Michael Giove said on Friday that the British people had had enough of experts. I think he was referring to economists at the time. But it is at odd moments like this that the true person is revealed.
Here after all is a man who is best known for his time as education secretary. During that time he tried to destroy expertise. And self expression through the arts. Whose idea of progress was to bring back Latin. And a rigid discipline of exams that more were intended to fail. All of which is part of his plan to create a product, not a person.
This is, then, a man who cannot afford experts. They, after all, question things. Like why it is good to be selfish. Or to want to discriminate. Or to increase inequality. The underlying philosophy of all of those is well known in early years with education. It takes no expertise to develop them.
And this is the level at which Gove is aiming.
Not long ago we worried about Austria electing a far-right leader. We should be looking closer to home. It's really quite a small step from not liking experts to beginning to move against them. Just look at Poland, Hungary and Turkey. Gove would seem to be in that mould.
Worry.
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I don’t over worry about him because he won’t ever get the chance to influence Britain’s future, the people of Britain would never accept him and his Victorian policies.
Well said. Michel Gove appears to be rejecting expertise. Technocrats being in charge is a bad thing in the mind-set of people like this, yet Select Committees take place every week to tap into the knowledge of experts. On education, the best expert for each child is the child’s parents, not this man and I look forward to the lucid and coherent thoughts of the excellent Ivan Horrocks on him.
Who needs rational calculation?
Go with your gut prejudice – one might almost say, your Fingerspitzengefuehl.
I think people reject experts because they don’t always agree with each other. Politicians of all shades can write expert opinion in support of their views, no matter how extreme. The media, and the BBC in particular, will present the expert views on both sides of any debate as if they ere of equal validity, with the ridiculous outcome that utter cranks standing on the wrong side of settled questions like climate change or vaccination are rolled out and treated as if enough to balance the weight of the entirety of mainstream scientific opinion.
The trouble is acute with softer sciences like economics. It’s rare to find a topic you can mostly agree on anyway, and even when one comes up, like the effects of Brexit, there are still enough taking the other view for the Brexiteers to act as if there is real debate and uncertainty.
This is why the commonest description of the Brexit debate is that it’s “confusing”. The media allow, even require, settled issues to be presented as live. If people understood that they had a simple choice between greater economic security but uncontrolled EU migration and controllable EU migration with a weaker economy, they could at least make a decision based on their own biases.
The BBC role in this is interesting
Large numbers of economists are being excluded from comment right now because most are Remain, for example
what annoys me, Richard, is that Brexit people still assert that ‘we can’t make our own laws’ or that ‘the Eu is corrupt: it’s accounts have not been signed off’. We could have had factual pieces from the BBC giving us the real context. For example, we can write our own laws on health, education, constitution (voting system devolution) criminal law, local government, we can deport people and refuse entry (with reasons), we can choose our defence and foreign policy.
The In facts website is good but most people will still their information from ‘balanced’ shallow accounts on TV or the newspapers -almost all of whom are for leaving (and their owners either don’t live here, have tax privileges (Rothermere) Desmond, owner of the Express does live here and is a UKIP donor.
Whilst old frauds like Patrick Minford (Thatcher’s living economist – the one who thinks that all unemployment is voluntary since you can always ‘price yourself into work’) are happily wheeled out for the other side.
Minford has not written a paper for years….
Watch question time, most panelists are for remain, and those that want exit are generally those that the public regard slightly unhinged. Only Paul Mason from the left with a brexit coherent perspective has been on there
Such spot-on scrutiny you make against a sea of contrived immigration and other false-fear is exactly what Gove hoped to build with dumbed-down education and hopes to build with getting rid of his ideological nuisance the EU.
The fact that the EU has taken massive steps towards neoliberalism in recent years but still not acceptable to Gove and the rest shows the scale of ideological intent. And that is hugely worrying. As is the scale of motive and power of the media barons who fill our heads every day with brainwashing rubbish.
Keeping the world safe took effort and will. Keeping postwar capitalism workable took effort and will. Those efforts have been undone by contrivance, and now by contrivance we are seeing the last bolts loosened.
We must believe it can be resisted. Your analysis of Gove shows how years of media and lobbyists have got us accepting the unacceptable. In his early Tory endeavours Gove was sussed ‘as not really a Conservative’. That one comment by an old-school Conservative shows how the Tory norm has changed; enabled by Thatcher Toryism is now defined by an ambition and culture that even she would find deplorable. But was always likely to happen because she needed the most-extremes to win her own internal fight,in creating her throne they created their royal court.
