THIS WEEKEND I had my handwriting analysed at a birthday party. I basically regard graphology as nonsense, but my friends had taken infinite trouble with the rest of the proceedings. Cliff Richard, for instance, sang Congratulations as Denise Van Outen jumped out of the cake, neither of which happened at my last birthday to the best of my recollection. Having my handwriting analysed seemed the least I could do.

Anyway, the lady looked at the way I signed my name and said that I liked to connect up ideas from apparently unrelated areas. Fiendishly clever insight, that. And so this column will set out to prove her right. In just under 1,000 words I intend to link the suspension of an academic at the University of Leeds, the weight of an ox, the outcome of the 2002 football World Cup, the recent dissenting speeches of Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn and the state funding of political parties. And, of course, cakes, graphology and Denise Van Outen.

Let’s get going. On Sunday, a group of academics wrote to a newspaper complaining about the disciplinary proceedings instituted by the university against one of its lecturers, Frank Ellis. Dr Ellis has been suspended for arguing that racial groups have different average IQ levels, and that those of blacks are inferior to whites. His defenders protested that some evidence suggested he was correct.

Yet the academics who suspended Dr Ellis and those who defended him are making an error. In fact, the identical error. They are confusing the correctness of Dr Ellis’s views with whether he should be allowed to continue his academic career. These are not the same thing at all.

In the autumn of 1906, as recorded by James Surowiecki in his excellent book The Wisdom of Crowds, the scientist Francis Galton visited the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. While there he found his eyes drawn to a guess-the-weight-of-an-ox competition. Butchers and farmers were taking part, but so were ordinary visitors without any expert knowledge. Galton was interested in how bad their guesses would prove to be.

Galton was to be surprised. The average of the 800 guesses during the day was almost exactly right and, crucially, much more accurate than any individual expert assessment. What he had discovered was something counter-intuitive — that even the wildest incorrect guess plays its role in helping to produce an accurate average guess.

Dr Ellis is a lecturer in Russian and Slavic Studies. He probably has as firm a grip on the study of IQ and ethnicity as he does on the study of ox-weighing. But his view is useful in both, regardless of its correctness. Allowing mistaken views to have a voice in the academy is a vital part of determining the truth.

Galton’s observation suggests something else that is important too — independence. Let me use an example from an area about which I know a good deal more than I do about fat stock — football predictions. A Swedish study conducted during the last World Cup showed that groups of experts were far worse at predicting match outcomes than complete amateurs (in this case, US students with almost no football knowledge).

There were a number of reasons for this — experts try to be clever-clever, for instance, and factor in things that do not affect the outcome — but one of the most important was the experts’ lack of independence.

When experts make judgments, they do not make them alone. Their forecasts are based on the collective wisdom, wrong or right, of other experts. They reinforce each other’s errors. This makes their collective guess, the average of their guesses, far less accurate than if they had each guessed independently.

All of which brings me, as surely you knew that it would, to the state funding of political parties.

Divining the truth requires the greatest breadth of opinion to be taken into account, not excluding even the wildest and silliest ideas. And it requires the greatest achievable independence of opinions, so that all are adding in their own view rather than recycling someone else’s mistake.

Now consider modern British politics. Here all the prizes go to uniformity, the acceptance of collective responsibility, the exclusion of fringe opinions and the squashing of dissent. The ability to read and remember the “line to take” from party headquarters is valued far more highly that creative contributions to the public debate. Recent speeches by Mr Byers and Mr Milburn urging their party to develop a fresh agenda were remarked upon only because they departed from “party discipline”. Their content, such as it was, was ignored.

The whole of British politics is, in other words, a giant conspiracy to reinforce error. The exercise of independent judgment is rare, the tendency to recycle the conventional wisdom of experts is great. And once an error is made, the unspoken rules say that it must be persisted with, and everyone is required daily to offer their fresh support for yesterday’s mistake.

It is this, and not the massively overstated problem of sleaze, that is really corroding British political life.

And the state funding of political parties will make it still worse, certainly in the form that is being considered. The State will bestow its financial favours on central party organisations. Private fundraising will be severely restricted. Discipline will be rewarded, the maverick punished, and independence of view militated against.

If there has to be state funding, if it cannot any longer be resisted, then surely it should be to the individual Member of Parliament rather than to the party. If MPs want to contribute to the centre then they can. And yes, I know, there are some pretty eccentric MPs out there. But that, you see, is the whole point.

daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

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