At this lunchtime's Political Studies Association awards event Mark Gill of MORI presented the results of a survey of nearly 300 academics. We learnt that Gordon Brown was rated the best Chancellor and Norman Lamont the worst.
Perhaps most interesting (but unsurprising) was the finding that academics clearly leaned to Gordon Brown when asked whether the Chancellor or the Tory leader would be the most capable Prime Minister. 49% chose Gordon Brown and only 14% chose David Cameron. This 35% lead amongst PSA academics contrasts with a 7% lead amongst the public, Gill noted.
MORI also asked the academics about their expectations of the outcome of the next General Election. Those are given in the box on the right (click on image to enlarge). The outcome preferred by the academics is a tiny bit more left-leaning than their predictions!
Related link: Academics warm to the Conservatives
Wednesday morning update: Peter Riddell has written about this survey in today's Times.
Bears and woods and the Pope and Catholics spring to mind. I wonder how much credence these people gave to PFI deals and the future for private pensions when making their deliberations.
The success or otherwise of most Chancellors does not really become apparant until some time after they have office. Personally I think it unlikely that history will judge Gordon Brown kindly.
Posted by: malcolm | November 28, 2006 at 16:40
What about John Whittaker MEP, economics lecturer at Lancaster Uni and author of UKIP's awesome "Flat tax for Britain" Policy Statement?
Posted by: Mark Wadsworth | November 28, 2006 at 17:01
In the 1960s J.L.Carr wrote "The Harpole Report" - a funny work of fiction about a new headteacher in a junior school. All bar one of the staff are identifiably right-wing.
There was a time when educationalists were counted as part of the Tory vote. That ended in the 1980s. For some reason, this core vote, apparently isn't part of the mythical core vote strategy...
Posted by: Adam | November 28, 2006 at 17:03
This surely adds to the achievement of CONSERVATIVE Home getting an award from this lot!
Posted by: Anthony Brodders | November 28, 2006 at 17:06
These results are not surprising, but they do present a confirmation of the overwhelming left wing bias in political studies departments in British universities and colleges. Is there political bias in appointments or do rightwing academics tend to go elsewhere such as the media and think tanks ?
Posted by: johnC | November 28, 2006 at 17:06
What a shocker ! Having worked at a University for the past 20 years my highlight was 1992 when Labour didn't win the GE. So many gutted people on the Friday morning after !
Posted by: Alison Anne Smith | November 28, 2006 at 17:09
I was at a Grammar School in Hertfordshire in the 1970's,the majority of teachers then were decidedly left wing and were very sad when Maggie won in 1979.The NUT were also a pretty left wing Union.Are you sure you're right about this Adam?
Posted by: malcolm | November 28, 2006 at 17:11
Yep- many academics do not live in the real world and have not done a day's proper work in their lives. That is why they lean left.
Posted by: eugene | November 28, 2006 at 17:47
How are we all going to sleep to night?
Posted by: Justin Hinchcliffe | November 28, 2006 at 17:56
*tonight
Posted by: Justin Hinchcliffe | November 28, 2006 at 17:57
Part of the "Gramscian march through the institutions", and time it was reversed.
Posted by: Denis Cooper | November 28, 2006 at 18:34
I take it the academics did not overlook the fact that their "best" chancellor directly succeeded their "second best".
Call it a scoring pass.
Posted by: Og | November 28, 2006 at 20:12
You'll be exposing the BBC for being inherantly left-wing next. Ooops - I forgot, they've already done that.
Posted by: Martin Curtis | November 28, 2006 at 21:27
We lost our intellectual edge in the late 1980's and 1990's in our quest to win over "Essex Man".
Posted by: Justin Hinchcliffe | November 28, 2006 at 22:53
in an equally surprising development, it has been discovered that night follows day.
Posted by: Jon White | November 28, 2006 at 22:56
No surprises there then.
But, what about the anti-semetic views of some academics, who espouse pro-Palestinian views, as has been demonstrated recently.
Education has been in the grip of the left for some decades now. These people have been trying to rewrite the history of this country to suit their own perverted sense of right and wrong, and conform to Marxist-Leninist tenets.
Posted by: George Hinton | November 29, 2006 at 11:15
They think Gordon Brown is the best Chancellor?
Given that they are incapable of seeing reality in front of their eyes, it does not bode well for their more complicated research does it.
Posted by: Serf | November 29, 2006 at 12:21
We lost our intellectual edge in the late 1980's and 1990's in our quest to win over "Essex Man"
Good point.
The crass materialism and money-culture of the later period was at variance with an earlier period of implementing ideas developed at the CPS in the mid-1970s.
I remember meeting Tim Congdon and Madson Pirie at one of the CPS seminars - not all ideas were good - but at least they weren't simply derivatives of half-baked US campaign slogans.
Then again the 1970s were a period of discussion and argument, in contrat today is brain-dead and advertising-driven
Posted by: TomTom | November 29, 2006 at 16:07
Speaking as an academic (*boo*, *hiss*) I think Conservatism has always rather prided itself on its anti-intellectualism, which is fine in itself but does mean that leftists had an easy time gaining control of the commanding heights of academia.
Perhaps strangely, so far I've experienced more academic freedom at the ex-Polytechnic I'm at now than I ever did at the old University of London college I worked at previously.
Posted by: SimonNewman | November 29, 2006 at 16:13