Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

[BovaryX]

There is an interesting article by Douglas Murray in the DM about the authoritarian, identity politics which have alienated Labour voters and triggered a paradigm shift in the political landscape. It covers some of the themes which Lang GC Pencils and others have been discussing in light of election result.

It is a divide between people who have real-world concerns and those focused on niche and barely significant ones...How, you might ask, have we reached such a state? There is a clue in the Labour Party’s dysfunctional reaction to its catastrophic defeat on Thursday

No grammars here, meaning that the very large majority of those who did go to uni (and did proper degrees, not Mickey Mouse ones) couldn't go to the local one as grades weren't good enough. People who then got very good degree results too btw, so they weren't just not smart enough.

I was referring to religious orthodoxy, especially as it affects girls

Ah, I see. My parents are actually both Catholic, and not very serious about it, so I have little experience of that, beyond the inherent misogyny of Catholicism, and it was tempered anyway by going to a girls' Catholic grammar school with very feminist teachers. In fact, the only orthodoxy we were sold was that getting married and having kids was Bad Feminism, and to be avoided in favour of a career, contributing to the world, and financial independence. I'd like to think they've moderated that stance a little bit now. It was pretty much a British lower-middle class version of the Indian school featured on Netflix's Daughters of Destiny documentary, if you've seen that (if not, it's worth a watch).

I think it's really difficult to compare going to university now with going to university 35+ years ago before the big drive for more graduates.

How do you compare the choice of an 18 year old to do a journalism degree at an ex poly in 2019 with a 16 year old joining the local newspaper in 1985?

How do you compare somebody taking a well paid manual job that could support an entire family in 1972 with a graduate working for Deliveroo in 2019?

I think grammar schools now are very different to grammar schools when I was there in the early 80s. Sure there were middle class kids but there were more kids from the local council estates than middle class ones. My grammar school was near dartford which had 3 big council estates & was before right to buy came in so majority working class

The mix gave me a chance to meet ppl whose parents had been to university and/or had professional jobs. I didn’t know anyone who’d been to university - no one in my family had.

DH is sane background as me but unlike him his sister didn’t go to the local grammar & the difference in their outlook, beliefs, lives despite having the same upbringing is massive

More importantly - far more importantly - there was a ready supply of well-paid working class jobs, so you could live a decent and dignified life if you were either unsuited to a middle-class career, or chose not to take that route in life.

Yes.

Re people feeling like the Conservatives respect them - they don't though, do they? Especially not this particular lot of Conservatives, the Boris Johnsons and Jacob Rees-Moggs don't have a great record on that. I think it's more like something Jess Phillips said post-election, that one of the things she heard again and again on doorsteps was "I don't like Corbyn, I don't trust Corbyn" and when she said "do you like Boris Johnson?" they said "Oh God, no." But, she said, the difference was that people were used to not liking or trusting the Tories - with Labour they feel properly let down.

As regards social mobility, I have been convinced for years that the actual driver of social mobility for the baby boomer generation was nothing particularly to do with grammar schools or government policies but rather the fact that thousands of men had died in the second and first world war.

This phenomenon had two distinct outcomes.

1. By 1950, there were hundreds of thousands of missing adult males between the ages of 30 and 60, who would have been, alternatively, occupying jobs and positions of seniority in the British labour market.

2. Because of these missing men, there were hundreds of thousands of babies that had not been born between 1920 and 1950.

These two outcomes reduced competition for opportunites, employment and advancement for those babies that were born post-1945. In short, there were fewer people above them to impede mobility, and there were less of them than there should have been.

In short, the social mobility of the baby boomers was the result of a quirk of history, not a progressive development. And when we talk about the decline of social mobility today, I suspect we are just reverting back to the norm.

Interesting article. Working class northern Tory MPs ON PURPOSE (plus, sigh, one keen on GRA reform). It does seem that the Tories had much more savvy in this campaign than we - let alone the oblivious Woke Twatterati cult - realised.