Keynes was a solver who turned out to be a delayer. He probably gave us peace as well as economic stability. The fact his safeguards didn’t prevail is the biggest eye-opener we have to the extent of the motive of the ideology that enabled Gove and the extent of where his ideology and that of the media billionaires wants to go.
*build against
Problem is you need to be an expert to recognise an expert.
The problem is more complicated, I think.
First: there is a subliminal thread which conflates the “argument from authority”fallacy with the respect owed to genuine experts. This is a conflation which is by now quite widespread and it is part of the plutocratic project to centralise power by undermining other power bases by one means or another. Many people no longer accept there is genuine expertise to be had. You see it in the belief that parents know as much about education as teachers, for example. You see it in the notion that “management” is a skill in itself, unrelated to the field in which that skill is deployed. And the consequent exclusion of workers from decision making which affects the ability to do the job. Many examples of this.
Second there is the futile elevation of the “scientific method” beyond its scope. By now we can be sure that the phrase “social science” is akin to “decoy duck” in which the first element translates to “not a”. Science and its methods are awesome, and have turned out to have wider application than was first dreamed of. But it is not universally applicable, because its methods are not suitable in many areas, due to considerations either practical or ethical. Economics is the worst abuser of this pretense, which we may call scientism. As the discipline has stolen the clothes of science it has gradually been seen to be naked, and unfortunately that experience had led to suspicion of the claims of all experts, tarred with the emperor’s tailors brush.
There are genuine experts. You can often identify them by their uncertainty and reluctance to go beyond the evidence. They are apt to show their working and to acknowledge the tentative nature of their conclusions. We do not see much of that in the kind of “expert” informing plutocratic prescriptions. To raise a subject which caused a bit of a stushie before, we can see this in action in the IMF, who some think have belatedly shown doubt, but who have caused untold damage through their theories to date.
Mr Gove does not know what expertise is, and in this he is a product of the wider plutocratic project to abolish all challenge to their faith. We are all the losers
Thanks
Good arguments
Appreciated
Well put, Fiona. All I would add to that (which you hinted at) is that behind Gove’s pathetic, populist condemnation of ‘experts’ is the cheap appeal to knee jerk reaction and the bogus notion (in this context) of ‘common sense’. When ghastly, condescending, establishment ‘rentier’ shysters like Gove talk about ‘common sense’ they really mean:
1) I’m rich and powerful and produce nothing of value but I want you on my side (creepy grin time).
2) I’ll achieve the above by referring to your good British ‘common sense’ despite the fact that I’m taking the piss and having a laugh at your expense.
3) I’ll take a leaf out of Clarkson’s book which is appeal to knee-jerk, prejudice and the mockery of taking anything seriously.
4) Let me humour you into a false sense of security whilst simultaneously extracting from you everything you’ve got.
5) I’ll talk about a non-existent entity called the ‘British People’ and supply your thoughts for you.
Gove should be in a museum of early 21st Century anthropology under the category: Genus: Shyster Politician
Fiona – good stuff.
I think that your last paragraph hints at what I would call ‘absolutism’ or even ‘nomotheism’ – that is to say that in politics these days there can only be one way – or one winner. It is a rejection of dialectics – the rejection of other worlds, PsOV and interpretations that are actually present. Business seems to like to work like this too – it likes to dominate and only integrates in order to dominate.
We are told by the left or right that theirs is the one true way, and each will also claim to be at the centre when in fact they are being pulled or are purposefully going in one direction all of the time.
I still maintain that politics and the point of society is about usurping the harsh cruelty of nature and establishing fairness and balance for everyone because that it what differentiates ourselves from animals. Life does not have to be a race to the top.
Modern politicians fail to do this all of the time these days.
But if such a person or movement came within our midst, would we recognise them? Would we be enabled to?
Good post Fiona
If I can add to it:
Not only do economists try to be scientists but they also think they have some special ability to predict the future. How can we know what will happen whether the UK remains or leaves the UK? Requires too many assumptions that may or may not happen.
When I see a letter from ‘300 economists’, it should say ‘300 non-clairvoyants who have no better clue of the future than anyone else’.
Probably a bit late to this discussion which I find interesting. I am not an economist but having spent some time trying to understand it, I now have a much greater respect for them. Most, probably nearly all, are well aware that they cannot predict that far into the future which is the reason why we see Robert Chote of the OBR brandishing fan plots. It’s just that the media are not willing to take a bit of time to look at a plot or chart, and instead present everything as black and white, as if the predictions give a definite number when in fact the uncertainty on that number can mean that it might even change sign.
