Gove was right. The problem is that experts no longer have to explain or justify themselves or explain the level of evidence behind their opinions.
Expertise has also been politicised. Experts are picked who give the prior decided opinions, and those who have the wrong opinion are got rid of (e.g. Professor David Nutt).
Finally Gove was speaking in the context of Brexit, and arguing that it ultimately a question of national identity. DO people identify as British or European? I agree - it is more like whether people in Northern Ireland want to be part of the UK or the Irish Republic, or maybe Scottish independence, than anything else in British politics. lots of parallels around the rest of the world.
Covid policy had multiple examples of this, and of not consulting experts on a sufficiently wide range of subjects.
And that framing is where the trick is hidden. People are perfectly capable of accepting and having multiple identities. They can be a mom of their kids, a receptionist of company X, a neighbour of street Y, a citizen of city Z, a member of the flower gardening society, a supporter of football club Q, citizens of the UK and Europeans too.
In fact you don't have to choose between these identities. But when you frame the question like that it make sense that people would choose what is closer to them.
I’m not sure this is correct; in general many people would think of themselves as X and European, where X is the country of origin or citizenship. The EU is not a country.
For that matter, the UK, despite being a country, has some aspects of this; while Northern Ireland in particular is complicated for historical reasons, plenty of English and Scottish and Welsh people would think of themselves as English or Scottish or Welsh AND British.
America is a bit different and, for some generations, consider ourselves better than the ugly factionalism and national identitarianism that led Europe into centuries of pointless warfare. One can be an African-Mexican-Asian-Queer-Irish-Jewish-Italian-American without subjugating one's identity.
Basically that's because "American" isn't a breed, like Scots or French. It's a political choice and an identity which is (should be) open to anyone who lives here and adopts the Constitution as the set of laws they want to live by.
Ironically, this is why Yarvin and Musk and Thiel will fail in their attempts at overthrowing the US government to create "network states". The US is the original state founded on a set of ideas rather than identities. (Since, at least, the Roman Republic). That is its strength, and something difficult for Europeans to really understand.
Not to politicise this discussion, but the country is called 'The Republic of Ireland'. The phrase 'the Irish Republic' references the 1916 Easter proclamation, and has specific political and even colonial implications in Ireland. It's frequently used on BBC news, but never in Ireland where it would have a similar connotation to 'the free state' or other radical republican delegitimisations of the Irish state.
So, to confuse the issue, the country is officially called Ireland (it's in the constitution!), and that is the name normally used in Ireland and in Europe. The UK government officially referred to Ireland as the Republic of Ireland until 1998 (it now calls it Ireland) and as a result people in the UK often call it the Republic of Ireland.
People calling it the Irish Republic usually have an agenda in doing so, yeah.
ED:
> Not to politicise this discussion
I mean, this is on a thread about the Nazis; I think you don't need to worry too much about further politicising it :)
> What agenda? I do not know enough about the history to understand the implications
Traditionally, you mostly see weird names for Ireland in British media with an anti-Irish viewpoint (you saw a lot of this from the right-wing tabloids during Brexit, in particular). In particular ‘Eire’ and ‘the Irish Republic’ are red flags; ‘Eire’ has never been correct to use in English, and ‘the Irish Republic’ was never _really_ the name of the country at all. At best it comes across as ignorant (a bit like Americans calling the UK ‘England’) but in practice it tends to only be used by a certain type of publication.
(In particularly extreme cases you sometimes see ‘the Irish Free State’, presumably from journalists who are over a century old.)
> How does one unambiguously refer to the country rather than the island without saying “republic”?
Ah, well, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? In cases where it could be ambiguous, Irish media tends to say ‘the state’, but that doesn’t really work elsewhere. In practice where disambiguation is required “the Republic of Ireland” is a reasonable neutral term.
Expertise has also been politicised. Experts are picked who give the prior decided opinions, and those who have the wrong opinion are got rid of (e.g. Professor David Nutt).
Finally Gove was speaking in the context of Brexit, and arguing that it ultimately a question of national identity. DO people identify as British or European? I agree - it is more like whether people in Northern Ireland want to be part of the UK or the Irish Republic, or maybe Scottish independence, than anything else in British politics. lots of parallels around the rest of the world.
Covid policy had multiple examples of this, and of not consulting experts on a sufficiently wide range of subjects.
A lot of evidence based policy is like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U