The events of the last week have confirmed the fears of many people that the next five years are going to see a progressive elite, already dominant across all major sectors and institutions of our society, insinuate its views ever more deeply into the national psyche contrary to the wishes of the majority of the population. There will be a doubling down on identity politics, the state will extend its tentacles even further into people’s lives, the autonomy of our nation state will be undermined, the school curriculum will be turned upside down, and, most worryingly of all, our freedom to express our views about some of these developments will be under assault from an elite that appears not to value free speech.
Is there anything we can do to keep this progressive elite in check, or are we faced with an unstoppable juggernaut to which, not for the first time, we will simply have to bend the knee?
The Inevitability and Necessity of Elites
Writing in the first half of the 20th Century, the Italian sociologists Gaetano Mosca, Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto argued that whatever form societies took, they would all be led by a minority ruling class and that it was this class that would largely determine the history of that society. Michels called this “the iron law of oligarchy”. Despite their realism about the inevitability of oligarchies, all were keen that ruling elites should respect the liberties of their fellow citizens. The challenge was to find ways of ensuring that the oligarchical rule to which we are all going to be subjected would be as respectful of the general interest as possible.
One way of doing this might be through education. They were cynical, however, about whether some kind of education in civic virtue would do much to induce elites to act against their own interests. They would certainly not have agreed with a recent book which saw education as “the primary determiner of the future of society”.
Avoiding the Emergence of a Hereditary Meritocracy
Pareto was particularly hard-nosed about the measures needed to keep elites in check. In his opinion, two approaches are necessary. First, an elite should be self-renewing with continual movement of people both in and out, making the emergence of a hereditary meritocracy less likely. Second, an elite needed a counter-elite sufficiently influential to force it constantly to re-examine itself.
Back in 2017, David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere had already pointed to the risks of the development of a hereditary meritocracy with the 20% of “Anywheres” – “the highly educated and mobile (minority) who… comfortably surf social change” – ensuring that the benefits the graduate ruling class had acquired were passed on to their children. It is true that more people from what Goodhart called the “Somewheres” – the socially conservative and largely non-graduate majority – now go on to higher education and then into elite roles, but there are many parts of the country and large sections of the population so poorly represented in government and in leading institutions that the gulf between them and those with power and influence is massive. These are the areas that people were promised in 2019 would be ‘levelled up’, but which have little to show for the past five years and little hope that the next five, under the shadow of the country’s Net Zero 2050 plans, will see anything better.
Inequalities in Educational Attainment: What the EBacc Data Show Us
Some of the data that indicate most clearly where the future English elite is likely to come from (and is currently located) are the scores for the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), a performance measure showing the proportion of pupils who, at 16, have obtained a GCSE Grade 5 or above in five of the most important and academically demanding GCSE subjects. Successful completion of the EBacc is an indication that a pupil has a strong academic foundation on which to base further study. Not all pupils are entered for it, and less than a quarter attain it. Success greatly increases one’s chances of going on to get good results at A Level, participating in higher education and then landing a good job. Success in the EBacc is one of the strongest indications of whether a young person is en route to ultimate membership of our elite.
What the 2022 EBacc data (published in August 2023) show is that getting on to this academic track is proving much more difficult for boys – who have a 34% EBacc entry rate and 17% pass rate – than for girls – a 44% entry rate and 24% pass rate. It is also proving more difficult for white British candidates – a 34% entry rate and 18% pass rate – than for Asian candidates – a 51% entry rate and 28% pass rate. One of the striking features of the data is that far fewer white candidates are even following a curriculum that allows them to be entered for the English Baccalaureate: 34% compared with an entry rate of 47% for black candidates whose pass rate, at 20%, is only slightly higher than that of white candidates.
More striking still are the geographical discrepancies. The pass rate for England overall was 20% – 17% for boys and 24% for girls. The overall London pass rate, by contrast, was 29%, with some London boroughs having stunning results – Hackney 32%, Barnet 38%, Hammersmith 41%. Many other parts of the country, particularly in the Midlands, the North and some rural areas in the South (for example, Cornwall at 13%), were hugely below the average pass rate of 20%. These areas also show even wider gaps between boys and girls than the national average.
Many of the places where there were recent violent disturbances have among the lowest pass rates in the table: Blackpool 6%, Stoke-on-Trent 10% (13.2% girls, 6.8% boys), Rotherham 11%, Middlesbrough 12%, Bolton 16%, Liverpool 17%, the North West as a whole 17%, Manchester 18%, the North East as a whole 18%, Sunderland 19.2% (girls 24.4%, boys 14%).