The problem is not economists, we need them, just give them a chance to explain, who they are, what they do and how they arrived at their results.
To some extent I agree
But economists are guilty of seeking to emulate scientists and want to pretend they can offer certainty as a result (even though many a wise scientist knows they cannot do that)
So don’t be too sympathetic: economists are captured by their own illusions
Gove always strikes me as the epitomy of a political stooge, one of far too many in the current batch of career politicians who know little of the real world, believe in nothing but what they have been told or taught by others, and are therefore easily hired by those with power and money to do their political dirty work and protect their vested interests.
The fact that he looks so much like Joe 90 convinces me that someone really is pulling his strings and has a hand up one of his orifices to open his mouth at the right time to mime the words they have prepared for him.
As for experts, the more the merrier, and lets have a government that doesn’t suppress and bury everything they don’t agree with but instead allow the UK public to decide based on all the real reports and data, not some one sided politically partisan interpretation of it.
There will always be conflicting views amongst experts (the real ones and the so-called ones), they should be peer reviewed before being publicly reviewed and those found to be telling consistent porky pies sent back to kindergarten where they belong.
I was called ‘Joe 90’ as a kid because of my specs! Gove has an additional ‘exothalmic’ appearance that contributes to a somewhat apoplectic demeanor.
The combination of him and Duncan Smith and Johnson sums up the detritus that is left out of a once major party.
But it may still be a vote winning machine
And that is what it has always been good at
Gove is of course brilliant. First class job as Ed Sec . Superb legal brain.
The best next Prime Minister this country will never have.
I do hope that was sarcastic or I will have to question what planet you have come from johnnymac!
There are no experts in Politics or Economics. There are just people with varying degrees of knowledge and different opinions on what the best thing to do is. What is good for one is bad for another. It’s all about behaviour and choices, and we all think we are experts at those!
I beg to differ
You assume self interest rules on all occasions
None of us are capable of excluding it entirely, but your assumption that it always prevails is, with respect5, without any evidential support
The attitude towards experts would appear to do with how well you were socialised as a baby and child to have a positive relational view of other human beings as a source of knowledge and emotional support. This makes you willing to listen to the views of others and have the sensitivity to spot when they are suffering. A negative relational view of others results in the converse a sort of “bunkering down” mentality where the predominant psychological disposition is one of not trusting others to provide for your knowledge and emotional needs.
Michael Tomasello and Stephen Kosslyn, American psychologists, have become “experts” in explaining to us how human beings have evolved to become ultra-social creatures (Tomasello) and in the process developed Social Prosthetic Networks (Kosslyn) for their well-being.
Rejection of experts is a dangerous thing. I’m thinking of the case of the ‘shaken baby’ expert who has been expelled by the BMA. Now anyone accused of that crime will have no expert to defend them, because all those who doubt the syndrome exists will not dare to be called to give evidence.
Politicians don’t like it when informed experts disagree with them. When you’re fact and evidence-free asset-strippers, like our lot, that’s much of the the time. In America, they’ve solved this, by banning advice from anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about http://inhabitat.com/house-passes-bill-that-prohibits-expert-scientific-advice-to-the-epa/ and of course here we’ve seen academics silenced on pain of having their financial support removed. Politicians don’t like it when the public are reminded what shysters they are. We are foolish for creating a class which is has the authority to silence their critics.
An expert used to be someone who had made all the mistakes. It’s a definition I’ve been working to all my life. ‘Still am as a matter of fact. It’s the only way to get better at anything in my view (as long as you are not causing harm of course – surgeons, airline pilots etc., and their ilk must NOT follow my line here).
You look at the ‘experts’ advising any of our Governments these days (usually young middle class university leavers) and you wonder what they are advising politicians about , especially since they do not appear to have lived similar lives to those whom their ideas will ultimately impact on.
The title of ‘expert’ has surely too been sullied by the abundant neo-liberals who have bent the ears of the powerful since the late 70’s. Nothing has turned out like they promised. Nothing. And even less.
As for Gove, I agree with your sentiment. All I can say is that Gove however sounds and talks like an expert himself. We must look to hope and realise that when people see him they are likely to be immediately turned off by him too.
Joe 90 has more charisma and empathy than Mr Gove, even if Joe was just a puppet. How the humanity in today’s political class has decayed.
