As if Nathan Cofnas needed yet more trouble! However, it’s Cofnas I’m using as my authority when I say that those on the Right don’t seem terribly smart.
Could it simply be an IQ deficiency that explains the response to articles by me and various others who want to see what we all want – the Right in power? Collectively, the Right is either dumb or the Great Replacement Theory has already done its job and replaced virtually the entire readership of the Daily Sceptic and the Telegraph with Left-leaning fifth columnists determined to scupper our next shot at power.
In his January 2024 paper ‘Why we need to talk about the Right’s stupidity problem’, Cofnas tells us that the IQ of extreme conservatives is about 8.5 points lower than that of extreme liberals. Moderate conservatives underperform moderate socialists too. So, don’t blame me for this piece of news – blame Cofnas. Though, if what he claims is true, it’s our forebears we should all be mad at!
However, you may take some comfort in the ‘Flynn effect’, which suggests that the average IQ in any cohort seems to improve by about eight points every 40 years or so. This is good news for us dumb conservatives: with a bit of luck our kids will be as bright as the blue-haired loons currently lining up behind Polanski. Thankfully, as his supporters show no sign of procreating any time soon, your kids should be safe from being outshone by the offspring of these ‘Leftards’ – but only because there won’t be any!
For those of you with a keen eye, you’ll notice that Cofnas is the bloke who first raised the hue and cry about Jason Arday in his July 2026 Substack essay ‘DEI fraud and coverup at Cambridge’. However, it’s his findings about the IQ of those of us on the Right that interests me more – worryingly, I think he might have a point.
By sheer coincidence – certainly on my part – four articles along pretty much the same lines were all published on August 12th by me, Allister Heath, Matt Goodwin and James Frayn. Each of us made the blindingly obvious point that the Right needs to coalesce in some form if we want to avoid splitting the Right-of-Centre vote in the next general election, as happened in 2024 – with the inevitable result that a ‘Progressive Left’ alliance would retain power. The four of us all recognised that the Right would be courting electoral disaster if we apply tests of ‘intellectual purity’ on prospective voters, with banishment to the Lib Dems for anyone who failed the test. Tim Stanley being the acid test.
Our articles went down like lead balloons. It’s hard to gauge exactly what reaction an article elicits from its readers, but the number of ‘views’ and ‘likes’ on X is probably as good a guide as any. Across X as a whole, the ratio of ‘likes’ to ‘views’ averages out at about one to 100.
In the table below I’ve compiled the number of ‘views’ and ‘likes’ from Toby Young’s, Matt Goodwin’s and the Daily Telegraph‘s X account postings of these four articles.
Of course, it’s pleasing that Toby’s post of my article attracted more than twice the number of views that the Telegraph‘s X account recorded for the Allister Heath piece, but it’s the ratio of ‘likes’ to ‘views’ that’s illuminating. Only one person in 1,000 liked mine. Allister Heath and James Frayn did a bit better than me, but then the Telegraph has drifted ever more Guardian-esque in recent months. And I suspect Goodwin has a narrower audience who instinctively like whatever he says.
If we discard Matt Goodwin’s results, Heath, Frayn and I had a ‘like to view’ ratio of one in 700.
This is unusual – we normally, all three of us, do much better than this. One of my recent articles about Peter Mandelson achieved a one in 10 ratio, which is unusual too. Another article I wrote back in 2023 was one of the most viewed pieces ever published on the Daily Sceptic: it concerned the 44% rise in heart attack deaths – totally ignored by the MSM (definitely worth a read) – and attracted 662,000 views and 7,800 ‘likes’, a ratio of one in 85. In the ‘likes to views’ stakes, I’m normally about par for the course, regardless of the number of readers.
However, with respect to these August 12th articles, there’s no getting away from it: viewers and readers simply didn’t like what we had to say. Clearly, the Right is in no mood to compromise.
Which brings me back to Nathan Cofnas and his research findings about those of us with conservative views being a bit thick.
It was LBJ who said: “The first rule of politics is being able to count.”