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that very few young people from these backgrounds end up following the path that leads to membership of the elite, or that, in the absence of such people, our current elite has proved itself so tone deaf to the possible existence of underlying causes behind the recent violent disturbances in these parts of the country. Goodhart highlighted how Anywheres at times governed in their own class interests in areas such as family policy, immigration and the prioritisation of educational expenditure. The resources poured into metropolitan education that made the above EBacc results possible are a prime example of this.
The Case for a Counter-Elite
Pareto’s second approach to keeping an elite vigilant and ensuring that it is responsive to the needs of citizens and reflective about its own plans and performance is to ensure that, alongside every elite, there is a counter-elite. Duties apply to both parties: on the counter-elite to try to empathise with the position of the ruling elite and to give credit where credit is due, and on the elite to provide space for the counter-elite to express itself – in other words, to guarantee the freedom of expression without which debate between sets of ideas – between the elite and the counter-elite – is never going to lead to any kind of synthesis.
Even more worrying than the Labour Government’s policy agenda is its assumption that disturbances are likely to be prompted by people’s online posts – that is by words – rather than by grievances and gut feelings that arise from circumstances, and that, therefore, the solution to the unrest is more regulation of speech. The Director of Public Prosecution’s menacing and nanny-like warning to the nation to “be mindful of what you are saying”, the involvement of the National Security Online Information Team, public speculation about reintroducing the ‘legal but harmful’ section removed from the Online Safety Act – none of this augurs well.
The good news is that the informal counter-elite in the U.K. is in a stronger position than it was a few years ago, with a TV channel, GB News, which allows legitimate views to be expressed that would never find their way onto a BBC programme; with sites like the Daily Sceptic, Spiked, and UnHerd; organisations like The Academy of Ideas and the Free Speech Union; and a growing range of Substack accounts operating without the risk of arbitrary closure. It is because all of this is thriving that the defenders of radical progressive orthodoxy on issues such as immigration have become increasingly shrill, demanding – not for the first time – the immediate shutdown of GB News.
Even if, in due course, a political party or parties emerge to challenge the radical progressive, technocratic elite head-on – and it seems some way off at the moment – this nascent counter-elite, in all its diversity, looks set to continue playing the kind of role that the Italian sociologists I have been reading envisaged for it.
Dr Nicholas Tate is a former headteacher and government chief education adviser and author of What is Education for? and The Conservative Case for Education.
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More American perspective on what’s going on in Britain and how it’s changing for the worse. The author’s correct to point out that had it not been for Elon Musk’s pledge to protect free speech since taking over Twitter ( can you remember how bad the old Twitter was ?? ) people across the world would not know half of what’s happening in the UK since Labour got in. No wonder the totalitarian censorship-obsessed Leftards hate this platform and its owner so much;
”For an American, it’s not only shocking, but also painful, to see what is happening to Britain today. The country of the Magna Carta, the nation that gave the world liberal democracy, and a people who stood indomitably against the Nazi totalitarian menace, succumb to utter demoralization and soft (for now) totalitarianism imposed on them by a corrupt ruling class. How far away seem the lyrics to the popular 1939 patriotic song “There’ll Always Be An England,” which lifted spirits through the Blitz:
It has become possible now to doubt that sentimental claim—precisely because England has ceased to mean much to its ruling class, and to many Englishmen. A friend who is a respected member of the British establishment wrote to me last week in despair.
“No sign it’s going to get any better, or that there is any way the country can come back from this,” he said. “We’ve faced wars, recessions, and pandemics for centuries, but this is different. You can’t reverse the slow dissolution of an entire culture and people, which is what is happening to the English.”
If you wanted to dissolve a nation—that is, a distinct people—it would be hard to beat the formula the British ruling class, both Labour and Tory, have implemented. Among them:
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/will-there-always-be-an-england/
Thanks for the link Mogs. A sad but very accurate essay on the plight of England and its people.
I am not one of those in Scotland who say “Hey, it isn’t just England”—–But “Hey it isn’t just England”. If anything, we up here have had an even worse bunch of Progressive (Communist) half wits running the show. Thankfully they have been wiped out but a new bunch of twerps has replaced them. –Labour. The future is indeed bleak and curiously as Europe is seeing a bit of a revolt against the twerp class of planet saving, gender bending, multicultural Technocrats, but we are swimming against the tide in the opposite direction. ——PS I forgive you for saying “England”…I am sure you really mean us all.
Attitudes are beginning to shift in society at large. A while ago if I mentioned that the Great Replacement is the Labour Party’s fundamental – if hidden – policy, people would hotly dispute it. But now people are beginning to agree with me.
Good read. Minus the thing about standing up to the Nazis. Nobody would have needed to stand up to the Nazis hadn’t the very people who – tata! – stood up them created them in the first place. The so-called first world war was collusion between England, France and Russia (initially) and England, France and the USA (later) with the main goal to destroy Germany at any cost. This destruction was duly accomplished (the Entente powers rejected about one or two attempts to come to a negotiated peace on the base of the status quo ante per year of the war) but this begat the Nazi counterrevolution mostly driven by former soldiers who felt that they had been robbed of what their sacrifices should have accomplished by left wing party politicians more interested in ruling over anything than what that anything would turn out to be.
