My daughter went to a comprehensive school. She has not become Prime Minister yet, although I think she would make a better job of it than the current one. She did very well at school, well enough to win a place at Cambridge to read Divinity (i.e. what other universities call theology). Having come from what you could describe as a lower middle class background, at Cambridge, for the first time, she rubbed shoulders with people from Public Schools (i.e. private fee-paying schools).
For a couple of terms she was rather overawed by these people who sounded so confident and always had something to say on every subject, as if they knew what they were talking about. It took her a while to realise, but in the end she got there. She realised that most of the time these people were talking out of their rear ends and probably knew less than she did about many things. She also realised that her opinion was just as valid as theirs, even if she did not assert it with the same confidence. They were more presentation than substance.
It has been widely reported in the press that our Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, was recently described by some of his financier friends as a “useful idiot.” This was in the context of a drinks party to which he was invited after delivering his recent disastrous “mini-budget.” Here is reported to have mixed with bankers, hedge fund managers and others involved in high finance, some of the very people who at that moment or later were betting on a fall in the value of the pound. It is not known what he told them, if anything, about the government’s future plans. Afterwards a couple of people who attended are said to have described him as a “useful idiot.”
This term has had some currency in politics down the years. It is attributed to Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet dictator, although there seems to be no evidence that he ever used it. However we know it was in use in the Soviet era as a description of supporters in the West. Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet era journalist and KGB informant who defected to the West talked about: “The useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system…” People who “idealistically believe” in the face of any evidence to the contrary. It sounds like a fairly apt description of our current Chancellor and Prime Minister.
Of course the thing about useful idiots is that they may be idiots but they can be used. Their idealism or ideology can be used by other people, as the Soviets did, to undermine the status quo and further their own interests in gaining power. Which begs the question who is using these useful idiots who have taken control of our government? One obvious answer is the financiers who benefit disproportionately from cuts in taxes, and from slashing back the role of the state and privatising the functions of government.
But there is also a question hanging over those shadowy “think tanks” like the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Taxpayers Alliance. These have provided the majority of the staff in the PM’s office. They consistently refuse to disclose the sources of their funding. One wonders why. Is it oil money? Does it come from outsourcing companies who have benefitted so greatly from government largesse under successive Conservative governments?
Do we have a government of useful idiots? You decide. I’ll leave you with a final thought from G.K. Chesterton:
“Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State