the Tories’ philistinism is electorally successful. Their appeal now is largely confined to the uneducated. YouGov estimate that in the 2019 General Election voters with degrees or higher qualifications split 43-29 per cent in favour of Labour over the Tories, whereas among those with GCSEs or less, the Tories led Labour 58-25 per cent. And today, satisfaction with Johnson’s performance as PM is far higher among the uneducated than among graduates. Dominic Grieve has a point when he says that “sophisticated” voters can see that Johnson is a charlatan.

Of course, this difference is partly a function of the fact that the Tories appeal is to the old who tend to have fewer qualifications. But the scale of this age difference is also a new phenomenon. In the 1987 general election, for example, The Tory lead among over-65s, at 14 percentage points, was only a little above its six-point lead among 25-34 year-olds. And of course back then, the Tories had big support among graduates, not least because having a degree was associated with higher income.

The issue here is not that John Stuart Mill was right to claim that “stupid people are generally Conservative.” Intellectual ability is an over-rated virtue in politics. If we listen to them properly – that is, not through phone-ins or focus groups - lay people have important and useful things to say. And of course, being educated in one field is no protection against being an idiot in others.

Instead, the point is that the Tories’ appeal to the uneducated whilst alienating graduates puts them on the wrong side of history, given the trend towards increase educational qualifications. A party which, in Will Davies words, “refuses to see any value in the next generation of employees and citizens” doesn’t deserve a future, and it might not have one.

* I exempt Jesse Norman from this charge, although the link between his intellectual work and his political career is not wholly obvious.

** Although when I read The Open Society and its Enemies, I was actually struck by how little animosity Popper displayed towards Marx.

*** Though not perhaps from the days of Alec Douglas Home.

Comments

[Steve Davies]

I think the intellectual decline you describe is indeed general and found in all parts of politics. It's not that there aren't keen and bright people in think tanks or scholars doing serious work in universities but that these connect less and less with politics while policy is dominated by technocrats with unexamined and unconscious ideologies. I think the reasons are the way the academy has been corrupted progressively by money (both public and private) and the publish or perish and group-think incentives and the transformation of the media, partly by technology.

[Hugh Mann]

"the wrong side of history, given the trend towards increase educational qualifications"

I have worked with more than a few semi-literate people with firsts. When 45% of the age cohort head for uni, GCSE-level jobs ask for A levels, A-level jobs want degrees, 2-1 degree jobs want a masters at minimum. The pressure to inflate degree grades is pretty impressive as well - the uni is well aware that someone paying 15k for a masters wants that piece of paper.

"a general decay of intellectual standards in public life"

How does that compute with your quote above, and what Miliband D called "the best-educated generation in history"?

Unless of course demography IS destiny.

[Nanikore]

"yes, dear reader, economics, done properly, is a cultured science."

It's a very uncultured and anti-cultural discipline. A lot has been said about the philistine character of economists. Sargent, Prescott, Summers or Fama are examples of the type. Economics should be connected to society and humanity, but it is very removed from it.

[jim]

Sure, we can easily see our politicians are charlatans. But why are they that way? Why have non-charlatans not outsmarted them and shown the way to political and economic nirvana? I would suggest that the reason is we are in a deep hole with no easy or pleasant way out.

Economics (and mathematics) are useful tools but you need a lot of them to usefully model anything. A bit of honesty plus some inspiration and rule of thumb methods are probably more likely to identify a useful way forward, the figure f**kers can come later. Equally, it is not obvious at the moment that a spot of Marxism or Keynesianism would put things right. My intuition says we are in a hole and some new thinking is required before choosing this or that econ ism.

A few thoughts. We seem to be a very mature and sclerotic democracy. Our electoral structure means we cannot get out of our overpriced housing market. Which makes us not so competitive and makes setting up here a PIA. We seem a nice stable place in which to invest in property but new businesses, not so much.

If I were of a revolutionary turn of mind, which groups might I send to the guillotine? As a rule of thumb, the upper middle could do with a trim. The braying classes too. And of course all the Brexiteers. A Maoist approach to re-educating the Eton classes might do well. Rees-Mogg and friends (such as are spared) can work on the land - barefoot. The green benches could do with a few unrepaired bullet holes - as a salutary reminder.

[rsm]

Don't non-charlatans just quickly sell out, typically? Once in a while a Gandhi comes along to shame them, but they quickly forget?

Aren't we always in a hole? Don't charlatans benefit most from the "there's just no money left" line?

Isn't the best policy solution simply to eliminate inflation constraints by having central banks explicitly sell inflation swaps to set expectations as needed? Can't inflation be insured or hedged away, and isn't that what the private financial sector already does (backstopped by central banks)?

[andy gray]

"I suspect very few government ministers know how to code, but they know that it is Not Art and therefore a Good Thing."

Certainly agree with the first statement but not always the rest
https://youtu.be/3Xq9enXx1PI

(warning - flickering/flashing lights)

[jim]

Thinking about what might happen to a stable upwardly mobile society. Everyone would end up on top.

But in accumulating these assets perhaps this bourgeoisie pushes up the price of assets to those lower down the pile. Worse, they might achieve some sort of capture to entrench their position. This effect is well known. The question is whether this has gone further in the UK than elsewhere. Are for example the Germans or the French or the Dutch seeing this sort of effect.

The long term accumulation of wealth by a bourgeoisie does not intuitively seem an entirely good idea - but what to do about it. Probably not the guillotine. The game of life seems to have unevenly distributed the ladders and snakes. Not enough small ladders and not enough unavoidable snakes perhaps. Two or three generations of wealth seems quite enough.

Herein seems to lie the central difficulty of Tory and Labour policy. How to stir the pot without disturbing the status quo.

[rsm]

"in accumulating these assets perhaps this bourgeoisie pushes up the price of assets to those lower down the pile. Worse, they might achieve some sort of capture to entrench their position."

Doesn't arguing against the central bank's ability to push up incomes in lockstep with prices simply enable the capture, though?

[Terry Needham]

If you think that intellectual decline afflicts only the right, then you haven't been paying attention.

[Ralph Musgrave]

Far from the Tories being "Philistines" for not giving special privileges to the live music industry as suggested by Chris Dillow, the Tories should be congratulated. There is no more reason for that industry to get favourable treatment than there is for favourable treatment being given to chess clubs, golf clubs, bowling clubs, strip clubs, sailing clubs or you name it clubs.

[ltr]

No, no, no; the problem is the likes of Keir Starmer. Could there be a more perverse and ignorant Labour leader?

[ltr]

The point to me is that the leadership of Labour no longer has a care for the well-being of ordinary workers. Th problem is not empty Conservatives, but an empty Labour leadership.

[ltr]

Why Matt Hancock should have to resign for kissing a partner, strikes me as utterly absurd. Talk about ignorance.