Without this particular end to the first world war, a second world war against the NSDAP Reich would never have happened.
Your analyses of the causes of the ‘so called’ WW1 and of the Versailles settlement are to say the least simplistic and distorted. Britain should accept no responsibility for the rise of Nazism other than the policy of appeasement of the 1930s.
In contrast to what you’ve been told to believe, they’re certainly grounded in extraordinary insight and expertise, not in the absolute sense – I’m certainly no historian – but at least insofar as I’ve spend a good deal of time working through first- and second-hand sources about the period beyond Wikipedia. But the people who broke it are obviously never keen on accepting resposibility for the outcomes of their actions. They prefer to blame mysterious evil forces which caused all their best intentions to flounder.
Eg, the terms of the Versaille treaty were dictated by England and France (chiefly France) to a state having been fooled into rendering itself defenseless (mostly by Wilson’s diplomatical maneuvering in October 1918) and barely capable of fending mass starvation of the population due to a continued total import blockade by the Entente powers, chiefly, England. This wasn’t a settlement in two important ways, namely, nothing was never negotiated with the parties forced to accpet and it didn’t settle anything, beyond distribution of the lavish spoils of war.
It and the unloved ‘revolutionary’ parliamentary republic forced onto the Germans by Wilson became the seeds the NSDAP would grow from.
Hereditary meritocracy is an oxymoron.
I’ve always thought The Democratic Party was oxymoronic, with the emphasis on ”moronic”.
I also thought it was a peculiar term. I guess the author is referring to a meritocracy where merit is only selected from a specific pool. Not a great phrase though I agree.
I don’t know. It’s good to have lots of different ways of thinking, opinions and approaches represented among the “elite” but I am not keen on any kind of “elite” – though I guess it’s inevitable. What I would like to see and what would make things a lot better (perhaps the only thing) is for the consensus to change to one that views politicians as servants not leaders, that views the state as a necessary evil that covers the minimum sensible ground possible where we choose to pool resources for the common good, but that people should in general solve their own problems and form their own opinions about what the “truth” is.
We are fast entering an era similar to George Orwell’s Newspeak. Lets call it say “Rightspeak” or “Labourspeak” (although I realise the Conservatives were leaning this way, but had a slightly different definition of what was “Rightspeak”). You are not allowed to speak or write, and coming soon, to read), anything not proscribed by the “Rightspeak” Commissar.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/britains-self-inflicted-wounds/
This really is a read it and weep piece and so damned accurate.
“OVER the last few days I have fallen victim to a deep melancholy.
Witnessing recent events, I cannot help but say to myself ‘and to think this is all self-inflicted!’ One of history’s greatest nations laid low by less than three decades of dreadful politicians.
The murders, the riots, the clamp-down, the predictable cycle of hysteria peddled by the media, all followed by a promised Stalinist crackdown on free speech designed to silence anybody critical of our government and their extremist immigration policies.”
It is difficult in a staunchly anti-intellectual culture like the one in England. Not that it is much better in other parts of Europe or even in Russia. And then of course you have the question, if an alternative elite were to develop, what would be its centre. It can’t be enlightenment values because we are essentially wrestling with the bankrupt heirs of the enlightenment. If it were to become purely Christian then that would turn it to crap very quickly. You have to have a centre and ask yourself what would it be. It is more difficult than it sounds.
My god Paul Mason is a nasty little fascist creep, in the true meaning of the word.
Always has been.
It isn’t difficult to become a member of the elite given how utterly misinformed and misguided the rulers are. Of course they are selected for this propenisty. Becoming clever and astute and dextrous isn’t enough really. At the very least if you were offering true redemptive change you would make it clear that you listen to every concern within a nation and you try to formulate a plan. At this point it is impossible. It may become possible after a major die off where two thirds die because the grief and shock would open the window to a lot of things. But right now we have to face the reality of a deeply demoralised situation. I was speaking to a Polish girl on the train and she said that she came here about 10 years ago to work and it was pretty good and happy times, and in her short stay she has seen it turned into a hellhole. It really is bad. I used to think that British cities and housing resembles the worst squalor of eastern Europe. It is way beyond that now these people are hungry and truly feral and they are rapidly becoming the majorrity. It is lower than the level of developing world peasants.
