Our esteemed editor was once excoriated for saying that the public had had enough of experts. ‘The people of this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.’
His remark sits within a fine conservative tradition: there is William F. Buckley, who stated: ‘I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.’
If the candidate hasn’t been to university, add five points. If they’ve done a proper working-class job, add ten
There is Thomas Sowell, who wrote: ‘Intellectuals are people whose end products are intangible ideas…Whether their ideas turn out to work… is another question entirely.’ And of course there is Edmund Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to read PPE at Oxford.’
But let’s park this for a moment. The fact is that such experts aren’t even a cross-section of experts. As the economist Richard Thaler himself remarked: ‘As a general rule, the United States government is run by lawyers who occasionally take advice from economists. Others interested in helping the lawyers out need not apply.’
