The working class vote

One interpretation of the referendum result seems to go largely unchallenged.

Some (mercifully not all) Remainers keep on and on about polls showing them to be better educated than Leavers. Apparently, this proves that all you need is a good education and you immediately see the virtues of the EU. In my opinion, this judgement contains more than a whiff of condescension.

Since I’m no longer young, my views are, of course, worthless anyway, but back in the day, I did win an open scholarship that took me from a Sheffield Council estate to Oxford University. So here’s a small thought from the graveyard’s anteroom.

When I took “A” Level, about 8-10% of 200,000 candidates obtained grade A. Today about 25% of over 800,000 candidates obtain grade A. In the mid 20^th century under 20,000 UK students per year were awarded degrees; in 2010 over 330,000 students were awarded degrees.

I, therefore, very tentatively, propose an alternative explanation for the correlation between an extended modern education and voting Remain.

The vast expansion of university places in the UK over relatively recent years produced both a significant reduction in average undergraduate standard and a much greater exposure of young people to the ‘progressive’ views that enjoy dominance among younger academic staff.

I am far from convinced that a mediocre graduate is intrinsically more qualified to pronounce on this question than an expert plumber who left school at sixteen.

I was born in a working class area of Sheffield, the son of a naval petty officer who left the service after the war but died of cancer within a couple of years. My grandfather’s family had been agricultural workers in Norfolk for centuries, moving to the big city in the late nineteenth century to find work in the steel mills like so many before them.

It so happened I was born with a good brain. I did nothing to earn that, and whenever I get too proud of what I’ve achieved or too downhearted over my failures, I remember the folk whence I came and remind myself that but for good fortune I’d probably have had far fewer opportunities to make such lifestyle choices, right or wrong, anyway. I should have been amongst the thousands of ordinary working people who lost their livelihoods with the collapse of the steel and cutlery industries and had to struggle so very hard to bring their city back to life again.

I cannot speak for them; I realise that. I am too far away from them now, in both time and distance. But I know one thing for certain. They are good people. They are sensible people. They know a great many things about life that you need no academic qualifications to know. They are as entitled to their view of how the EU affects them as any southern banker or stockbroker.

Not many people have been privileged to enjoy the sort of education I have. But neither I, nor anyone else, has earned the right to patronise the working class who voted Leave.