In 2009 The Club of Rome held it’s second Global Summit in Amsterdam where 800 world leaders (jeez 800) got together in Amsterdam to decide what to do with “us” (The little people). The “crisis” selected to help rule the world was “climate change” or “global warming” back then. With globalist puppets in place all over and a bought and paid for media providing legitimacy to the junk science ever evening on the 6 O’clock News, everything was ticking along nicely till those nasty Brexiteers and Trump supporters put a spanner in the works. But things got back on track with Biden and the fake Tories. A huge part of the Elite control in their carving up of the world and its wealth and resources is control of the media. ——Propaganda is such a powerful tool which is why government use it, and when you see how easily people for the climate hoax with the most delirious among the populace clamouring for more and more government to run their life for them by laying down in front of traffic, gluing themselves to buildings and throwing paint in art galleries you can see how powerful that propaganda is. Mainstream media all sing from the same hymn sheet because they are all owned by the same people, making the propaganda not just powerful, but co-ordinated.
If there is no effective opposition in the House of Commons, how can there be a counter-elite?
What the author calls the counter-elite are really more like Lollardy was to the educated elite of the Medieval period. This body of ruling elite provided the reservoir from which the king drew his ministers and with them the state’s policies. Lollardy caused no change in this ruling class.
Two opposing elites might lay the foundations for civil conflict.
I don’t know why EBacc is used as a measure to indicate likely entrance to the academic track and to the country’s elite. It appears to be very Arts focused, and this emphasis has been producing a very non-elite elite.
We have preponderance of Arts, Humanities and Social Science graduates in Parliament, Whitehall, QUANGOs and other influential positions that is resulting in a £1.5 Trillion disaster of NET Zero policies, soon to be constructing 850ft windmills anywhere Ed Miliband deems fit, and creating Electricity shortages in London and the South East within four years. And we appear to study History, not so we don’t repeat our past errors, but so that particular politicians can march on the world stage to emulate Churchill, or even someone worse! And coupled with a Law degree, the public appear to be getting a legal identity, without any life to savour.
As Katharine Burbalsingh has said, it all starts at school!
What most people are less aware of is the funding available to the Left and Far Left from the likes of billionaire George Soros who has been using over decades hundreds of millions [pocket change compared to his billions] to fund them across Europe.
What others are also less aware of is how well resourced the Left and Far Left are and how well correspondingly over decades they have become organised – we gained an insight only in part into this from the recent responses to the false flag alleged 100 ‘Far Right’ protests.
It takes a lot of organisation and coordination to get thousands to turn up at venues across the country and to do so as quickly as they did.
The Left and Far Left use modern electronic mass communications and were able to field their warriors at the drop of a hat.
The same applies to the Labour Party’s election campaign. They have sophisticated back office systems to coordinate and communicate simultaneously with their supporters and activists at a local and national level.
None of the other parties have anything close.
In other words, the Left and Far Left are far far better resourced and organised at every level than ever before.
And problematically it is the Left and Far Left who have historically been the most vulnerable to manipulation by foreign actors.
There is resistance out there. It’s still early days but the Reform Party ticks all the boxes in the fight for our rights and freedom.
It needs much more support, less apathy and more engagement. If we want to stop this growing totalitarian dictatorship we must fight for our rights in any way we can under the law, or become subjugated and controlled.
Our Government is no longer our servant or even friend, it is an evil force taking us to Global governance. Reform rejects the influence of unelected foreign organisations like the WEF, WHO, The UN, UNESCO…..
Spread the word.
“in any way we can” – I disagree.
We need effective means to counter what is being, continues to be and has been done for at least two decades – the 1992 Maastricht treaty and subsequent EU enlargement was a coup d’etats – executed without democratic mandate of EU states including especially the UK.
To be effective:
1) we need to understand what is being done – all of it The How;
2) what the purposes of The How are – The Aims and Objectives;
3) who the people and organisations are doing The How – The Spear Tip;
4) who the people and organisations are who are pushing The Spear Tip – The Shadows;
5) who are running the show – The Darkness;
5) and we need to know not by guesswork but with specifics exactly Who, the What, the Why, the Where and the When.
A problem is no ordinary people have the money, organisation or resources to do 1) to 5).
The UK’s or any other security services cannot be trusted to do any of this. They do as they are told by The Spear Tip or the Shadows and of course The Darkness are the last to be identifiable if they are identifiable at all.
So we may have to be resigned to our fates – as desperate a prospect as that may seem.
In Russia the Russian people have never had democracy and in Europe over the past century democracy has been patchy and sporadic.
Judge for yourselves all the states in Europe which over the past century were at one time or another under control of dictatorships – Spain, Portugal, Greece, most of Europe to the east of West Germany [eg Poland, the Baltic States, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia to name just a handful].
And of course in the UK there is no democracy any more.
Be resigned to your fate.
The smart money is on joining and working for the bad guys – but even that may not be a safe option.
Something bad is coming and there is very little you or anyone else can do about it.
I have never understood Stalin’s elimination of elites and intellectuals but it is becoming clearer now.