Paul Homewood on August 17th wrote a critique of my earlier piece entitled ‘Do the Tories really need Tim Stanley?’. Paul’s probably very clever – I have a feeling he’s an accountant, which means he can definitely count. What’s more, the reaction to his article shows that, unlike me, he’s a man in sympathy with his audience: 11,100 views, 275 likes, one in 40 ‘likes to views’. Alas, I am to the accountancy profession what Jonathan Reynolds is to lawyers – nearly one, but not quite! Though I can’t help feeling that in this instance, I’m right and Paul, like the rest of you, is wrong.
The title is, of course, intended to be rhetorical. Paul thinks the Right doesn’t need the Tim Stanleys of this world. Nearly all of the commentators under both Allister Heath’s and my piece appear to share Paul’s view. But we can’t afford to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Homewood’s argument – and that of so many of the commentators – does them a massive disservice. The assumption seems to be that if we debate Net Zero on the Right, the swivel-eyed loons promoting Net Zero by 2050 will win the argument. They won’t. Paul and his co-sceptics have done a great job fighting back against the catastrophists. The only people who ever want to stifle debate are those with weak arguments. Paul has great arguments. Gird your loins, Paul – once more into the fray. Bring them on: you’ll win the day!
But being able to count is at the heart of the matter if we want to prevent the ‘Progressive Left’ retaining power at the next election. In my August 12th article I shared YouGov polling showing that only 34% of Britons oppose rejoining the EU. If that 34% is already on our side, continuing to ‘preach to the choir’ while cutting off the rest is pointless. Strategically, there are only two options left for a party wishing to gain additional voters: convert the unbelievers (very hard) or neutralise the issue (much easier).
Exactly the same is true for Net Zero. YouGov reports that 60% of Britons support Net Zero. Of those that don’t, nearly all already support Right-of-Centre parties. Policies that neutralise the issue will win the day. This doesn’t mean conceding anything to anyone, but it does mean continuing to expose the cost of Net Zero, the negligible impact our own self-sacrifice has made and the real cost in terms of jobs and wealth. None of these things require us to condemn Net Zero sympathisers to the outer darkness of Lib Demery. Let’s welcome them in and congratulate them on how much they’ve achieved – but now’s the time to let everyone else catch up.
It was always said of Labour that it was the natural party of opposition. However, power forces us to make decisions we wouldn’t necessarily choose – one of the reasons that Starmer and now Burnham look so uncomfortable as Prime Minister. That said, the same is true for any leader from the Right.
Farage’s softening on his inherent Thatcherite tendencies is a good example. Of course, he believes in ‘personal responsibility’; of course he believes in a ‘smaller state’; of course he believes in the primacy of the ‘open market’. He probably also believes that vast numbers of illegal migrants and ‘legal’ migrants who ‘gamed’ the system should be deported. But if he hopes to win a majority at a general election he can’t be too explicit about these things. The same is true for Badenoch. She needs to broaden, not narrow, her appeal.
Homewood says Net Zero and membership of the ECHR are binary choices, but they are not. The ECHR is, in large part, based on English common law. Prior to joining the ECHR there was not a vacuum of human rights laws and there would not be one if we left. We are more than capable of drafting our own human rights legislation, where the delta between our national and the prevailing European law is narrow but sensible, with the added bonus that our own Parliament would be able to constrain activist judges. To be against the ECHR you do not have to also be against rights for humans.
Net Zero is not binary either. In the UK our per-capita CO2 emissions are now back at the levels last seen in 1860. Figure 2 also shows the degree to which we have simply exported emissions to China, which now emits almost twice the mass of CO2 per capita that we do. The message the Right should be promoting is not that it is all nonsense – rather that we have done our bit, that we are the good guys here, that it is time for others to step up and match the sacrifices we have made. It is not ‘us’ against ‘them’; it has to be ‘us’ and ‘them’.
And while cocooned in our ‘information silos’ we may frequently hear that the UK produces only 0.75% of global emissions, it is not at all clear to me that the population as a whole understands that neither the UK nor the EU, with our minuscule share of emissions, has its hand on the global thermostat – not that there is one.
