Perhaps that is evidence of the preference for empiricism above abstraction that is sometimes said to be a British trait whether the laboratorial empiricism of scientists or the lyrical kind of novelists.
It is a state of affairs where people seem to believe that the validity of their views is determined by the strength by which they hold them not by any reference to empiricism.
Diminishing social mobility, the cult of the celebrity society, the decline in serious learning, the increasing disregard for empiricism and social attitudes verging on valuephobia threaten to cast a shadow on the enlightened western liberalism which has taken us so far.