I know that most teachers see red when they see and hear Gove. It IS worrying – and more so when you also hear political commentary praising his performance in BREXIT debates!
The BREXITEERS use of the immigration issue is very alarming. Remain’s answer to this is useless but it was good to hear Corbyn talking about how unscrupulous employers exploit immigrants because that is the closest yet I’ve heard someone in politics getting to the crux of the issue.
But then a certain BBC political editor with a certain bias who has recently managed to get our sympathies because of online misogyny simply asked if he was now just confusing the issue? Great eh?
It won’t necessarily be Gove & Johnson that win this vote for BREXIT because of the quality of their argument – it will be because of misguided acts of sabotage (disguised as ‘cutting edge, incisive journalism’) from the likes Ms Kuenssberg – someone whose ‘journalism’ is more fit for ‘Hello’ or ‘Chat’ IMHO than that produced by colleagues like Ms Maitlis and Wark and a long line of capable and objective female journalists before them.
Since Corbyn’s accurate exposition of the mechanics of immigration related wage deflation, have the star crossed austerity lovers Cameron and Osbourne promised to step up the regulation of immigration and wage rates in the business community to curb this unfairness?
No. Of course not. They didn’t and they will not. Just like they will not increase the numbers of people at HMRC to deal with tax abuse.
It’s when I consider conflicting policies like those above that I realise that we are all being had really concerning this ‘debate’.
I’m not so sure about ‘debate’ either; it is more like ‘debased’ from what I’m hearing.
The opposite of Michael Gove: and proof that his educational understanding is mired in the ’50s
http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud
I tend to think that one of the more reliable indicators of an ideologue, is their rejection of ‘expert’ knowledge and their projection of absolute certainty. This applies to religious ideologues such as the Christian right wing creationists in the US or islamic fundamentalists. It also applies to political ideologues such as Johnson, Gove or Trump (invariably with some degree of climate change denial as one part of their rhetoric) and as I see it, the bulk of the Brexiteers. Real experts are more open about the boundaries of their expertise and the areas of uncertainty
Ideologues of course thrive at times of greatest uncertainty and insecurity, when many of the public are looking for some simple answers and scapegoats to blame, and for certainty – even if it is an illusion or a straightforward con. The combination of populist ideologues such as Trump, Johnson and Gove with an equally ideologically inclined media, denigrating and dismissing thoughtful and even independent experts is especially dangerous
Isn’t it rather convenient to undermine experts, expertise and evidence … they may have facts and figures that interfere with what a politician/corporation want to do?
I would think that it was a rather regular feature of this government that they don’t care about the lack of proper evidence to back up their policies and the burying of inconvenient statistics… and when it comes to the private sector, there is the cancer-link with tobacco, climate change evidence from the 70s etc and more that we still don’t know about.
I discovered a new word the other week.. agnatology or the study of ignorance. I think it certainly deserves more study!
I like that word
This taps into a general British mistrust of cleverness (”not clever by half’) in favou8r of ‘common-sense’. This is an issue faced by opponents of austerity because austerity relies on a simple narrative with an intuitive appeal, i.e. that running the national economy is like running a household. Although this is completely wrong, it resonates politically (John Boehner once said that people in america are tightening their belt, but don’t see government tightening its belt). Opponents of austerity get dismissed by being accused of ‘over-intellectualising’ the argument and for being selfish and child-like.
Chairman Mao decried “experts” during his so-called Great Leap Forward. I wonder if Gove, like Peter Hitchens, was a Trot or a Maoist as a student, before transitioning from Hard Left to Hard Right?
Don’t know if they were trots, but many have made “the long trek right”. It is, IMO, mischaracterised, the better to mislead. The shift to the right is easy for a certain kind of person, and the left/right dimension is not the essence of it. What they have for consistency is a high level of authoritarianism, which is the other important dimension. In that sense there is no change. Many hard lefties are true authoritarians, and this is how all totalitarians have more in common with each other than with democrats.
Gove’s early political career is detailed on Wikipedia – “Gove joined the Oxford University Conservative Association and was secretary of Aberdeen South Young Conservatives. He helped to write speeches for Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet ministers, including Peter Lilley and Michael Howard. When applying for a job at the Conservative Research Department he was told he was “insufficiently political” and “insufficiently Conservative”, so he turned to journalism.
Gove had been chairman of Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank launched in 2002. He had a hand in establishing the right-leaning magazine Standpoint, to which he occasionally contributes”.