Finally, tools such as the energy subsidy clock and the energy dashboard should be promoted, to get everyone who is interested to understand real data rather than alarmist nonsense.
We need to do more to educate people to appreciate that we have picked the low-hanging fruit of low-emissions energy sources and the sheer scale of the hidden cost we have absorbed in doing so – then perhaps they will be more open to a pause.
For decades in popular culture, Thatcher has been demonised for destroying working-class jobs, but she was an amateur compared to Net Zero. This is a message to the ‘red wall’.
Whilst the mean IQ of us foot-soldiers of the Right might be underwhelming, we have to hope that our leaders come from much further up the curve. However, we too have to demonstrate some smart strategic thinking ourselves, because like it or not – and I know you do not – prior to the next election, the various Right-of-Centre party leaders are going to have to come to some kind of constituency-sharing arrangement. In advance of that it is perfectly understandable that they will continue to deny any such thing will happen; they are playing for position. It is like a game of ‘chicken’: how close to the next election will they have to come before they throw in their hand and agree a pact?
Until then they have to play down similarities to maximise their party’s advantage. But come together they must. And when they do, it is no good if we refuse to play along.
No doubt this article will, once again, attract the thumbs down – but remember that LBJ adage about being able to count. There are 650 constituencies and the Right needs to win around 350 to form a working majority. Fail to reach that target and all your purist principles will count for nothing.
Discussion
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i used to have a very high IQ in the days anyone measured it, but i can’t figure out how to post a “like”
The whole IQ methodology is nonsense. It rewards the sort of behaviours inculcated by the “education system” in the minds of people who are more prone to following rules than thinking for themselves.
Actually,I have scored pretty well on IQ tests and have a postgrad degree but still disagree with Rendell so here is explaining my point of view. The right split not due to policy, but to not being actually right wing and betraying supporters who thought they were (the Tories). Alternatives now include Reform who seem to be more about the centrist views of 1 man who has abandoned politics at key moments and Restore, a party splitting from Farage’s Reform, maybe out of spite, and relentlessly demonised in the press. Maybe it’s not the supporters but the poor political choices available and the thought leaders, especially in the media, being left-leaning and less than impartial. No wonder a fed up public largely opts out of bothering with the political process at all.
The right will always be split because it stands for individual liberty and freedom of thought and speech and therefore leads to independence of action. The left stands for collectivism of property, thought and policy, and any deviation from the ideology leads to cancellation and expulsion from the hive. We’re doomed, much in the same way that British tolerance tolerates unscrupulous intolerant parasitic cultures which will eventually kill the host. We are already quite a long way along that disease trajectory. I am not sure if it’s reversible and if it is, the host will have to suffer extensive damage from which it may not fully recover. Voting harder will not perform the surgery required to excise the pathogens.
As one Boomer to another (even though I hate the label!) I share your thoughts about intolerant parasitic cultures – and I’d include communism / socialism. Oddly enough only last evening I was reading a novel which included an account of someone who almost died of cholera but recovered through good nursing. What we the north European cultures are experiencing seems very much like an epidemic of intellectual cholera. The disease is the result of over-intellectualising everyday social and economic issues and trying to build a perfect, permanent system. And as we discovering, the road to hell is paved with idealistic intentions.
I choose the label as a way of defusing the “OK Boomer” insult that was popular a few years ago. It seems to have slipped from common use. I don’t mind it now, I am among many things a boomer and a bloke. Whatever the cause of the problems, I think that voting will not solve them, unfortunately.
Exactly the problem is political parties of the Right seem to have been infiltrated by left leaning politicians. The Conservatives are a classic example they have become so watered down that nobody I know now recognises them as true Conservatives.In fact some would say they are more like the Liberal Party of the 1960s. The MSM is the same, such that the Overton Window has gone so far to the left that what I consider proper Conservatives those with common sense values like members of Restore and some in Reform are now considered unpalatable.
Personally I tend not to “like” anything on X otherwise the algorithm just feeds you the same information. Don’t be discouraged, we are the silent majority.
