Meritocracy is overrated

I never went near the Oxford Union when I was a student at the university. Even though it has been the nursery for many leading politicians in this country and abroad, the spectacle of tyro ministers in evening dress back-stabbing each other never held much interest for me. Nor, as far as I can remember, did it appeal to any of my friends. 

Since leaving, I’ve been asked several times to take part in union debates. Following my view that someone who asks other people questions for a living should be prepared to give an account of himself to educational institutions, I’ve turned up at the Union about once a decade. 

Going into this week’s engagement, I was up 2-1. My side had prevailed on Russia having no future as a superpower, and something about the internet. The lone defeat was an over-confident partnership with Denis MacShane when a forensic Andrew Gilligan trounced us on the power of tabloid newspapers. 

The latest debate looked like the most uphill yet to win – persuading hundreds of undergraduates that there is “No merit in meritocracy”. They all proudly see themselves as meritocrats, having worked hard to get top exam grades to get into Oxford, which is consistently rated one of the best universities in the world. 

Oxford Union debates are more cumbersome than those in the House of Commons. Two teams of four of five made up of a mix of student members, and guests argue it out formally for proposition and opposition before the matter is thrown open to the floor. 

Our team leader, Professor Daniel Markovits of Yale, got us off to a cracking start alienating the bulk of the self-proclaimed “World’s greatest debating society”. He pointed out justly that people from private schools were disproportionately represented in the student body and that eighty per cent of them came from what is classed as privileged backgrounds. He argued that their elevated sense of self-worth was neither good for them, their children or society as a whole. 

Adrian Woolridge led for the other side. He’s a distinguished journalist on The Economist and a fellow of All Souls, Oxfords elite graduate college. He is joining Bloomberg soon.

Wooldridge has just published a widely praised book called The Aristocracy of Talent – How Meritocracy Made The Modern World. His contention is that meritocracy saw off the old feudal structures and opened the doors to scientific and technical innovation, making lives better for all. In keeping with his newspaper’s neoliberal utilitarianism, he too was preoccupied with the social mobility for the entrants to top universities. 

I find his hypotheses questionable. There is no evidence that meritocracy was the driver of progress. The crucial inventions, it seems to me, came from the innate human instinct for excellence, the drive to do something better and a similar urge for social justice and fairness. 

Meritocracy is divisive, insisting that those who have exhibited the best efforts and talents should reap the greatest rewards and the right to power, literally “rule by the worthy” rather than democracy, inclusive rule by all the people.

I pointed out that superior-minded egg heads have often taken us all off the rails. The gentlemen in Whitehall failed to see the merits of technical education alongside academic excellence at grammar schools. As a result, technical education only flowered briefly in the egalitarian post-war period, nurturing many of the key figures in the pop movements of the swinging sixties but not after that, as Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones points out in his autobiography.

I argued that the seven Oxford graduate Prime Ministers since the ousting of the feudal 14th Earl of Home, had done the country no better service than John Major and Jim Callaghan, graduates of the university of life – only for a sharp-witted student to point out that they both lost elections. 

I further damaged our cause by fulfilling Godwin’s law, becoming the first person in an argument to mention the war. My point was that the Fabian Society socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb belief in meritocracy led them to be in favour of eugenics and that similar impulses at the time also led to the exterminations of the holocaust.

At least I got away better than my Christ Church contemporary Andrew Graham-Dixon who earnt himself a life ban from the Cambridge Union this month after impersonating Hitler to make a point. 

My single appearance at the Cambridge Union was hardly more successful. In 2003 the organisers had to abandon a planned debate on probity in public life in a hurry because the president absconded with the club’s kitty. 

They decided to discuss the situation in Iraq. To the audience’s disgust, Alan Duncan MP, Michael Binyon and I all said that the invasion of Iraq was going to happen. Debate dried up, and we were sent packing on an early train.

This week’s debate in Oxford was surprisingly free of wokery. Except for one earnest young woman who declared herself offended as a woman by Markovits suggestion that life was fairer in the 1960s because her mother had been refused a pilot’s licence. 

Socialism was once identified with meritocracy, but the two have diverged. Tony Blair wanted more than half of children to go to university; his son Euan has set up a highly profitable business to encourage people to do apprenticeships instead. 

In the debate, the left-leaning speakers calling for greater rewards for key workers such as nurses and refuse collectors, were also opponents of meritocracy. But it is hard to suppress the competitive urge at Oxford. The President selects the two best speakers from the floor for awards. The runner up in this debate received a case of Brewdog beer; the first prize was less memorable. 

The Union also served up a special debate night cocktail which sounded suspiciously like an Espresso Martini. I left the students to their late-night drinks and made for the station. True to my anti-meritocratic spirit, and don’t know the result of the post-debate vote.

If you are interested and what to find out who won, I’m told you can look it up on the internet.