How tragic that the country – and indeed the world – is being dragged rightwards by a bunch of Neanderthal conservatives who relish ignorance and despise experts. That, in as many words, was the argument advanced here by Nick Cohen on Monday, as well as by many others on the Left. Nick wrote:
‘…in Britain and America one trend is clear: the better-educated you are the less likely you are to vote for the right. Like Mill, I am not arguing that educated people are always clever. Intellectuals have always included fanatics and cranks among their number. But I can say this: in a country where ever more people are going to university, no party can hope to survive as a party of government if it sells itself as Michael Gove’s know-nothing party’.
He bases his observation on a genuine statistic: that there has emerged a correlation between academic qualifications and which way we vote. According to a YouGov analysis of how Britain voted last week, the higher the level of your qualifications, the more likely you are to have voted Labour. Among those who hold degrees, 49 per cent voted Labour and 32 per cent Conservative. Among those whose highest qualification is a GSCE or below, 55 per cent voted Conservative and 33 per cent Labour. Similar analyses have shown a correlation between qualifications and the vote in the EU referendum – with Remain voters having higher qualifications.
But to try to equate formal qualifications with intelligence is not only wrong, it betrays a degree of snobbery which would have been considered disgraceful on the Left just a few years ago. If Conservative voters have relatively few degrees and other formal qualifications it is really just a reflection of their age. The real divide in Britain politics now is generational, with young people far more likely to vote Labour (and for Remain) and older people far more likely to vote Conservative (and Leave). Older people are also far less likely to be educated to degree level than are younger people. According to the 2011 census, 52.9 per cent of the over-65s have no formal qualifications at all. By contrast, 40.3 per cent of 25-34 year olds have a degree.
This is not because old people are stupid and young people clever but because when the over-65s were young there were not many universities around. It was far more common practice to go straight from school into employment and to train in the workplace. Since the massive expansion in university places instigated by John Major and Tony Blair degrees have become commonplace.
The Left used to champion people who had not had the advantage of a university education. Labour was the party of those who had not been privileged in this way, which stood up for them and promoted their ideas as being just as valid as the highly educated elite. How odd – and how objectionable – that many on the left now seem to make the assumption that a lack of a degree is a symptom of stupidity.
As for Nick Cohen’s jibe that the Conservatives are a ‘know-nothing’ party and Michael Gove a patron saint of the ignorant, one might have thought that those who attacked Gove a year ago for his comment on economic experts might be showing a little humility now that the predictions of an immediate recession to follow a vote for Brexit – made by the Treasury, the IMF and others – have been shown to be wrong. The assertion that experts are beyond question is not a very attractive one – and not one which the Left holds when it suits it. To the Left, climate change sceptics are idiots who deny scientific evidence – yet the same standard does not seem to be applied to people who disagree with scientists who tell us that fracking is safe. All week, the DUP has been attacked by the Left as a bunch of creationists. Yet the Today programme this morning carried an interview with a feminist who was – rightly – attacking Charles Darwin’s claim that women are at a lower state of evolution. So maybe the work of Darwin is not quite such sacred truth after all.
I am not going to get into creationism, fracking and climate change here, but just to make the point: the growing conceit on the Left that it represents reason while the Right represents ignorance is bunk and cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.
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