If Stanley and his ilk want to be members of the Tory party, great. But Badenough is correct to exclude wet pro net zero, pro ECHR types to stand for election. The government must speak as one voice and cannot have people deliberately wrecking the manifesto they will stand on.
As for a right wing Pact – this has to happen, Farage and Badenough may not like each other but they have to work together to defeat the Lefties, the country will not forgive them if they do not and a left wing coalition wins the next GE.
This article exposes the fundamental flaw in the U.K. system.
To gain power in the U.K. a party already has to provide some sort of consensus, which is a problem in itself. The main parties have to be broad churches, hence the inevitable infighting within parties.
Fair comment except that what we have at present is not a ‘flaw’ but a characteristic. A system based on smaller, more narrowly focussed parties simply shifts some but not all differences of opinion from within the parties into the infighting which goes on in parliaments when small parties form coalitions. Neither system is ideal but their characteristics would matter less if we did not expect governments to solve all our problems.
Agreed. But with more smaller parties it is more likely you will find a party aligned with your views and your voice being heard.
But in my opinion PR is not the answer either as it shifts the power to the urban population. I like the idea of constituencies.
Maybe a hybrid of some sort? Moving to direct democracy?
Not sure what the solution is, especially when a part of
the population is simply not interested and also directly benefitting from the current system.
There are potentially better systems… but they tend to work only briefly until the careerists find a way around the limitations, and then you are back to square one.
I held my nose and voted CONservative in 2019, despite the previous 9 years of utter uselessness and the Tories REFUSAL to implement LEAVE – which is what we voted for.
I was rewarded with a LibCON MP; the Covid Tyranny; 4 million legal 3rd world immigrants; goodness knows how many illegal ones because they REFUSED to stop it and Wallace’s 40,000+ unvetted Afghans smuggled in for a life of “free everything” and the information kept from the British people who would be paying for them via a Super Injunction.
I can count. I understand the electoral system.
But I don’t believe that a Party which still contains the likes of the following can be described as “on the Right:”
Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak, Gove, Hague, Wallace, Mitchell, Hunt, Hammond, Handcock (etc).
I also believe that only someone who is BORN British should be able to become PM (like the USA Constitution which requires a President to be born a US Citizen).
Badenoch doesn’t qualify. I strongly suspect that her Nigerian background is why she lobbied for even more Nigerian students and their dependants to be allowed into the UK. It’s called “conflict of interests” and I believe she is… Read more »
We could perhaps learn from our trans-Atlantic bretheren where in West Virginia Spanberger promised lots of nice things to get elected and then dumped most of it once elected governor, proving that you cannot trust a leftie. So promise a trebling of welfare payments, a 2 day week for traindrivers, all the schoolgirls you need and bombing Israel and then say ‘Eff you!’ and drop it all once elected.
What is ignored is that most Tories are clerical workers who are scared of physical confrontation. The Left has used physical confrontation since the late 1960s.
Once when it did not work was when Militant tried to intimidate Sir Ken Jackson the leader of the AEU. He obtained the support of some rugby league players and Militant backed off.
The gist of this article is that the “right” is stupid enough to do deals either the Tories. Without, yet again, explaining the uselessness of the term “right” I must insist on pointing out the Tories are not conservatives still less related to anything called “right”.
This article fits the recent series of theatrical propaganda. It seeks to portray the Tories as a born again party with no connection to those people who caused such problems from 2010 and assisted throughout the Blair years.
The most urgent result is to persuade Reform to take a chance with the Tories. Result: Reform lose over half their support while the Tories gain almost none. Outcome: Uniparty retains office.
This article is worse than unhelpful.
Can the author cite some examples of leaders or parties or governments nominally from the “right” who have demonstrated the great intelligence the author seems to think he possesses, to NOT shoot themselves in the foot? Look forward to a list of the beacons of these smart right wingers we’re told we should emulate.
Enoch Powell, Nigel Lawson (perhaps).
I’m sure the author would dismiss both as unelectable extremists
My brain hurts!