I looked the Tory manifesto and thought it was very clever in this respect. There is photo after photo of candidates who are teachers, nurses, police officers, doctors, charity workers, a sheep farmer, and of all ethnicities. They now have Britain's first openly gay Muslim MP (in one of those supposedly racist Northern constituencies!). It was clear from looking at the manifesto that there was a conscious strategy to move away from the stereotype of Tory MPs as former lawyers and investment bankers. They positioned themselves as the party of the workers, and Labour as the party of the elite.

With the above in mind, though, I am wary about giving TOO much credibility to the idea that Labour these days = 'elite London metropolitan middle-classes who don't understand the real working class'.

It's a huge oversimplification, and one that very much suits current Conservative spin lines. And it ignores things like Labour vote holding up much better among the working class in cities, and Labour leadership under Corbyn still having people like John McDonnell, child of a docker and a cleaner who grew up in Liverpool slums. And big shifts like city demographics getting younger while towns get older while age is an increasing factor in inequality, and a lot of Northern/Midlands towns having become more middle-class in demographic anyway over the past 20 years or so as they become commuter satellite towns for the cities - like Stockport now has a very poor working class living alongside an increasingly wealthy middle class.

But there is still a gradual move of Labour away from its traditional base and away from policies which support that base, and this started right back with New Labour, and that current Labour has allowed a lot of people with loud voices who aren't from that base but claim to speak to for it to shout over everybody else (literally in some CLP meetings). And when you respond to any criticism or disagreement with "fuck off and join the Tories", turns out some people do.

and it was tempered anyway by going to a girls' Catholic grammar school with very feminist teachers. In fact, the only orthodoxy we were sold was that getting married and having kids was Bad Feminism

Brilliant GC! I will check out the Daughters of Destiny documentary you recommended.

They positioned themselves as the party of the workers, and Labour as the party of the elite.

Yes they did. Something else they have successfully borrowed from Farage.

More importantly - far more importantly - there was a ready supply of well-paid working class jobs, so you could live a decent and dignified life if you were either unsuited to a middle-class career, or chose not to take that route in life.

This.

It's a huge thing that very few people talk about. I've been banging on about this on MN for years, but at best usually just get a polite silence.

We now have an hourglass-shaped economy: a fair few well-paid jobs at the top; lots of very poorly paid jobs at the bottom; very little in the middle.

I've always argued that the nation should face this reality and ensure that life in the bottom bulge can be meaningful and humane.

The argument I get in return is that people should simply fight it out, Hunger Games style, to make sure it isn't their children in the bottom bulge.

Mm, OK, but you realise we down here still each have a vote?

And when you respond to any criticism or disagreement with "fuck off and join the Tories", turns out some people do.

In his bewilderment at the election result, Little Owen Jones was refusing to believe that anyone had been told by Labour party members to fuck off and join the Tories. People obligingly sent him tweet after tweet of the Momentum mob doing precisely this.

They positioned themselves as the party of the workers, and Labour as the party of the elite.

Yep. I could cry.

I don't want to derail the thread, but the idea of grammar schools as a vehicle for social mobility is a bit dodgy. Most grammar school pupils were middle class. The number of white-collar and middle-class jobs expanded enormously in the 50s and 60s, however, so there was room for people to move upwards. There is less room for upward mobility these days.

But if you look at places like Oxford and Cambridge, and other elite universities, they have a higher proportion of state school pupils now than they did in the 70s. Comprehensives have done quite well, relatively speaking, at getting working-class kids into uni.

It was clear from looking at the manifesto that there was a conscious strategy to move away from the stereotype of Tory MPs as former lawyers and investment bankers. They positioned themselves as the party of the workers, and Labour as the party of the elite.

Perhaps off topic, but some are already noting that this, at least in the short term, leaves the Tories short of talent and experience. It’s easier to slot an Oxbridge educated lawyer straight into a junior ministerial role.

Perhaps deliberate. Perhaps government will run via a kitchen cabinet effectively run by Dominic Cummings. I hope they don’t forget who voted for them.

