Rishi Sunak, a very Tory kind of technocrat

Think of it as the political equivalent of a flight to safety. Just as investors trade equities for government bonds when markets tank, so British voters have developed an appetite for technocracy after years of chaos. Bobby Duffy of King’s College London runs the British leg of the World Values Study, a global survey of public opinion. In the 2022 version some 61% of Britons said that “having experts, not government, make decisions” would be a good system, up by 20 points from 1999. A similar trajectory can be seen across the rich world but Britons’ liking for technocracy is the highest in the G7, and just below that of Moroccans and Nigerians.