If the left really does score higher on IQ tests then it simply goes to show that the tests are either testing the wrong things or that they’re simply utterly useless.
Intelligence is important but so is wisdom. As someone has pointed out somewhere in these comments, they are not the same thing. The left is promoting the destruction of white European civilisation – a civilisation that has benefited the “intelligensia” enormously. That to me is a good definition of “stupid”.
Calling your readers stupid is a great way to win them over. Call me stupid, I don’t care.
I don’t want any more big government socialism regardless of what party is in power pretending to believe in what they promise. Sadly most people seem happy with more of the same. I think we’re better off experiencing the full ruin of socialism, when it comes. It might wake a few people up.
Trump didn’t win by appealing to the “centre” – he got his base out to vote. Working people.
Re. your fudges
Net Zero: This is not about being afraid to have a debate on the right, we’ve had the debate, and all 3 parties agree that it has to go. The only holdouts are the Tory LibDems.
ECHR: Eh? Of course we have human rights laws and we will fall back on them. What gave you the idea that we are going to be abandoning “rights for humans”?
And, yes, eventually the parties on the right are going to have to come to an arrangement. Over at the DT under the new owners we have seen what their idea consists in: destroy Restore, then Reform in the south, leaving the same old globalist puppets, the Tories, in control of the south, and the eventual coalition.
Yes, the DT’s strategy is obvious.
Destroy Restore
Weaken Reform
Big up Badenough (they’ve failed with that one)
Try to force a coalition in order to save the Establishment CON Party.
The commentators below the line aren’t playing ball.
Since the Left is a midden for intellectuals and bien-pensants perhaps that explains the alleged IQ differences. But in my experience, really dumb, stupid people gave high IQs.
As for “the Right” coalescing – it’s up to the electorate. If the electorate wants to vote for more of the same, whether the Parties of the Right are split or not.
We have a welfare-state. This is transfer of wealth via the tax system controlled by those in Givernment. A huge part of the electorate are Government employees either bureaucrats or in the public services. Since none of them create wealth but are paid by the Governmebt with money extracted from the productive sector, they too are on welfare.
Then we have 12 million cultural enrichers who know which side their bread is buttered.
A demos is a social group sharing same culture, outlook, loyalty, heritage, genetic line.
UK is no longer a demos. I doubt there is a sufficient majority who want change.
I too doubt this. Things will have to get much worse and that will take time. More time than I have.
“it is not at all clear to me that the population as a whole understands that neither the UK nor the EU, with our minuscule share of emissions, has its hand on the global thermostat – not that there is one.” But even debating any impact of man made CO2 and the atmospheric percentage, on average global temperature acknowledges the premise of the non issue, and the presence of the imaginary thermostat. CO2 is plant food, necessary for life on earth and the more they get the better they grow and therefore more food for other life forms further up the food chain.
It’s a pity this otherwise useful article chooses to start out with the IQ hook. Another manifestation of the Cofnas effect, I suppose.
IQ test scores do a fair job of screening for the genuinely mentally deficient, but are otherwise largely a result of circularities, and are a poor predictor of anything useful.
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
Exactly. I have known many people who were undoubtedly academically intelligent, but who had zero common sense or practicality. Conversely, I have known many with zero academic qualifications but who had an innate cleverness of the sort that could not be taught, it was just “there”.
Absolutely spot on. The number of people I used to work with who were very clever with figures but could hardly make a cup tea was scarily high! Those who were supposedly “thick” were often the most perceptive.
It’s not useful at all. Just an attempt to dazzle us peasants with science.
“Pigheaded Bigots! Just look at all these scientific graphs, you Knuckle-dragging Neanderthal Patriots, and see the error of your ways!” says he. “Now just do as you’re told, because you’re all as thick as two short planks, and WE KNOW BEST! “
I am proud to be a knuckle dragging patriot who makes stuff and does stuff.
Hear, hear!