That wasn’t too difficult to look up, and undercuts your wondering somewhat. It may as well be argued that Catholicism and Fascism are positively correlated.
Unfortunately not enough people go into politics for the right reasons which is why candidates like Gove get elected by default (the lesser of two evils in some cases or just because the person votes for the party, not the person). Thankfully there are some young passionate informed people coming into the arena who are standing up for the people they represent instead of being career politicians. No-one really knows what Cameron, Boris, Gove etc really think as they all lie and change their views.
I was on the fence until I heard Corbyn give his speech which was factual, honest, no frills & no ridiculous stats. I am now definately for Remain. However, the BBC will not show all his speech as they do not give equal reporting to all parties and there is evidence that they are operating a witch hunt on the oppostion leader.
I don’t think I could disagree more, really. It is true that people broadly vote for a party, at least in GE’s, and it is also true that media and plutocrats in general are trying to change that, quite determinedly. They are making some progress.
It is a mistake to vote for the person, because most of us know precisely nothing about the individual. We know what the media decides to tell us they are like, and what their own press folk put out. That is all.
By contrast, we know what is in a party manifesto and that is why they are as vague and the party can get away with. The plutocratic tale is that the manifesto is irrelevant, because they all lie. And they do. But despite that faux cynical attitude the manifesto does really matter: witness the cry “you cannot oppose this it was a manifesto commitment”: and the fate of the lib dems in face of open breach on tuition fees. They would regain much of their importance if taken seriously be the electorate, which is why they are routinely dismissed.
Fact is the manifesto is the ONLY true information about what you are voting for. If you rely on “good chaps” it is a beauty contest, and one you are judging on basis of a radio commentary by MSM, to boot.
It is far from perfect, but please do consider whether you want any more of this “good people with good intentions” trust which serves the neoliberals so well. It is the single thing most calculated to enhance MSM power and control. Rupert Murdoch knows that and acts on it.
If you put your best political stooges into safe party seats, you can ensure that your top table is stuffed full of yes men (and women).
UK politics has become just another form of “business”, with the real shareholders in the city of London making sure that the “board of directors” in Downing Street is only ever going to do what the shareholders demand, while they play elegant lip service to any notion of democratic accountability to the people.
As another blogger said recently:
“Everyone knows that if you stick a red rosette on a pig it would get elected in some areas, and that a dog turd with a blue rosette would win an equally impressive landslide in certain Tory heartlands.”
Both Blair and Cameron played that game very well, and as a result we have Westminster filled with far too many “pigs” and “turds” in my opinion.
This attitude is not restricted to Gove, by a long way, Richard. He’s just feeling empowered enough due to his starring role in the Brexit campaign to start saying in public what he actually think. And I have to add that a fair number of people would agree with him, which led me to write this into unit 1 of my Masters research module:
‘Many years experience in higher education in the Uk makes me aware that a good percentage of students are at best ambivalent about, and at worst, anti theory. Or, to put it another way, the approach to explaining an event or phenomenon is simply to describe it. Analysis is restricted to drawing on personal experience and beliefs – what some people like to refer to as the “common sense” – however partial or biased this might be, rather than engaging with literature that sets out theories and concepts that provide the means for rigorous and valid analysis.’
I’ve never doubted that politicians such as Gove fall into this category, along with Johnson – whose probably the most egregious example – although Trump in the US Trump would give him a run for his money. Anti-intellectualism (because this is what the hatred and distrust of experts is at heart) has along history in the US and here as well. But I often find it odd that people who went to posh schools and supposedly elite universities are frequently in the forefront of the movement.
Ivan
I recognise all of that
R
Ivan
It is interesting that you find anti-intellectualism in the posh school set odd.
To me it seems quite natural Ivan. And I’m not trying to come across as superior here at all. It is just from my experiences of working with community groups who engaged with local service providers in getting improvements to the service they get. The difference in service quality between a well-heeled part of town to one on its last legs was marked in my experience.
By poo-pooing experts (who are trying to help clarify the issues – even to genuinely help the voters themselves) – the posh set are merely cutting off sources of greater awareness that would lead to people becoming more critically conscious about what was really going on. And – thus – perpetuating the continuation of posh power and values in say education, economic life and politics. It is a means by which the posh establishment achieve hegemony – by denying others the right to the truth.
It is simply controlling information – intelligence – and keeping people ignorant and unenlightened. Instead of dialogue – working together – the posh just push people away whom threaten the received wisdoms that too many people accept verbatim.
