You can tell a lot about a country by who it admires. I was pleasantly surprised some years ago to see a poll showing that the most admired man in the UK was Richard Branson. You may not love all his publicity stunts, or have liked the sandwich selection on Virgin trains, but that poll suggested the British public still liked entrepreneurialism and achievement.
It seems mainly to affect people who have really never done very much with their lives
I slightly dread a rerun of such a poll today, because I suspect that among the youth vote in particular the winner would be the person with the most perceived disadvantages in life. Having succumbed to the American woke mind virus, much of the generation coming up in Britain seems to be under the impression that we should only really admire people based on their position in the oppression hierarchy. Meaning that what we ought to think most highly of is an ethnically diverse woman with as many physical and mental disabilities as possible. The fact that entrepreneurialism is not the most appreciated quality can be seen from what one might call ‘anti-Elonism’.
Ever since Elon Musk became more vocal about his views, and then went all-in with his support of Donald Trump, the Tesla boss has faced an unrelenting campaign against him by the left-wing media and others. Rather than merely disagreeing with him, these people wish to cast Musk as not just an eccentric but as some kind of loser. A magazine of the American left called the New Republic went so far recently as to say that he is a ‘small man who is simply not very good at anything’. Lest anyone failed to notice, last week Musk and his SpaceX force successfully parallel-parked a 250-ton space rocket booster on their first try. It was probably one of the greatest engineering achievements in history.
But not as far as Britain is concerned, it seems. There was a kerfuffle last week when the UK government tried to organise an International Investment summit. One of the people they pointedly did not invite was the world’s richest man. Our colossus of a Business Secretary, one Jonathan Reynolds, stonewalled questions about why Musk hadn’t been invited, but it wasn’t hard to guess. After the riots that broke out in the wake of the Southport stabbings (remember them?) Musk observed that Britain appeared to be on the brink of civil war. He also issued a number of sharp tweets about what he thought of the UK authorities deciding that any disorder it does not approve of is by its nature ‘far right’.
One British commentator who used to be tied up with the left-wing hate-group ‘Hope Not Hate’ proudly opined: ‘A few weeks ago Elon Musk was telling the world civil war in the UK was “inevitable”. The idea the British government should be rolling out the red carpet for him at an investment summit is bonkers.’ So it seems that the rules of the game are now meant to be that unless the world’s richest man agrees that all is well in the UK and there are really no unaddressed societal problems that have put the nation into a state of constant social peril, then he is not welcome here. Or perhaps he is allowed to disagree but just should not say it? After all, you can’t hurt the feelings of a certain number of people in the ostrich position and then be allowed to do business on their patch, can you?
The fact that these could be the rules of the game is of course made easier by the fact that there is not a single person in the current Labour cabinet who has spent their career in business. All of them are either career politicians, lawyers, public-sector workers or union workers. None of them has ever grown a business. All have simply spent their lives to various extents sucking off the teat of the public purse.
Ignoring this specific snub (and the government and its media mouthpieces are denying that it is any such a thing), I find anti-Elonism to be a fascinating trend. Because it seems mainly to affect people who have really never done anything very much with their lives. It is a wonderful thing to sit behind a keyboard and bash out theories about how the world ought to be and how the country ought to be run. I sense that some of the people who do this get the occasional chill of a feeling that they aren’t using their lives optimally. Firing off a column about what Bridget Phillipson might be thinking this week may not be tough work but it is also pretty unnecessary work. Whereas creating the most successful electric car company in the world, running the world’s no. 1 social media platform and trying to make ours an interplanetary species in your spare time feel to me like pretty impressive things to put on any CV. You might think that this is the sort of person you would want to be close to.
And I suppose that brings me back to the Branson point. If a country is going to do well, it will not be by government diktat. In fact it is most likely to be in spite of such a thing. It will happen because remarkable people are created who are then encouraged and inspired to do even more remarkable things with their lives. The reason why clusters of such people – from tech entrepreneurs to composers – so often come up in the same place at the same time is that brilliant people help other brilliant people become more brilliant still. It is one manifestation of what René Girard was on to with his theory of mimetics: that we desire what other people put desire into and that makes us desire it more.
I’m sure that we could hobble along perfectly boringly as a country for a few more years while looking to Angela Rayner and Jonathan Reynolds for inspiration. But I’d take Musk any day. He’ll do fine without us. Are we sure we’ll do fine without him?
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