Brexit and the voice of Britain’s hidden majority

Politicians neglect the unfashionable but cherished values of family and community

Afriend of mine, the social researcher Geoff Dench, died a few weeks ago. You are unlikely to have heard of him, although you may have heard of his close associate, Michael Young (father of the mischievous Toby). Young helped to write Labour’s 1945 manifesto and then fell out of love with the party and wrote a celebrated critique of the new meritocratic class, The Rise of the Meritocracy, and founded the Consumer Association and the Open University, among other things.

Both Dench and Young, who died in 2002, would probably have described themselves as communitarian social democrats. And Dench was that rare thing, a socially conservative social scientist whose concern for family, community and working-class men put him at odds with most of his discipline and eventually drove him out of the academy.

Dench was, in fact, heroically out of step with the times. He was critical of both meritocracy and feminism

– or at least of their unintended consequences – two of modern liberalism’s most powerful ideas, strongly supported right across the political spectrum.

Alongside Young, he argued that meritocracy was inadequate as an organising principle for society because it divided people too sharply into winners and losers and prioritised the public realm over the private, despite the primary importance of the latter to most people.

His critique of what he called “state feminism” focused on its downplaying of the civilising role that family motivations play for men. The flip-side of female autonomy is men – especially working-class men – feeling superfluous. He pointed to the rising male suicide rate, the sharp fall in male labour market participation and the poor performance of white workingclass boys in education.

So, you might think, Dench represented the last gasp of a dying tradition, forlornly standing against the onward march of progress. Yet this member of the awkward squad can claim to have foreshadowed the push back against modern liberalism represented by Brexit, Trump and the rise of populism. I was never able to discuss Brexit with him because for the past few years he had suffered from progressive supranuclear palsy, a brain disease that had prevented him from talking.

But his widow, Belinda Brown, confirms that he was a strong Brexit supporter. For Brexit represents a rebellion against some of the trends he most disliked in modern society: the rise of cognitive ability as the gold standard of human esteem and the correspondingly reduced status of so much non-graduate employment; and the over-domination of metropolitan “Anywhere” priorities of mobility, openness and individual autonomy. He saw this liberal graduate world view as shallow and hubristic and at odds with powerful human instincts.

Dench’s death also made me think of the political credo of the late American political scientist Daniel Bell, who declared himself a market-friendly social democrat in economics, a liberal in politics and somewhat conservative in social and cultural matters. It is a Left-Right combination that I feel attracted to myself, and I think represents the “hidden majority” in most modern liberal democracies.

For historical reasons, neither main party of the centre-Left or centre- Right, anywhere in the rich world, has come to embody this combination although the Conservative manifesto at the last election came quite close. The failure of our political institutions to represent that combination was another factor behind Brexit and the continuing sense of instability in our politics.

Of course, Bell’s credo begs some questions: most importantly, what does it mean to be “somewhat conservative in social and cultural matters”? Like everything else, small-c conservatism evolves. As recently as the late Eighties, a large majority would have opposed homosexuality; now many, if not most, support gay marriage. Many small-c conservatives now embrace things that would have been considered wildly liberal 50 years ago.

But at any given time one can point to certain “hidden majority” beliefs that are of far less concern, or even actively opposed, by liberal graduate “Anywheres”. Here are a few: national citizen rights before universal rights, social stability before high mobility, men and women are equal but not the same, greater priority on raising the basic level of competence of everyone in education and better options for those not heading to university.

In policy terms, that would mean a return to more moderate levels of immigration, much more support for the family in the tax system and elsewhere, greater stress on order in the classroom and ensuring no one leaves school illiterate or innumerate, and a respected vocational and technical alternative to university.

These are hardly policies for an alt-Right manifesto, yet (with the exception of reducing immigration) mainstream parties do not focus on them. How to combine the concerns of reasonable liberals and reasonable small-c conservatives is the great political challenge of our times, and neither of the two main parties has yet found the formula.

The various new centre parties now being touted would represent the first group but not the second. Perhaps it is time to revive David Owen’s old Social Democratic Party. Apparently there are plans to do just that. Geoff would have been pleased.

Combining the concerns of reasonable liberals and small-c conservatives is the great political challenge