Have We Had Enough of Experts? Reflections on Evidence, Reform and the UK Election
Jeremy Williams
It would have been hard for any researcher working in evidence-based policy development, not to read the writing on the wall during the 2024 UK General Election
While much commentary on the recent UK General Election focused on the historic nature of Labour’s landslide and the end of 14 years of Conservative rule, an equally significant development was the huge gains made by Reform UK.
Reform’s 14.29% of the vote represented not only a significant moment in British politics, but a rejection of expertise over anti-science rhetoric.
At the International Public Policy Observatory (IPPO), our team works to bring the best evidence to governments across the UK. We are part of a well-established knowledge ecosystem of organisations that support governments as they struggle with the vastly complicated socio-economic challenges facing communities.
However, we are faced with a political landscape where more than 1 in 8 voters cast a vote for a party who claim that man-made climate change can’t be stopped and have pledged to ban initiatives such as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, despite overwhelming evidence for their efficacy and benefits.
Lee Anderson, Reform MP for Ashfield, said after his victory: “Politics is not that complicated.”
However, many working in our ecosystem would tell you that it is, and that tackling issues from the climate crisis to the crippling effects of our country’s faltering economy, will take more than “listening to what people are saying in pubs”. But, we also know that simply sharing evidence on what might work to fix these problems is not working.
That’s why organisations such as ours must think more deeply about how to rise to the challenge of an apparent rejection of evidence, and to engage a rightfully sceptical audience with big ideas that meet the scale of their expectations.
An International Trend
While national factors were undoubtedly at play – including the return of Nigel Farage to frontline politics – the rise of the populist is an international phenomenon. From the first placed finish of Geert Wilders’ PVV in the Netherlands, to the Front National’s victory in the first round of the French elections (albeit one tempered by the surprise win for a left-wing alliance in the second round) Reform’s rise echoes similar increases in support in democracies across the world.
Understanding the success of these candidates and parties requires us to engage with a defining common factor in their outlook: a rejection of the set of beliefs and assumptions about the world widespread across mainstream institutions including the media, politics and academia.
Had Enough of Experts
This rejection is also one of the neoliberal post-political consensus emergent since the 1970s where large areas of public life have been removed from political contestation, instead to be managed by those qualified to do so. In Britain, this found expression in the Brexit referendum, with Michael Gove famously claiming that “the people of this country had enough of experts” striking a chord with a country where the dramatic cuts of austerity were sold as a dry, technical necessity rather than a political choice.
With mainstream parties performing politics as expert-led and non-emotional, parties on the populist right also recast political activity as ritualistic and cathartic. This sees the carnivalesque spectacle of Nigel Farage holding court in the Clacton Wetherspoons echo the chaotic appeal of Trump’s rallies to his base, or the energy invoked at what The Guardian described as the kind of rock concert-cum-pagan-mass favoured by far-right Argentinian President Javier Milei.
The Future is Cancelled
We can see the populist right’s rejection of the status quo, and their reframing of political activity as something more primal, as a contestation of what Italian philosopher ‘Bifo’ Berardi calls the “slow cancellation of the future”. This is the gradual loss of popular belief that things will get better, and that there is a future which can be imagined beyond the rationality of the current moment. And this rationality of the current moment is one which no longer works for an increasing number of people.
Despite Britain being the sixth largest economy in the world, food bank use has increased tenfold since the financial crisis. In the large parts of the country, you are unable to get a dental appointment, while housing is increasingly unaffordable. In 1970, the average price of a house was three times that of the average salary, today it is nearly nine times. A country which increasingly struggles to function is underpinned by unprecedented financial inequality where the 50 wealthiest families in the UK hold as much wealth as one half of the population – 33.5 million people.
The Election and Evidence
Against the backdrop, the two major parties in the UK general election largely fought campaigns lacking a meaningful engagement with dynamics which fuelled Reform’s rise. While the Labour Party were happy to point out the country’s problems, both they and the Conservatives engaged in what the Institute for Fiscal Studies described as a “conspiracy of silence” over tax and spending plans.
At the same time, the Conservative party’s increasing engagement in “culture war” issues fuelled alienation with a system they embodied after fourteen years in power. For organisations like IPPO this shift was particularly difficult to navigate, as we found ourselves advising the government on how to depoliticise Net Zero, while they were themselves simultaneously politicising Net Zero.
Three Ideas for the Future
How can organisations concerned with providing evidence to policymakers respond to this difficult situation?
Firstly, we need to understand that what is happening is not a rejection of evidence in itself, but instead of a system and way of thinking which no longer delivers for many people.
We should understand that for many people turning against a system that is breaking down is a rational response and ensure our interventions speak to that reality. This means we need to be open about the need for big, structural fixes rather than piecemeal interventions.
Secondly, we need to understand that politics and policy is not just technical, but about emotion, narrative and feeling.
The Brexit referendum showed us that a rejection of existing notions of expertise, where the vast majority of institutions were in favour of Remain, can hold popular legitimacy. Rejecting a technocratic notion of common sense (or “what works”), we need to reconceptualise evidence-based policymaking as being in service of people’s own experiences and needs, rather than those assumed and defined to them by experts.
Finally, we need to be more self-reflective. This can include thinking creatively and critically about our position within a system which many people are justified in thinking does not work for them – and acting, behaving and intervening accordingly.