Thanks for making my point for me, I completely agree. Measuring someone’s IQ unless you are checking for deficits in cognitive abilities is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
as for academics, it seems that today’s lot are mostly measured on their level of imbecility and how distant they are from the world of anyone not an academic.
i have never heard of anyone from Mensa or any of the other high intelligence clubs every contributing anything of value to society or the world. Same goes for Oxford and Cambridge, whose mission it seems is to destroy the foundations it stands on; very intelligent that one, in the last ten or twenty years. It’s a scam and people shouldn’t fall for it.
“IQ test scores…are a poor predictor of anything useful.”
Really?
Higher IQ is positively correlated with: educational attainment, income, job performance and seniority, marital stability, impulse control, health and longevity.
Higher IQ is negatively correlated with: criminality and incarceration, poverty, divorce, unplanned pregnancy, mortality, substance abuse problems.
These aren’t fringe findings; they’re among the most replicated results in psychology and the social sciences, backed by studies spanning decades.
IQ is far from a perfect predictor and many other factors matter. But calling it a “poor predictor of anything useful” is simply false.
Those are all circularities. The IQ score is a downstream consequence from sampling a previously selected cohort. Rather that being a predictor, the IQ score is a consequence. You’ve got it completely backward. As has essentially all of “social science”.
No.
IQ is routinely measured in childhood (ages 8–11) in large, unselected birth cohorts and population samples.
The educational, occupational, income, marital, health, or criminal outcomes occur subsequently. Longitudinal data then show those early scores predict the later outcomes decades later
The time ordering shows that the “downstream consequence of a previously selected cohort” claim is simply and obviously wrong.
Nick, you seem to be oblivious to the irony that your arguments are very lefty thinking – I am right, and if you disagree you must be thick, for I am far more clever. The error you are making is exactly the same error the left make – conflating academic intelligence with wisdom. Your arguments may be intellectually clever but they are as equally stupid in every way that matters.
What a wonderful photo of some of England’s National Treasures, missing only Eric Idle & Graham Chapman. That’s the best thing about Nick Rendell’s article. In fact, it’s the only good thing about his article.
Here’s another one with all the lads:
Article based on YouGov polls…honestly, that is a definition of stupid.
34% of us oppose rejoining the EU? Says who? What poll? The number is no lower than during Brexit and given the mess that the EU is in, maybe higher.
60% support Netard Zero? Says who? Not where I live. Most are clueless and once you clue them into the fraud, opposed.
It is called education. Educate the illiterate. Win the arguments. Win the election
Yes! Most people keep forgetting that YouGov was founded by
IRAQI MUSLIM NADHIM ZAHAWI.
He’s even written a book about himself, entitled:
“The Boy from Baghdad”.
Agreed. YouGov is a consent manufacturing machine, I’d take its “findings” with more than a pinch of salt.
A lot of this work will do itself – exposing the fraud makes the answers obvious. Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant, and all that.
It’s only a flesh wound.
Happy Days they were… long ago and far away! 🙂
Does the author mean, scoring an own goal? Shooting yourself in the foot means disabling yourself in order to get out of doing something.
An alternative interpretation is that the movers and shakers on the Right are too clever by half and this is why the Conservatives were pulled down by the Wets.
So the real question to be answered is how the Right will win those 350 seats. I believe trying to ‘educate’ the natural supporters is the mindset of the would-be elite.
I’d argue that what we need is a short manifesto of a few key red lines without the hinderance of trying to be all things to all people. So, pledge ending Net Zero. Pledge swift removal of incoming illegal immigrants. Scrap the EHCR/DEI industry.
That’s three things simple enough to be written on a Business Card, but a powerful promise.
Other stuff like restoring Parliamentary authority and democracy, defunding the BBC and winding back the bureaucracy are nice to aim for but shouldn’t be allowed to distract from the three key promises.
So we are thick are we?
Everything of value in this world has been made by practical blokes with right of centre views.
IQ scores are at the end of the day irrelevant.
Can you do stuff? Make stuff?
Excellent points! So true!
Quite right – many people with an allegedly high IQ and good education – the lying oaf Johnson for example – are actually really stupid in normal life.