Can I recommend the works of Paulo Friere:
http://infed.org/mobi/paulo-freire-dialogue-praxis-and-education/
Also, check out Antonio Gramsci:
http://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/gramsci-and-hegemony/
These two writers – yes, albeit from the Left – have hit the nail on the head with regard to how austerity has been sold to the public and how the EU vote is being handled long before it happened.
I didn’t mean that comment to be read in the way you’re interpreted it, PSR, but more as Simon has below. And I am aware of Gramsci as I read his work when I did my degree and have done again since as hegemony has been a topic regularly discussed on Richard’s blog since I started reading it quite a few years ago now.
I hadn’t seen the piece by Friere though so thanks for that.
‘ I often find it odd that people who went to posh schools and supposedly elite universities are frequently in the forefront of the movement.’
These people are trained to pass exams-that’s all it is and there education is bereft of any real content. Johnson’s dad (another oik full of himself) read classical at Oxford which is all about giving you a cache of superiority and the ability to speak high-falutin language with a stentorian vocal tone that intimidates people and makes them feel you are something more than they are. The socio-linguistics of this were developed by Basil Bernstein some years ago. Combine this with massively inflated self-esteem and the total absence of any self-doubt and you end up with Gove/Johnson. Behind the facade there is utter cultural vacuity of shocking proportions.
Johnson, himself, uses anti-intellectualism as a tool to popularise himself. He recently made a joke about not being able to play the piano and was hopeless at music.
The etiology of anti-intellectualism is an interesting area. My own view is that it emerged out of the 60’s with Monty Python and public school humour that entered everyones’ lounge and changed the direction of humour from a more self effacing variety (Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd etc) to that of ‘clever-arsed’ rapid fire verbal puns and ‘piss-take.’ This was something inherited from the public school milieu and became the ‘model’ for a brand of humour that blended well with the emergent neo-liberalism of the 70’s and empitomised, in the 80’s by Clarkson who took vicious put down to another level. As a result, to be ‘serious’ about anything became considered ‘bad form’ and one being dismissed as a ‘party-pooper.’
Nick Duffel explores this in his recent book ‘Wounded Leaders’ and is worth a read for further insight into this insidious phenomenon.
It is no surprise that people like Cameron/Osborne/Gove/Johnson are as vacuous as they are. They are empty vessels relying on the cache of social class and wealth that renders them untouchable. Remember Cameron’s cheesey grin on American T.V. when he couldn’t remember the Date, or location of the signing of Magna Carta? Again, a reminder of the vaunting of dumbed-downess.
British humour caught on like wilderness in America from the late 60’s onward and that might be one con contributory factor in the dumbing-down of the world (Top Gear was a best seller!). There was a crescendo of this in the 80’s as inequality peaked and the ‘strivers/losers’ world view took a further grip.
So, I think it has all been in the making for about 40 years. It’s about time we collectively stuck two fingers up to it and demanded a cultural life that is humanly enhancing.
In the imminent aftermath of a “Leave” victory, one of the gravest questions would be who is to replace Cameron. My fear is that, with Johnson having lost credibility among Tories, the next PM would be Gove.
Gove has said ‘… he wanted the UK to be “outside the single market but have access to it”’ (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c5c74bc-151e-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e.html#axzz4AnBycYgF) which sounds particularly incoherent to me. The words “have”, “cake”, “eat” and “it” spring to mind.
I certainly don’t believe Johnson will take the leadership. It looks to me as if Gove is positioning himself for that role. Don’t know who else is in the running, but I don’t believe Johnson a contender, despite the media infatuation with him. Can’t see average tory wanting to be represented by someone who had adopted a Bertie Wooster persona (however dishonestly) when “punching above their weight” on the world stage.
The anti-expert Gove is a champion of the anti-philosophies.
That does not mean his words are mindless. Indeed, his appeal comes from the fact that they contain a grain of truth, although he has no desire to elucidate what that is if it does not serve his political purposes.
What problem have the British people got with experts? Although we have many experts in the field of economics, the most striking fact is that it is so difficult to get them to agree. Nor is the disagreement a minor one, but it concerns profound differences of opinion on macroeconomic issues such as government spending, taxation, and finance. Why? There are two possibilities. Either the truth is so complex that when a sane, rational individual like Prof Murphy comes along his words will be lost in a jumble of controversy, or the truth is so simple that if the experts can’t agree amongst themselves, surely we would be better off without them?
Evidently Gove has the answer.
And to defeat such high minded incoherence calls for a cross-expert collaboration, to beat him at his own game.