What are they diverting attention from?

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It was a little over 50 years ago that the UK switched from pounds, shillings and pence to the new decimal currency. I have a vivid memory of the time shortly before the change when my grandmother and her sister were sitting in front of the fire bemoaning the fact. “Why do they have to do this now?,” said one, “Why couldn’t they wait until all we oldies had died out?”. I suspect that many of that generation, if they were still with us today, would happily vote for the return of what was, to them, the familiar money of the time – there is something in all of us which finds comfort in the familiar. And there’s never a ‘right’ time for everyone for making such a change.

Those of my generation were taught measurements primarily in imperial measures. Although metric units were also introduced in schools alongside imperial measures in the 1960s, my A levels in Physics and Maths in 1970 still used mostly imperial measurements. One random result of that education is that I know that acceleration due to gravity is 32ft/s² but would need to look up the metric equivalent. It’s easy to see how, for many older people, a return to feet and inches, or pounds and ounces, might be attractive. It’s ‘only’ since 1974 that metric units became the prime system taught in schools, bringing the UK into line with most of the rest of the world. That word ‘only’ is doing a lot of work, though. What it means in practice is that around 70% of the population have been taught only, or primarily, metric measurements, and that those feeling some sort of nostalgia for what went before are likely to be over 60 years old.

By sheer coincidence (or maybe not!) that is exactly the demographic most likely to vote Conservative (and of course to support Brexit). And that is enough in itself to explain the otherwise perverse decision taken last week by Boris Johnson to allow traders and others to use solely imperial measurements. I don’t doubt that the very word ‘imperial’ also has its attractions to them, along with the symbolic rejection of a foreign, European, way of measuring things. They should beware, however, of following simple demographics. Whilst it’s true that older people are more likely to vote Conservative, it doesn’t follow that people somehow turn Tory as they age. As each cohort ages, what they feel nostalgia for is likely to be what was prevalent when they were young. There is a danger that they are hitching their populist bandwagon to what is, by definition, a short-lived electoral cohort.

In more practical terms, why on earth would any manufacturer or trader want to sell his or her wares solely in imperial units when they can already use both if they wish? Certainly, it makes no sense at all for anyone expecting to export, especially to Europe. And with 70% of their customer base likely to be more familiar with metric than imperial measures, selling in units with which those customers are unfamiliar doesn’t look like a good business decision even for those selling only into the domestic market. Maybe a few older market traders whose customer base is made up largely of people of a similar age might want to take advantage of their new ‘freedom’, but they, too, are traders not likely to be in business for much longer, for the same demographic reasons.

It is, ultimately, little more than a gimmick, a stunt, aimed at appealing to nostalgia and that sense of exceptionalism which characterises English nationalists. Like blue passports, it’s a headline-grabbing diversion from reality. We should pay more attention to those things from which they are trying to divert our attention with such pointless gimmicks.