BY STEWART SLATER

“What would the Romans do?” is always a useful way to consider issues of public policy. This is not to say they got everything right – their views on women were a bit iffy while about their attitudes to slavery, the less said the better (even if, on both, the reality was more nuanced than is often assumed). On the other hand, a civilisation which built the largest ramp ever constructed by man just to mop up the remnants of a failed revolt would probably not take 20 years to build a train line.

Although the Empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, it was substantially complete by the time of Caesar. Rome had risen to greatness as a Republic and, specifically, as an aristocracy. The old, land-owning families had the money and they had the power. The ordering of the famous formula “The Senate and People of Rome” (SPQR) shows exactly who was in charge.  One of the advantages of Roman history over Greek is their naming conventions make it easy to trace family relationships through time and the same names keep cropping up – the Metelli, the Cornelii, the Caecilii etc. There might be long gaps – it would be almost 200 years before a descendant of Brutus, one of the first consuls, again gained the top job – but prominent families remained prominent families.

This was not enough for power, however. Office was won by elections and, even with money, connections and the most illustrious name, elections could still be lost if the people took against you. Catiline came from a noble family, was a favourite of the dictator Sulla, and had enriched himself as governor of Africa but his runs for the consulship failed – probably because everyone had come to realise that he was a bit of a wrong ‘un. That he reacted to his losses by attempting to launch a coup suggests they had a point…

Even with all the advantages at the start, power could be lost and careers destroyed. Society was divided into three classes, based on wealth. Every so often, a survey was conducted of the rolls and those who no longer met the criteria were degraded. Lucius Cornelius Scipio came from one of the most noble families, was the brother of the man who had saved Rome by defeating Hannibal and had been such a successful general in Turkey that he was awarded a new surname (“Asiaticus”), but when the payment of a fine left him penniless, he was kicked out of the equestrian order. Current scholarship suggests that roughly 10% of the Senate (the creme de la creme Romaine) were similarly degraded. This did not affect the family – Lucius’ descendants would go on to hold the consulship – but it did affect the individual.

The final check on the elite was provided by events. Rome was, at its heart, a militaristic society. Its leaders were expected to be generals, and unsuccessful generals were expected to die, whether in battle, by their own hand (as most of Caesar’s assassins did) or by one of the inventive punishments the ancient world specialised in – the Parthians are said to have paid ironic tribute to Crassus’ status as the richest man in Rome by pouring molten gold down his throat when he was captured after losing the battle of Carrhae. The Roman elite may have been privileged, but they were expected to have skin in the game. Brutal it may have been, but it had the useful side effect of ensuring that those at the top of society were those who deserved to be there.

For those who are not ancient historians manque this little spin through the glory that was Rome might seem unnecessary but one of the benefits of a classical education is that, as well as furnishing a ready-made stock of quotes for those wishing to seem erudite, it also provides a mirror which we can hold up to our own society.

The Twittersphere has been ablaze with indignation (as, to be fair, it usually is,) at Matthew Goodwin’s Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics which was published recently. In it, he posits that power and influence in the country are increasingly held by a “New Elite” who leave the country’s leading universities, move to its big cities and take jobs in charities, the media and think tanks which allow them to promote their generally left-leaning values, a belief system which is becoming increasingly detached from that of the broad mass of the country. If this seems intuitively true to you, that merely shows that you are not a member – so much spluttering has been uttered by those who are that the first rule of “New Elite Club” seems to be not to talk about “New Elite Club”.

In some ways, they have a point. The group generally wields no formal political power and its members are not rich compared to, say, the average hedge fund manager. This does not show, however, that they are not members of an elite, but rather that the elite has fractured. Compared to Roman times, when the social elite was the financial elite which was the political elite, in the modern world, these roles are performed by different groups. Members of the group who deny their elite status by pointing to their lack of political office or personal wealth are only telling half the story, however, because they ignore their influence over society. And they must know this – why would anyone work in, for example, a think-tank except to influence society?

In contrast to Roman times, however, the acquisition of this influence is opaque. To gain membership of the Senate, one had to have held various elected offices, allowing the people to pass judgement on one’s abilities. To work for a think-tank or in the media, generally one just needs to have been to a decent university, and passed a job interview. Those who are subject to the New Elite’s influence have no say in the composition of its membership, and little idea about the attitudes of those who wield it even if the advent of Twitter has allowed the occasional glimpse behind the curtain for those who use it.

Once in the New Elite, it is quite hard to get out of it. Whereas the Romans had numerous ways of getting rid of those who were not quite good enough, the Blob is famous for shuffling its members around the available jobs with no obvious regard for their performance. This is not purely a left-wing thing. Roman eyes would have been raised by the Telegraph giving Nick Timothy a column after serving as Chief of Staff in a premiership which is certainly in the conversation for having been Britain’s worst and having overseen one of the most disastrous election campaigns in history. Nicus Timotheus, by contrast, could have, at best, expected a permanent retirement to his country estate.

For whereas Roman society started with aristocrats and forced them to become meritocrats, the New Elite is composed of self-described meritocrats who are trying to become aristocrats. Membership of the caste is often hereditary – Goodwin, perhaps flippantly, suggested one test for membership is whether one’s parents have a Wikipedia page –  and a range of signalling mechanisms have been developed to allow members to display their status – declarations of pronouns in one’s biography standing in for a coat of arms, knowledge of the latest progressive fashions replacing a familiarity with courtly etiquette.

Like any aristocracy, for the New Elite, position trumps performance. The fact that forecasts come from the IMF is enough to make them newsworthy, despite the fact that, according to analysis by Bloomberg, only 6% of them turn out to be accurate within the margin of error. The OBR retains an outsized import in the national conversation for an organisation which recently had to adjust its figures by 20% over a 3-month period – a third of which was due to their misunderstanding of the definition of the statistic they were trying to forecast. Academics who were wildly wrong (in both directions) about the pandemic are regularly given public platforms to air their views and promote their agendas, their professorships giving them prominence their actual performance cannot support. Media talking heads may, as a class, have failed to predict Brexit, the biggest event in recent British history, but they remain media talking heads.

It is in this that the New Elite are unique. The political elite is subject to judgement by the voters (and sometimes, before them, by their MPs). The financial elite is, as the saying has it, “only as good as its last trade”. Power and position are related to performance. Just as the Romans had it. The media, think-tanks, charities and academics retain their platform no matter how wrong they have been in the past. While their values may differ from those of their fellow citizens, the real problem with the “New Elite” is that we have no reason to believe they are, actually, elite.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.

Matthew Goodwin’s Values, Voice & Virtue: The New British Politics can be acquired here.