The way Educated Elites were looked at: Then versus Now

For long, at least in Britain, there has been an overarching consensus that officeholders should be sufficiently qualified to hold the most important political  office in the country. In fact, 45 of all 58 British Prime Ministers have attended either Oxford or Cambridge. This sort of academic  background was once a marker of good leadership. Clement Atlee pioneered a generous welfare state, Harold Macmillan ushered in the ‘British Golden Age’ and Margaret Thatcher deftly fused British nationalism with a staunch commitment to free markets. The trinity were extolled during their terms in 10 Downing Street. Yet the promises of the educated elite succeeding them induced in place of hope, considerable despair. While the British economy was booming with the average annual growth rate exceeding 4.5% since 1990, this was not doled out to Britons. OECD figures show that the UK now has  among the highest levels of income inequality in the European Union (as measured by the Gini coefficient). Wages have essentially stagnated since the 2008 recession and borders just as they are now, were also precariously porous in the years preceding Brexit, despite incessant assurances from career politicians that everything was ‘just fine.’
‍

Francis Fukuyama argues that the chief source of populism is a trust deficit, i.e. a lack of trust in the ability of highly educated politicians to drive meaningful progress. That lack of trust stems from stunted progress which begets disillusionment and disillusionment, in turn, begets populism. Educated elites are increasingly perceived as jargon pablum ‘perpetrators’ masquerading as well-wishers; they are being held culpable for bulldozing the foundational ethos of their nations in their blind and blissful pursuit of neo-liberal globalisation. So far so simple. But whilst the traditional definition of populism holds true for a bottom-up populist movement led wholly for and by the citizens of a country, it does not hold true for movements like Brexit. Brexit exhibits characteristics of a moment carefully constructed to mimic populism.

‍

A Populist Strategy Conceived by the Elite

The seeds of populism were sowed by the elite in the case of Brexit. Brexit emerged as a spark from the upper echelons of Britain that set ablaze a populist fire. It was whispered first among factions of almost all parties in the House of Commons. Soon, it became ingrained in British parliamentary discourse as a portent of good times (for some, Brexit necessarily invoked nostalgia of a Britannia that once ruled the seas without encumbrances from other nations). In 2013, David Cameron’s Prime Ministerial election campaign was undergirded on an ‘in-out’ referendum to ‘finally’ decide the future of the UK’s relationship with the EU. Whilst Cameron, a proponent of stronger ties with the EU, later wrote in his biography For the Record that he had misjudged the extent of support for Brexit, it seems difficult to reach any other conclusion other than that he wielded Brexit as a weapon to win the 2013 general election. Politicians from most parties in Britain knew that Brexit was politically expedient. Citizens sought change, and a good way to create a facade of change was to propose a radical aberration from the status quo. Whether that aberration was actually capable of driving positive change was the last concern. To that end, politicians worked around the clock to present Brexit as a potent antidote for the nation’s many problems. This was in spite of warnings issued by prolific economists, including a collective of 10 Nobel Laureates.

‍

The undeniable educational pedigree of politicians who put Brexit on a pedestal—most of them having studied  in elite UK universities — fuels suspicions that Brexit was just a smokescreen to deflect from key problems engulfing Britons. Governmental ineptitude had been brushed under the carpet and atop lay an unnecessary EU versus Britain battle. The stakes hit the sky when Prime Minister Cameron had yielded to holding the Brexit referendum in a bid to placate the more radical members of his Conservative party. Even though the ‘in-out’ referendum was his promise to win the Conservative Party nomination for the Prime Ministerial race in 2013, it was hoped that he would dispel the anti-EU feelings within his party by persuading fellow members at both Westminster and at the grassroots as their Leader and Prime Minister. It was hoped that he would set the record straight on the magnitude of Brexit, a term that was so casually thrown around—in stark contrast to its far-reaching implications. Political expediency can and will pick the hornet's nest. 

Tim Bale, a professor at Queen Mary University of London, puts it well: 

“Cameron chose to commit to a vote, not because the country’s population was clamoring for one but because a significant minority of his own MPs, many of them frustrated by the constraints of coalition, were demanding that he do so—some because they feared that UKIP [UK Independence Party] would cost them their seat (or the seats of too many of their colleagues) at the next election, some because they wanted out of the European Union and were more than happy to leverage that fear to their advantage.” 

Cameron and his colleagues gave proper governmental legitimacy to an idea that was just floating around — Brexit had been stamped by the establishment. The rescript of a referendum likely entrenched Brexit in the public parlance, and made it sound like a promising solution. One after another, Politicians jumped on the Brexit bandwagon and began to parade the idea around Britain’s streets. Iconic English red buses were plastered with misleading advertisements such as those stating that leaving the EU would allow the UK to recoup around £350 million a week, money that would then be reinvested to salvage the nation's besieged health service. The costs of staying in the EU were widely inflated and benefits sharply discounted. The overarching aura around Brexit was so up-beat and enticing that it was hard not to fall prey to such a narrative. The EU was the purported source of inundating immigration, unemployment and cultural ‘decadence.’ The supposedly prudent solution was, therefore, leaving it.

