Britain won’t heal its divisions as long as the clever are too powerful

Theresa May’s ‘British Dream’ rings hollow for those unable or unwilling to escape their roots

There are many explanations for the discontent that led to the two big shocks of last year, Brexit and Trump, the first of which Theresa May is now struggling to manage. But here is one that you may not have heard of: smart people have become too powerful.

Fifty years ago, when we lived in a less complex society, the people running government and business were generally brighter and more ambitious than the average – as they still are today – but qualities other than analytical intelligence (or cognitive ability) were held in higher esteem. Today, cognitive ability has become the gold standard of human valuation – the “brightest and the best” trump the “decent and hardworking”. Other qualities such as character, integrity and experience are not irrelevant but they command less respect.

And cognitive ability used to be more randomly scattered around. In recent decades, a huge sorting process has hoovered up young exam-passers and sent as many as possible into higher education, leading in Britain to a 400 per cent increase in student numbers since 1990 and a precipitous decline in the prestige of so much non-graduate employment. An economic system which once had a place for those of middling and even lower abilities now favours the educationally blessed. This has been reinforced by something known by the ugly phrase “assortative mating”, meaning that people in high status jobs requiring high cognitive ability are far more likely to pair up with similar people.

Why does this matter? Surely modern societies need more clever people, and so long as people from all backgrounds get a crack at joining the elite – the “British Dream” of the Prime Minister’s ill-fated Manchester speech – then all is well? I disagree. In my book The Road to Somewhere I talk about a polarisation in values in society, revealed starkly by the Brexit vote, that has been exacerbated by a narrow focus on cognitive ability and left Britain more divided than at any time since the Seventies.

On the one hand is the group I call the Anywheres, making up 20 to 25 per cent of the population, who are welleducated, usually live far from their parents, and tend to favour openness, autonomy, and social fluidity. On the other is a larger group, about half of the population, the Somewheres, who are less well-educated, more rooted, value familiarity, and place a much greater emphasis on group attachments (local and national) than the Anywheres.

Anywheres are generally comfortable with social change because they have “achieved identities”, a sense of themselves derived from educational and career achievements, which allows them to fit in pretty much anywhere. Somewheres have “ascribed identities” based more on the place they live or group they belong to, which means that their identity can be more easily discomforted by rapid change.

Anywhere priorities have come to completely dominate modern society and all the main political parties. And the Anywhere answer to everything from social mobility to improved productivity has been: more academic higher education.

Yet David Lucas, the children’s author and illustrator, has persuasively argued that a good society needs a balance of respect between the three Hs – head, hand and heart. Society needs the cognitive skills of the knowledge economy but also the craft skills of artisans and tradesmen, and the emotional intelligence of those in caring jobs. Hand and heart skills have become chronically undervalued in modern Britain, unbalancing our society and alienating millions.

Everyone is in favour of social mobility and bright people from whatever background travelling as far as their talents will take them, but today’s British Dream has become too narrowly defined as going to university and into a professional job. Not surprising when more than 90 per cent of MPS are graduates.

There has been some attempt at offering other options to school-leavers with improved apprenticeships and T-levels. But they cannot compete with the prestige of university, leaving our economy starved of essential workers: last year fewer than 10,000 started proper construction apprenticeships while one third of the building workers in London are from abroad. Meanwhile, heart jobs in social care, parts of the NHS, early years education and childcare continue to be undervalued (and paid) because they are roles that used to be performed in the private realm of the family, mainly by women. Hence, in part, the crisis in social care and in nurse recruitment. follow David Goodhart on Twitter @ David_goodhart; read more at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion

And because of residential universities and the over-dominance of London, joining the cognitive achievers normally means leaving where you grew up. Earlier this year, Justine Greening, the Education Secretary, gave a speech about moving away from her hometown of Rotherham so that she could achieve “something better”. Many Somewheres cannot or do not want to leave their roots and join the Anywheres, and, in any case, half of the population will always, by definition, be in the bottom half of the cognitive ability spectrum. Yet all of us need to feel we have a valued place in society.

This all could have been fertile ground for the Conservatives under Mrs May, and she initially showed a clear empathy for the basic political intuitions of the Somewheres: the importance of stable neighbourhoods and secure borders, the priority of national citizen rights before universal rights, the need for narrative and recognition for those who do not thrive in more education-driven economies.

But the Tory election failure has allowed the Anywheres to strike back, with the most obvious consequence being that we have now shifted from a Somewhere Brexit stressing immigration and sovereignty to an Anywhere Brexit with more focus on trade. The parliamentary arithmetic has left a stalemate meaning neither side can assert itself.

If we want to restore stability to our politics, one thing is clear: whatever new settlement we achieve must be one in which both groups feel their core interests are respected. The cognitive elite cannot be allowed to shape society only in their interests.