Why Peter Hitchens and the right are wrong

### Jamie Sims

**Peter Hitchens, in his recent talk to Warwick Conservatives and [in an interview with The _Boar_](https://theboar.org/books/2012/dec/10/interview-peter-hitchens) presents a view of Britain that many on the right would consider to represent simple common sense; placing the blame for Britain’s problems – an economic malaise and perceived crisis in public order and public morals – on the supposed victory within the political class of loony leftism and namby-pamby politically correct liberalism. The fatal flaw of this assessment is that it lacks any basis in reality – in this article I hope to convince you of that fact using verifiable evidence and rational argument. **

Don’t get me wrong – Hitchens is highly intelligent and well-read, but he falls foul of natural biases in human reasoning – though he proudly considers himself to be a sceptic. Humans are prone to confirmation bias (i.e. seeking out evidence that supports their position and rejecting that which doesn’t) as well as any number of other cognitive biases and logical fallacies. The intelligent are often the best at self-deception as they are able to build a superficially convincing case to rationalise any assumption, bias or prejudice, however implausible. Examples abound even at Warwick, which prides itself on admitting the cleverest students: I have come across creationists and conspiracy theorists – the problem is a lack of scepticism – it seems to an uncritical mind to be common sense that the complexity of life requires a ‘designer’ or that certain coincidental events must be linked by sinister intent, yet application of logic dispels these delusions.

First, Hitchens sees the conservative establishment as having been replaced with a liberal-left consensus among the political class. This is a misreading of the post-war era – in fact, from 1945 onwards a social democratic consensus was established that created the NHS, assertive trades unionism and the welfare state; this was shattered by Thatcherism. The politics of the last decade has been a reflection of Thatcherite assumptions about personal responsibility and the power of the free market – the new consensus is right wing. Mrs Thatcher herself called New Labour her greatest achievement because: ‘We forced our opponents to change their minds’.

Second, Mr Hitchens locates the causes of crime with a kind of moral decline, compounded by cowardly law and order policies (he advocates the death penalty and vigorous prosecution of antisocial behaviour). This flies in the face of the evidence, as presented in Wilkinson and Pickett’s _The Spirit Level,_ that social problems from obesity to crime can be traced to the level of inequality in a society – inequality undermines social bonds, damages the individual’s sense of investment in, and responsibility to, their society and leads to heightened class prejudice; the British experience of which is documented in Owen Jones’s _Chavs_.

Finally, throughout Mr Hitchens’ written work, in his books and _Daily Mail_ column, he promotes a traditionalist socially conservative approach to society. He asserts that the decline of grammar schools and classroom discipline are responsible for falling educational standards – yet Finland, generally recognised as having the best education in the world (as confirmed by the PISA survey) has no grammar or private schools and a relaxed classroom culture.

Recreational drug use is prevalent because our government has ‘surrendered’ to drugs, according to Mr Hitchens, yet in Portugal decriminalisation has minimised the social harms of drugs and reduced rates of addiction (addiction, by the way, is another scientific truth which our self-proclaimed sceptic denies).

His views on sexuality are clouded by a prudish and moralistic strain of Christianity – in a column on contraception in schools he warns apocalyptically that abandoning ‘lifelong marriage’ heralds ‘the long journey back to the debauchery of Babylon’ – a reality-based approach to contraception would take into account the finding that teen pregnancy rates are highest in those US states that use abstinence-only sex education curricula (surprise, surprise).

What Mr Hitchens represents is a reliance on traditionalistic “common sense” which doesn’t fit with the evidence. Scepticism is not the same as common sense, and common sense is most often not very accurate. What is needed in Britain is not a return to Protestant Christianity, draconian policing or social conservatism – what are needed are egalitarian, liberal, evidence-based policies.