‍

Political Manipulation at the Expense of the Nation

When British elites had failed to do their jobs properly and endorsed an idea as the end-all and be-all for short-term political gain, ordinary Britons bought into a classic ad populum fallacy that did not bode well for Britain in the long-term. Brexit’s exquisite assortment of nationalism, racism and exceptionalism was ephemerally effective in soothing deep cuts resulting from governmental inefficacy. However, those cuts have since deepened with immigration spiking to levels far higher than what pre-Brexit waves ever entailed, citizens still grappling with an overburdened National Health Service (NHS) and an economy teetering upturns and downturns. OECD forecasts show the UK will be the worst-performing G7 economy in 2025. In an official release, the NHS has 7.5 million people waiting to be treated. In 309,300 cases, patients waited more than a year to be treated. Yet Brexit, the kingmaker in the 2019 UK General Elections, found not even a cursory mention in the manifestos of entrenched political parties in the run-up to the July 2024 elections. This reluctance to take on Brexit further substantiates the argument that it was simply a political ploy rather than a policy that emerged from a veritable consensus in the public and political spheres. 

‍

Brexit’s link to India and America‍

The recent literature on the causes of populism has converged on two main explanations: the economic insecurity thesis, which explains the role of financial stress and the cultural backlash thesis, which explains fears of cultural displacement: two sensitive topics that must be treaded on with caution because of the strong passions they can inevitably arouse.

‍

It goes without saying that any discourse pertaining to these subjects should involve not impulsive innuendos but empathy, poise and above all, civility. Take Indian Prime Minister Modi. He has a penchant for rhetoric that often maligns India’s 200 million plus Muslims. On the road to India’s 2024 elections that were held in May 2024, Modi said to a large crowd in the state of Rajasthan, “Do you think your hard-earned money should be given to these infiltrators?” Calling Indian muslims ‘infiltrators’ is nothing new—that goes back all the way to Pakistan’s botched religious partition from India in 1947—when 18 million people betted on life to enter either India or Pakistan. Yet the very same rhetoric has now made Muslims in India feel palpably out of place. This is because the endorsement of fringe Hindu-nationalism by the Prime Minister has the power to make it mainstream and carries significantly more weight than some random person on the street crying foul.
   

Political analysts like Shekar Gupta from The Print concur that Hindutva politics have become India’s defining zeitgeist post 2014, going so far as being a reliable harbinger of the nation’s forthcoming state elections. This political desire to shift a fringe element into the mainstream is not just exclusive to India or Britain but even applies to America. Donald Trump is the American equivalent, constantly hammered for wielding radical rhetoric as a weapon to induce unnecessary anxieties and win over voters. Some might argue that citizens are at fault for buying into polarising propaganda as every human being has the faculty for rational thought. That sounds right but lest we forget how the very formation of electoral will is blighted with even democratic elections in place. When politician-backed lobbies control what people see and think, they control people’s will. An analysis by Gallup and the Knight Foundation revealed that only 26% of Americans hold a favorable opinion of news media. Still, Pew Research found that 70% of Americans get political information from the news media. That is quite a paradox to say the least.

It is a truism that non-partisan media is the exception rather than the norm. CNN is for Democrats and Fox News is for Republicans. It is also a truism that news media is the only option for an overwhelming majority of voters to keep up with what is going on in the country. The product: People end up believing in different facts and live different lives as is argued by Harvard professor Michael Sandel in Democracy’s Discontent. Instigating rhetoric in conjunction with a docile and other times designated media houses can challenge and subvert the very foundations of a democracy, validating repugnant beliefs and paving the path for what is seen as populism, although its true origins have little to do with people. Insofar as populism is concerned, a state should be complicit in stoking populism even when it ‘merely’ endorses a radical idea, rather than creating that idea. Brexit brazenly impinges on both criteria i.e. the state not only created the idea but also propagated it. The term ‘populism’ in its connotations appears to hold people culpable for partaking in ‘decadent’ politics but draws a blank to politicians who stood at its centre from day one.

‍

Conclusion

The apparatus and workings of a state have a certain sanctity attached to them; the leaders who sit in parliaments are the drivers of something much larger than themselves and as a result have cardinal ideals to uphold. Politicians should work to come up with actionable solutions that their constituents can make sense of, rather than partake in electorally expedient blame-games that only end up convulsing their countries. Politicians have been given a mandate, and that mandate is to solve problems. As Plato suggests in his Republic, a true politician should have the decency to distinguish between the act of getting hold of a state’s helm and the art of steering, which alone is statesmanship. Engineered populism is undoubtedly the former. It is perhaps arm-chair thinking to hold politicians to account but I rest my case.

‍