Boris has the advantage of being the first party leader since Thatcher who is not trying to hold together a party split by attitudes to the EU. The country will need to adapt to Brexit and he has the mandate to do this.

Agreed that grammar schools are not a great idea for social mobility. They take a relatively small proportion of poorer pupils and a relatively bigger proportion of privately educated pupils. They benefit those who attend them, but not massively so, and poorer pupils who don't attend them in selective areas do worse than they do elsewhere.

Discussions of social mobility tend to assume not only that everyone is trying to escape the working class, but also everyone ought to be trying to make such an escape. This isn’t necessarily a good thing...

It’s easier to slot an Oxbridge educated lawyer straight into a junior ministerial role.

But isn't this a major part of the problem in the first place? That government replicates specific paradigms found only within elite institutions?

Surely, any organisational structure is profoundly unstable if it requires individuals from a particularly socio-cultural background in order to operate efficiently.

Discussions of social mobility tend to assume not only that everyone is trying to escape the working class, but also everyone ought to be trying to make such an escape.

Mmm. True in part but I don't think that's quite it; it's more that people are in general trying to escape the low-paid jobs and poor housing and inadequate local facilities that many are surrounded by. The children in my parents' generation who were successful at grammar schools and went on to middle-class careers escaped that, but so did many of the ones who went on to secondary moderns and then comps and had decent jobs in eg the manufacturing sector to go to. I wouldn't say someone like my dad for example escaped the working class or wanted to, but he escaped the slum he grew up in all right.

Still I see what you're saying and yes, and it's an issue with the idea of grammar schools and the broader idea of meritocracy as well. There just shouldn't be a massive proportion of the population living in poor conditions from which we cream off the lucky cleverest few to elevate to middle-class-ness. Decent jobs and decent lives should not be restricted to those who'd pass an 11 Plus.

As regards social mobility, I have been convinced for years that the actual driver of social mobility for the baby boomer generation was nothing particularly to do with grammar schools or government policies but rather the fact that thousands of men had died in the second and first world war.

You would be correct in your observation.

Historically the only things that have led to large scale social mobility are wars, famines, epidemics and other natural disasters. Things that have left huge swathes of the population dead.

I am firmly a somewhere. My family have been rooted here for centuries and the immigrants in my ancestry were French Hugoenots.

My partner is from a more mixed background. His father is from one of the most disadvantaged of all ethnic minority groups, the travellers.

Historically the only things that have led to large scale social mobility are wars, famines, epidemics and other natural disasters. Things that have left huge swathes of the population dead.

Thinking of the plague now.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death

I LOVE THIS THREAD!

The wars did a lot for social mobility but it's not just that. For many generations now, each generation has been able to reasonably expect it'll do better than its predecessor. That now is not the case. Intergenerational inequality is becoming a bigger and bigger thing and it is going to have a real impact on the Conservatives given how dramatic the voting skew is between age groups (it's not just 'people get more conservative as they get older'), but they probably reckon they have another ten years or so before they really need to worry about it.

children in my parents' generation who were successful at grammar schools and went on to middle-class careers escaped that

No grammars here as I said, but my dad went on from WC area to MC job, bought a nice semi in a better area. Still in the catchment for the same comp though (later rebranded as a "high school" - and since demolished) which without the same opportunities for apprenticeships etc meant I have ended up back in the same area he escaped

It's a huge oversimplification, and one that very much suits current Conservative spin lines

Indeed. As previously mentioned you can only make this spin work if you completely ignore the working classes not just in major cities, but in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

I live in the fastest depopulating council on the UK mainland. Over a quarter of our population has left since the 80s leaving an aging, immoblle, socially deprived population of firmly somewheres behind.

Many, many of these left behind working class people have has stints labouring on the continent thanks to the EU. It has never been the case that only the educated middle classes benefited from freedom of movement.

Labour politicians (I'm looking at you Caroline Flint) need to stop assuming the working classes are some kind of solid mass who favour brexit. It simply isn't true. We voted remain by a huge margin.