I glimpsed earlier, just on a friend’s facebook thread, that Reform councillors have now launched a campaign to introduce Christian prayer into council meetings. Of course, like any thinking, rational person, I find this utterly abhorrent: not only do I object to the imposition of religion into politics, but it is also a blatant ploy to exclude any non-Christians (and thus people whom they don’t perceive as British) from the political discourse. It is a sickening act of xenophobia and nothing more. Well, if they are going to do that, then we should also have a rule saying that only people with degrees can be elected to councils. That would obviously exclude every one of those barely literate Reform bigots.

Now, I realise how reactionary and draconian that may in itself sound; and also that I’m making quite a broad, unqualified assumption. But there is a reason why higher education and progressive ideals go hand in hand. University not only educates you about your given subject, but also how to actually think and engage with the world. At uni, not only do you come into contact with new ideas, but also vast arrays of new people and new cultures. Such an environment is inherently antithetical to the reactionary, exclusionary politics of Reform. More to the point, I would prefer anyone in the political sphere to have a degree because at least then we would know they have the critical thinking skills to engage with a given issue, rather than clinging dogmatically to any pre-conceived ideas that they might have. 

Thus it seems to me that making having a degree some kind of default standard for being an elected politician would be a prudent way to go, and almost infinitely more sensible than forcing politicians to pray to a god which can not and does not exist. After all, if we expect doctors and teachers to have the level of education which comes with a degree, then surely we should expect the same standard of our politicians.