Our arrogant new meritocratic elite isn’t as good as it thinks it is
From North Korea to education to economics, our rulers have failed – yet they still love themselves
There was a time, before social media, when humility was seen as a virtue, rather than a debilitating character flaw. It’s not just Twitter’s fault: our new, self-consciously meritocratic ruling class is so convinced of its superiority that it cannot see the point of trying to be humble. If you are so good, why not shout about it? If you are so clever, why not tell everybody – Emmanuel Macron’s strategy in France?
Which would be fair enough, perhaps, if everything were hunkydory and such self-confidence were warranted. There are just two small problems: from North Korea to the economy, much of great importance is going terribly wrong; and it turns out that large swathes of this “elite” aren’t as good as they think they are. At best, they are overselling themselves, asking us to trust them to tackle problems that are unsolvable; at worst, they are no better than previous generations, merely a ruder, more entitled iteration.
No wonder the public is angry: it feels the brunt of myriad policy failures, from falling real wages to terrorism, and yet keeps being lectured by a delusional, self-aggrandising establishment that blames everybody but itself. Elites demand respect and the trappings of power, but don’t want to be responsible for actually gripping problems. They measure their success by the esteem in which they are held by their peers, or by how efficiently they can signal their virtue, rather than whether they achieve anything of lasting value. This fundamental disconnect is the key to understanding the alienation engulfing Western societies.
This is certainly not an argument against elitism per se, or a tirade against all elites. One problem is that many of our experts are not good enough: they have been tested and found wanting. They are too arrogant to realise the limits of their knowledge. It also goes without saying that much of the establishment is performing superbly, not least the entrepreneurs who keep inventing better goods and technologies, and the brilliant scientists who keep discovering ever more wondrous drugs. The real problem lies in the political, cultural and bureaucratic spheres, the bits that control governments, central banks and set the agenda: their inadequacy is proving to be an existential challenge for our civilisation. The only genuine policy triumphs of the past few decades – the end of communism and the drastic reduction in global poverty – were the product of elites dramatically loosening their grip and trusting individuals to take their own decisions. In every other area, utter failure has been the order of the day.
It is hard, even for an optimist such as myself, not to despair at our shocking inability to fix long-term problems. North Korea is merely the latest case in point: everybody has known for years that this totalitarian regime would eventually become a flashpoint, and yet the world may now be about to pay the price for our leaders’ decision to stick their heads so firmly in the sand for so long.
Even if Donald Trump and the Chinese do miraculously strike some sort of deal with North Korea, the wider issue of nuclear proliferation remains terrifyingly real in a world of rogue regimes, terrorism and drones. The situation in the Middle East may be improving slightly, thanks to Isil’s retreat, but long-term it is likely to worsen further. The cycle of Western interventionism has failed disastrously, yet nobody learns any lessons, offering only more of the same. The Gulf states may collapse with the internal combustion engine, and with them the whole region. The terrible truth is that there is no answer: we are stuck with flawed borders and an appalling ideology in Islamist extremism.
Mass migration, in part caused by the problems of the Middle East, is another challenge which our policymakers have no clue how to handle. Tens of millions will want to move over the next few years, with many landing in the European Union, a dysfunctional technocracy if ever there was one. There are many reasons why I doubt the EU will survive for more than another decade, and this is certainly one.
Then there is education: standards continue to decline in much of the West, even if we have managed to reverse that slightly here in Britain. But universities are in a deep crisis: social science and humanities departments have fallen prey to extreme groupthink, rejecting capitalism and enlightenment values, while student movements, especially in the US, are swapping free speech for a deranged form of authoritarianism. Combined with the deleterious impact of social media on our ability to have rational, nuanced, in-depth debates, it is hard to see how Western countries will be able to think clearly when new challenges emerge, or how a generation afflicted with the shortest of attention spans will be able to re-skill in the face of artificial intelligence and robotics.
The economic establishment has failed to predict or understand just about all recent recessions, bubbles and busts; its performance prior to and during the financial crisis was especially pathetic. It didn’t predict the slowdown in productivity or the hit to real wages (in the UK, it didn’t predict the good news and the return to full employment, either). It was wrong about the disastrous euro, wrong about disinflation and will, in time, be shown to be wrong about Brexit. The developed world is now addicted to cheap money, which could yet prove to have been one of the most catastrophic economic experiments of the past 50 years. Will we really be able to relearn to live with interest rates at 5 per cent or even higher?
Brexit is one of the few rays of light, a necessary but not sufficient condition to ensure the UK’S long-term success and to rebuild a properly functioning democracy. Yet the only reason this is happening is as a result of a revolt against the elites, and they are waging a quiet counter-revolution.
Given such a record of total, systemic failure, it is easy to understand why electorates are losing trust. Our ruling class needs to show a little humility: it could start by apologising for getting it so wrong so often on so many things, and admitting that some problems just cannot be solved. Our political and cultural elites are not the anointed ones, and they should stop behaving as if they are.
follow Allister Heath on Twitter @Allisterheath; read more at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion