Yes it's all done behind closed doors in those clandestine Orwellian 'think tanks' all somehow affiliated with one political party or another. If not that then with one of yet many of Cameron's commissions, reviews, or studies that he conveniently uses to duck any questions on his policies. What policies we may ask I don't think I've come across one coherent and well thought out one. No the intellectuals who served us well have been replaced by faceless bodies only answerable to their political masters and only telling them the answers they want to hear.

OK where is everyone - I don't want to be the first one to answer every time - are you all hiding somewhere............

I was just wondering the other day why the UK lacks someone of Paul Krugman's academic stature talking about politics.

Well, there's always Terry Eagleton.

I've got Bertrand Russell's 'History of modern philosophy'.

Whenever I have a nasty dose of insomnia I just pick a passage at random and within 5 minutes I'm off to dreamland.

After years suffering the horror that is insomnia, taking pills of all sorts, knocking myself out with booze and such like it's been a godsend.

So high praise indeed from me for good old Bertie.

Hurrahful

I was just wondering the other day why the UK lacks someone of Paul Krugman's academic stature talking about politics.

Indeed, but sadly he'd be being ignored completely by our current government.

You see, in Tory la la land because he's a bit of a Lefty his Professorship and Nobel prize in economics is no match for Osborne's 2:1 in modern history.

9 Aug "In praise of ...Thomas Cook timetables".
10 Aug "In praise of...political intellectuals".
11 Aug "In praise of ...

suggestions@guardian.co.uk

suggestions@guardian.co.uk

In praise of supporting the Lib-Dem's?

To be fair there were hundreds on here egging them on, as a Lefty Lib-Dem I tried to warn them...but was ignored, Clegg at the time was king, the Messiah and I was slated for trying to warn you all.

Who's not laughing now?

What could be more suitable for New Guardian than "In praise of NHS privatisation"?

We certainly don't need anyone of Paul Krugman's bloated ego to talk about anything. A man who though the Nobel Priize was his by entitlement.

There was an audience prepared to listen critically to, and think about, and discuss Russell v. Gaitskell.

Sadly, I have to doubt whether the same is true today.

What a pity, when vehicles such as CiF are so superior to 'Letters to the Editor'.

In praise of....

- the gaffe
- the cock-up
- school milk
- manifesto commitments
- tuition fees..
- ...and a graduate tax
- elective austerity
- quangos
- school chums
- fig leaves
- toxic debt
- NHS reorganisations
- unemployment
- the new politics
- the big society
- duck ponds
- miserable little compromises
- leadership elections
- third men
- agreeing with Nick
- being all in it together
- being Greece
- editorials

FionDearg

"his Professorship and Nobel prize in economics"

Since he won his Nobel in relation to a body of work which demonstrated the benefits of free trade I'm sure there's plenty for Tories to like and lefties to rage about when it comes to Krugman.

- and politicians shoud be allowed to listen to the debate and then vote as they see fit.

all generations have a responsibility to think out alternative courses on major questions publicly and clearly. That is not happening today, either on nuclear disarmament or the economy. And we are the poorer for it.

Indeed, so therefore you plummed for the LibDems as closest to the middle of the road rather than seriously considering change.

And we are poorer for it in every sense.

I'm less worried about the lack of supposed intellectuals as I am in the growth of anti intellectual politics for the masses. Sociology reports produce to already preordained conclusions to add false intellectual debate. Cherry picked stats to give give the shocking headline, given to newspapers who write articles to justify the headline they got rather than question it.

Does this paper question cherry picked stats like the pay gap? Does it look for the reasons behind why it exists as it would the huge prison gap? No it's got it's cause and that means moral authority beat intellectual honesty.

Also we have gossip masquerading as news, Breakfast News on BBC resembles GMTV, Newpapers less interested in facts than opinion, achievments than private lives.

The problem isn't lack of intellectuals, it's lack of intellectual debate. there is a difference. One gives the idea of a few geniuses while the real problem is that the large part of our population able to engage in intellectual debate is being made smaller and smaller.

Maybe I'm being finicky, but I've noticed in the last week or two lots of errors in the titles and standfirsts (subtitles) of articles. Here the mistake is small, but you wonder why it happened. Whereas the titles of articles can play fast and loose with normal syntax, standfirsts shouldn't. Here there should be a "a" before "responsibility" in the standfirst, as in the body of the text (3rd sentence from the end). You can say someone has responsibilty for something, but not that they have responsibility to do something.

Indeed, so therefore you plummed for the LibDems as closest to the middle of the road rather than seriously considering change.

Whatever you think of them, the Lib Dems surely represented more of a change than the other parties. If enough Labour voters had set aside their tribal instincts, we could have had a majority LD government and the prospect of a new, lefty start.

@sweeting

Subject to two minor exceptions which I list below, I agree fully with what you say:

a) the reasoning
b) the facts

Our politicians simply reflect the general population's lack of intellectual enthusiasm. And that's basically down to the way we do job interviews and CV's, the way we select and train employees, the way we prioritise useful science degrees over silly arts degrees.

In other words - if it doesn't make you more employable, if it doesn't help you pay a mortgage, if it doesn't contribute to GDP, then it shouldn't be in your head and the system will not, under any circumstances, reward such idle curiosity of intellect.

Knowledge for knowledge's sake is dying out. Politicians are simply going with the flow.

Given the brainless kneejerkery on display in this thread, I'd say political intellectuals would be too good for us at the moment.

You also find intellectuals making casuistical or even absurd pronouncements, half heartedly disguised because they can dress up their prose or their spoken sentences like a tart's blouse.

Exhibit A: Roger Scruton vs the Pet Shop Boys.

I'm not sure whether Martin Amis counts as an intellectual or an artist, but I've heard him drawling some pretty drab points in baroque and nice sounding language.

It surely comes as no surprise that in an age of decadence and decline we have seen the disappearance of the creative public intellectual. There are one or two knocking about, Chomsky, and possibly Gore Vidal, in the US, maybe Habermas in Europe. But certainly the age of C Wright Mills, Sartre, Russell and Fromm seems to have ended. We are all, apparently enmeshed in mainstream thought structures and methodologies which effectively prevent thought, newspeak if you like. And of course the high priests of this order are the journalists and politicians who can only suceed insofar as they don't think. They have become the purveyors of orthodoxy and the whole career structure is built upon the internalisation of this mainstream ideological configuration (sorry about the mixed metaphor).

Additionally, where are the right wing intellectuals? I think it was George Orwell who once remarked that there are no genuine high Tories left, they are either liberals or fascists. True; when one thinks of intellectuals one tends to assume that they are against the stream, left-wing in one sense or another. However, this has not always been the case. Where are the Burke's, Oakshott's and Thomas Carlyles - or even intelligent conservative politicians like Lord Stockton? Ah, relics of a more enlightened and bygone age.

The political confluence of our age is one of extreme liberalism. A sort of centre-right hegemony where all the thinking has been done and the battles have been fought (F Scott FitzGerald anyone?). Thinking is no longer required, the template is set - a template which rejects social solidarity, lauds nihilistic individualism, and worships at the shrine of power, money and success. The masses are to a large extent infantilised, turned into mere children and are inducted from an early age into the norms and values of the existing order; an order which we are constantly reminded is permanent and unchangeable.

Politics (along with the media celebrity culture) has become a spectator sport with no real ideological dfiferences apparent between the contesting parties and factions. Still as long as it keeps the plebs happy and diverted.

Of course all of this is strikingly reminiscent of the last days of Rome, and come to think of it I don't think there is any way in which we are going to dodge to ultimate fate of all previous civilizations. We're doooomed! Seriously!

I think I have said enough. Maybe I am just an old reactionary fuddy duddy.

The Russell Gaitskell debate was brilliant and an object lesson in how to communicate ideas.

The problem isn't lack of intellectuals, it's lack of intellectual debate. there is a difference. One gives the idea of a few geniuses while the real problem is that the large part of our population able to engage in intellectual debate is being made smaller and smaller.

Exactly right thetrashheap it's what you get when you design an education system specifically to discourage independent thinking.

It is all very well discussing intellectual debate on matters of great import but it completely misses the point of parliamentary politics which is party driven.

The conclusions of such intellectual debates, which don't happen anyway as we have no real intellectuals in politics, intellectuals are to be found elsewhere, is watered down or completely diluted versions of the original outcome of what limited intellectual debate there is, due to the expedient nature of non-independent party self interest and group think.

And then, when such issues are eventually voted upon we have a further contamination of the intellectual process as the laws proposed are voted upon in the House of Commons by a bunch of drunkards (17% of MPs have admitted to being dependent on alcohol) who are being bullied by the whips.

Surely until we prevent drunken or drugged up MPs from voting when inebriated this whole discussion is pointless as a sober judgment can only be made by a sober mind.

It is time that alcohol testing and drug testing are introduced for MPs: those found under the influence of mind altering substances should be barred from voting.

Perhaps we would have more intellectuals in parliament if we threw out all the drunkards?

@Scipio1

Well, at least your kneejerkery is expressed in sentences. Mind you, a confluence of extreme liberalism? If only! You don't actually mean neo-liberalism, do you?

I'm not convinced that it's about a political consensus though. I find Porthos' explanation more immediately appealing. We've lost the cultural habit of intellectual pluralism and exploration. As politicians got more in touch with what people wanted, they became less good at offering and explaining alternatives. I do wonder if people who would have been naturally attracted to public life fifty or even forty years ago stay in academia now.

timeforpeace
12 Aug 2010, 9:41AM
It is time that alcohol testing and drug testing are introduced for MPs: those found under the influence of mind altering substances should be barred from voting.

Those found not to be under the influence of mind altering substances should be barred from voting.

In fact, the media don't help the cause of intellectual pluralism by holding politicians to account on a false basis. Everything they say has to be

(a) agreeable to every member of their party
(b) agreeable to the majority of voters/readers/listeners and
(c) diabolically disagreeable to the other parties.

How are you supposed to discuss ideas like that? It's a total sham. The amazing thing is that anyone can operate in that environment and not become an unquestioning automaton.

In a Guardian article on Tuesday 14 April 2009 ("Soundbite politics has had its day" Carlo Strenger argued that "the deification of free markets" demonstrated "that intellectual breadth" was "a necessity rather than a luxury for our leaders". In defence of his theory he gave the example of George Soros, whose training in philosophy caused him to reject "the dogma" of rational markets, but his warnings that economies world-wide were heading for disaster went unheeded. Strenger called for the re-establishment of "a culture of differentiated public discourse to replace the politics of 30-second soundbites we have gotten used to". According to his argument, a generation of young people (including our present politicians, of course) had been educated in the primacy of securing a high-paying job at the expense of a capacity for intellectual rigour.

While this is a drastic generalisation and is highly debatable, what is less contentious is that the soundbite and the whole apparatus of spin by the party machines have led to the packaging of policy into bland statements and tiny gobbets of information perfect for feeding the insatiable jaws of the news media. The new age of austerity Britain is a perfect time for rational debate about the best way for the UK to tackle its deficit that goes beyond soundbites and party spin and into substance; which gives people a chance to consider just what sort of society they want to live in in the twenty-first century. It is to be hoped that Citizenship will remain a compulsory subject in secondary schools and that it will play a major role in helping young people to make informed choices.

Whether this will qualify as Carlo Strenger's "intellectual breadth" is questionable - but it will be a start.

sweeting

If enough Labour voters had set aside their tribal instincts, we could have had a majority LD government and the prospect of a new, lefty start.

I am genuinely speechless after reading this comment. [My husband is delighted at that]

Let me get this right...you are saying, after what we've seen of the shenannigans of Nick [oops forgot to tell the voters I want Tory cuts] Clegg, David Slasher Laws, etc, etc, in the last three months that they would have given us a 'lefty' government ?

Now, who is going to want to listen to a room full of Stephen Fry's prattling at their most verbose?

The problem is that the intellectual elite is elitist. To argue as say Russell, or most of the pre 80’s intellectuals, one requires an education in the classics, with a good grounding in logic and rhetoric, and an understanding of the historical narrative. To gain such an education, and be able to use it effectively, one firstly needs a good brain and secondly needs the education now only available within the better public schools, followed by one of the better universities.

Pre 1980’s our culture glorified the intellectual and the elite. Now the elite has been rejected and the successful Mr (or Ms) average are the people to be glorified.

Hmmm…dumbing down or lowering the aim point for the younger person to exemplify?, – societal cultural changes as to what is achievable!

Blueporcupine

Given the brainless kneejerkery on display in this thread, I'd say political intellectuals would be too good for us at the moment.

Sadly typical of CiF - there's there's an awful lot of ringing certainty, which tends to preclude debate. The occasions when two CiFers essentially say 'I disagree with you, but I'm happy to debate the issue with you' are pretty rare - especially on the more obviously political threads.

Wonderful when it does happen though. People put down the megaphones and sometimes even change their position on something. I've experienced it maybe half a dozen times.

thetrashheap/sparerib/Greatgrandad...

...are all correct. Such debates require an intelligent audience.I wonder how many hours the average person spends reading, compared to watching brainless garbage on the telly. I wonder what percentage of the population read anything informative ar all. Intellectual debate is only possible if more people seek out knowledge. Sparerib is correct that the education system doesn't encourage the type of learning that encourages independent thinking, but how many of the children's parents encourage it outside school?

If the parents don't read, and don't engage in meaningful conversations at home, future generations are likely to follow this path, too. We are now seeing the results of decades of consumerism and mindless entertainment; a painfully dimwitted world. Our politicians - with their populist, simplistic banality - are, sadly, suitable to represent the society we have.

And as for the editorial itself, I agree with it. We live in an age where political debate takes place at a very intellectually impoverished level, and we're the poorer for it.

Perhaps the traditional British mistrust of clever-clogs intellectuals has something to do with it, but the obsession with spin and focus groups and Mondeo Man is also partly to blame.

Every time I heard some politician banging on about the needs and rights of hard working families I used to wonder how in a democracy it was acceptable for lazy single people to be rendered second class citizens.

@liberalcynic

Agree, but I'm being a bit harsh really - I can't altogether blame people for being like that. People watch politicians and usually see them declaiming with exactly the same sense of ringing certainty, so they think that's how you do political discussion. In a way, there is a sort of intellectual aspiration in it which can only be a good thing - but people ape the manner rather than the underlying thought process (assuming politicians have one, on a good day).

Blueporcupine

people ape the manner rather than the underlying thought process (assuming politicians have one, on a good day).

On this one I'm infinitely more cynic than liberal.

Given how often politicians loudly condemn their opponents' policies before quietly adopting them - and they've all done it - it's hard not to be.

Sparerib is correct that the education system doesn't encourage the type of learning that encourages independent thinking,

I have a good example of this from a history teacher friend. She showed her class a photograph, of a black guy and a white guy standing in the middle of a crowd and burning bits of paper. They were Americans burning their draft papers in the 1970s, but she didn't tell the kids anything about it. She asked them, "What do you want to know about this photograph? What questions would you ask to find out what's going on in it?"

They couldn't do it. They'd been covering Vietnam and the Civil Rghts movement, but they could not cope with the idea of asking independent questions and finding out about something. They thought they were being tested, and had to ask the "right" questions - it took a lot of coaxing to get them to understand that there weren't any right or wrong suggestions. Anything that involves any creative thinking at all, my friend says, they get badly stuck on.

Anyone remember the AJP Taylor half-hour History lectures on tv? Half an hour of monochrome Taylor standing in front of the camera with no notes or auto-cues or illustrations, props, or film clips of any kind, was, dare I say it, gripping.
Just Taylor, his words, and nothing else and was very much a media success. Apart from Taylor's fee, the production costs must have been extremely low. In fact, his fee was probably very low by today's standards as well.

Such a format nowadays would be entirely inconceivable. Why is that?

shlick

Such a format nowadays would be entirely inconceivable. Why is that?

I'm not entirely sure. We appear to have the opposite nowadays - vapid, exploitative nonsense with sky-high production values. Perhaps because, deep down, people who work in television are shallow and sensationalist?

Liberalcynic makes a good point.

We live in a propaganda age which is the nemesis of intellect.

Problem is, propaganda works.

Elite intellectual debate is all well and good. Except of course if your Toby Young where the desire is greater than the achievability.
Rather than the few speaking on lofty ideals and practicallities, whereby only the few could understand the machinations of the arguments, we now have the ordinary positing concerns and reason. More democratic and practible.

In that, the many are questioning the need for enemies, or the reason for enemies. The questions have evolved into, not what to do to enemies, but, why are they enemies. It, thus, transpires that ordinary people, by and large, wish not to have enemies created by the minds of others.

Therefore, removing the snobbery of collective long words and making it more understandable for the "masses" the debate has elevated itself, as opposed, to "dumbing down". The more people understand the debate the more reason can affect the debate. And as we have seen Philosophical debate changes its hat three times a day. That is the point they cry. Not really.

The reality of the Eastern Bloc threat was virtually non-existant. The Berlin Wall the evidence that proved it. It wasn't nuclear threat that brought down that form of communism, or Capitalism, it was the impracticality of such divisions. The argument defeated itself.
Intellectualising an argument is equally self-defeating as instinctive reaction. It is not necessarily the elite that define the outcome, it is the common morality that defines the future. Holding the high ground in a battle is not always the best tactics as it is possible to by-pass.
Descartes stated "I think, therefore I am". A hungry individual already knew this and tended not to waste calories thinking about it. They didn't need the musings of someone who experienced "a series of three powerful dreams" to define reality. Medical science blew apart the concept of Dualism, although Freud did his best to reverse it. Intellectualism is no more than trying to rationalise the animal that humans are. Giving reason to actions and reactions that we share with rabbits, foxes, chimps and hamsters.

At the end of the day Fred down the pub would poke holes in both the arguments of the protagonists. By reason of practicality rather than climbing the classical ladder built over millenia. Intellectuals attack the philosophy, Fred attacks the practicality of the philosophy. Both are valid.

Shlick.

Yes, I remember the Taylor lectures well, and as a schoolboy I found them fascinating. I also remember, Dr Bronowski, talking about theoretical physics, again, half an hour, monocrhome, in front of some unversity campus building. Then of course there was the Wednesday play, some really brilliant theatre, Last Train through the Harecastel Tunnel, The Brylcreem Boys, I still remember the impression they made on me to this day. I can even remeber a time when Ipswich Town new promoted from the old second dfivision, went on to win the First Division championship - incredible.

All gone I am afraid. Of course the whiggish faction would say this is all for the best, and that we live in the best of all possible worlds, this is the standard apologia for the dumbing down of our society.

I suppose de Tocqueville was spot on this respect.

Francoisvoltearouet

Elite intellectual debate is all well and good. Except of course if your Toby Young where the desire is greater than the achievability

Thanks - I am mightily amused at the prospect of the words 'elite' and 'intellectual' appearing in the same sentence as 'Toby Young'.

I don't agree that long words hamper political debate - put simply, most people aren't as thick as policians appear to think they are. The crude reduction of political debate to a handful of pledge card slogans impoverishes political life.

Or to put it another way, if you've read 1984 you'd know that dicking around with the language is an excellent way of constraining the terms of the debate.

Same paragraph, that is - oops!

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society.

A brilliant recent book that shows the shortcomings of intellectual discourse - namely, that public intellectuals are very often wrong.

John Carey, George Walden, also enjoyable on this sort of subject matter.

liberalcynic

I don't agree that long words hamper political debate - put simply, most people aren't as thick as policians appear to think they are. The crude reduction of political debate to a handful of pledge card slogans impoverishes political life.

Or to put it another way, if you've read 1984 you'd know that dicking around with the language is an excellent way of constraining the terms of the debate.

Haven't you just contradicted yourself?

I don't think Brown was sufficiently 'modern' to have had an intellectual debate with a major 'modern' intellectual.

Political intellectual. Intellectual politician. Yes. Yeah. Yippee!

francoisVoltearouet

Haven't you just contradicted yourself?

By using the word 'dicking'? I didn't suggest all words had to be long...however, if you reduce the vocabulary in which the debate takes place, you put limits on the debate too.

Or to put it another way: slogans are usually crude and simplistic, and if you reduce political debate to slogans, the debate becomes crude and simplistic too.

Political discussion is now reduced to members of each party having to justify the lies of other members in a continual sense defying narrative that only serves to hide anything of import.