Our misguided faith in non-political experts

One of the more depressing things about us is the way we are so overawed by experts. Fully 55% of you, according to a recent poll in the Daily Telegraph, applaud Gordon Brown’s decision to bring non-political experts into his ministry; only 17% think it a bad idea.

What naive faith in the idea of the unbiased professional.

The former UN deputy secretary general, Sir Mark Malloch Brown, whom the PM has just made a foreign office minister, may be a reasonable bloke, but his interests lie with the international professional caste to which he belongs: he will always favour supranationalism to temper what he sees as the irresponsibility of national politicians.

And so it is with all the unelected functionaries being put in charge of our prisons, our schools, our highways: they all reinforce the values of their own particular tribe. Politicians you can vote out of office, but what recourse do you have when the experts invoke their so-called expertise? The notion that it is better to be ruled by disinterested technocrats than elected demagogues has been the justification for every tyranny in history.

What you can do

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