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 you were generally wary of elite consensus on a given issue, you were a right-winger. Mr Goodman points out that successive humiliations over issues such as Thatcherism and the euro have sapped the old Tory left of members and morale. Bar the occasional Damian Green or Ken Clarke, few Tory MPs would define themselves as being on the left of the party. ( There are several "modernisers", not least David Cameron and George Osborne, but, if you'll forgive this detour into Tory theology, that is not the same thing at all. Modernisers are generally much more eurosceptic, Thatcherite and hardline on crime than old Tory left-wingers.) Finally, let me address the second of the questions I posed earlier. Why do elites (people who almost by definition are well-informed and practised in important decision-making) get it wrong? A shallow, though correct and often neglected, answer is that judgement is a completely different mental faculty to intelligence or experience. Clever people can analyse an issue forensically but draw the wrong conclusion. Stupid people can do no analysis at all but still arrive at a sound judgement through sheer instinct.