Title: The nature of establishment opinion - When elites get it wrong | Blighty | The Economist
Headings: When elites get it wrong
The nature of establishment opinion
When elites get it wrong
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Content: If Mr Oborne overstates his case, it is not by very much. I first became interested in politics at around that time and recall vividly that in my then newspaper of choice the term "eurosceptic" would often be partnered with a phrase such as "swivel-eyed" or "foaming at the mouth" in the same sub-clause, even though, by any measure of public opinion, it was far stranger to be pro-euro. The essay is fascinating because it suggests two broader questions: when else have elites got it wrong? And why do such clever, experienced people make such bad mistakes? Let's start with the first question. British elites have been very wrong about something very important in each of the last three decades. First, in the 1980s, it was Thatcherism. Privatisation, flexible labour markets and non-punitive tax rates are the common sense of our times, but Thatcherism was, at least at the turn of the 1980s, disdained by much of the British establishment as a transient fad propagated by a crazed fishwife from Grantham. Tory "wets" such as Ian Gilmour and Jim Prior were in line with the thinking of the civil service, the Confederation of British Industry, the universities and much of the high-brow media.