Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

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Reflections on the 'open letter' debate: a middle way to approaching the radical right?". openDemocracy . Retrieved 12 July 2023.

Such are the grisly politics of grievance. God help the young. I consider myself supremely fortunate to have grown up before Woke ideologies, “Social justice” activism and Social Media. update - a brief bit of Googling reveals that at least a part of the ‘what’s happened’ bit is: he’s aligned now with Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, the very existence of which makes me want to combust with embarrassment. Going native: Populist academics normalise the anti-immigrant right". Politics.co.uk. 31 October 2018 . Retrieved 21 August 2023. Labour has staged one of the most impressive recoveries in history. After finding itself outflanked by Nigel Farage’s national populism, then Brexit, and then Boris Johnson, the party now commands a 17-point lead in the polls over the Conservatives, more than enough to win a majority next year. But how much of this is true today, after four decades in which academia has gone from leaning Left to being overwhelmingly progressive? Wokeism might not yet be a term used by the masses but it is rapidly going mainstream. Take last week as an example. Excluding references to Luntz’s study, the terms “woke” or “wokeism” appeared in a large number of articles across a diverse array of UK media, from debates about sustainable investing, employee training, William Shakespeare and television advertisements to debates about local councils, Alien, Love Island, university reading lists, the England team and trigger warnings for university students, to name only a few.

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Shaw, Martin (2023-04-25). "Professors, Power and Projection: the Case of Matthew Goodwin – Byline Times". Byline Times . Retrieved 2023-08-22. If the political right wishes to win a large share of votes from these people, it needs to emphasise issues relating to immigration and the culture wars - rather than make the mistake of Trussonomics in thinking that we can return to Thatcherism. While the author recognises that some of Mrs Thatcher's reforms were good and necessary, the key faul Members of the old elite derive their social status from wealth, income, holidays and leisure time. Members of the New Elite increasingly derive their status from their luxury beliefs and their allegiance to radical ‘woke’ progressivism (a worldview that some of them try to claim does not even exist). They rally behind the leading advocates of this new religion and deride those who are critical of it. They claim to be committed to liberalism and pluralism, while simultaneously avoiding or shutting down debate with anybody who might hold different beliefs to their own. We welcome applications to contribute to UnHerd – please fill out the form below including examples of your previously published work. And that, many on the left have argued in recent years, is just what has happened. One of the most uncompromising analyses of “anti-working class radicalism” came in the American academic Catherine Liu’s acerbic tract, Virtue Hoarders.

Hassan also criticised the book' failure include even a single sentence on Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland: "Goodwin, it turns out, is not really talking about “British politics” on populism. Rather he is talking about English populism. Critically and unstated, Goodwin poses this English populism as speaking for and representing Britain, without once noting the fissures and tensions that brings forth." [15] The crux of this analysis is the counter-revolution being waged by the ‘traditionalists’ who feel that they have no say in the running of Britain and are looked upon with contempt by the ‘new elite’ who see themselves as morally and cognitively superior to the traditionalists and are embarrassed/ashamed of Britain and its history. The new elite cleaves to supra-national (and undemocratic) institutions such as the EU and cannot accept any rejection of their preferences further alienating the ‘traditionalists’ by labelling them racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis and whatever else is available to them in the pejorative lexicon of the left. Goodwin and his National Populism coauthor Roger Eatwell have argued about the USA that political polarization has been caused by "an increasing fixation or near-total obsession among Democrats and the liberal left with race, gender and ‘diversity’". [41] That there are such echoes across the decades should not surprise us. The image of a distinct, new elite, defined by its education and values, and standing over the common people, has a long history, popping up throughout the 20th century. The roots of the contemporary debate about the new elite lie in the 1970s. The late Barbara Ehrenreich published with her husband, John, an essay in 1977 in which they coined the term “ professional-managerial class” (PMC). There had developed, they argued, a new class of college-educated professionals, from engineers and middle managers to social workers and culture producers, that was distinct from the middle class of old but essential to the functioning of capitalism. The Ehrenreichs were hopeful that this class could be mobilised for progressive causes. They warned, however, that it could also give rise to “what may at first sight seem to be a contradiction in terms: anti-working class radicalism”. A couple of thoughts: the 18-24 generation is too influenced by the internet and yet to make important life decisions which affect other people (such as raising a family). I have also read that that age group is more easily scammed due to too much trust of the internet.Are you starting to understand that the unprecedented, top-down mandated experiment in population demographics called massive immigration was not a good idea? That such a utopian scheme was doomed to fail, as all the historical evidence indicated? What has caused the recent seismic changes in British politics, including Brexit and a series of populist revolts against the elite? Why did so many people want to overturn the status quo? Where have the Left gone wrong? And what deeper trends are driving these changes? In the UK the revolution began with Mrs Thatcher’s electoral victory in 1979 which began four deep sets of changes.

Things are beginning to change, with Keir Starmer’s acceptance of Brexit and focus on crime a sign that he grasps the need to reach out beyond London and the liberal enclaves. But unlike during the era of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the gulf over values is now being exacerbated by other, more recent developments.

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There is a huge swathe of Britain who put their trust in practical common sense and who can smell ideology when it tries to inveigle its way into decisions. That’s why these ideological proponents have to resort to threats to livelihoods and social media pile-ons to enforce their dogmas. They are the new aristocratic toffs. They lost touch with the values which are held by many people. The new minority elite have increasingly imposed their liberal cosmopolitan and progressive world view on the rest of the country and in doing so cut many other people adrift both economically and culturally from the new dominant world-view. As the new elite of university-educated minority in the big cities and university towns doubled down on these values, millions of others realised that their values are no longer recognised or respected by the people who now rule over them. In his new book, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, Matthew Goodwin reflects a recent intensification of claims that a small group of cosmopolitan oppressors (you may know them as the wokerati) are imposing their view of the world on everybody else, and that this influence is more significant than that of our most electorally successful politicians, much of the media, and the interests of business. Malik, Kenan (16 April 2023). "This obsession with a 'new elite' hides the real roots of power". The Guardian . Retrieved 25 August 2023. It is true that a new generation of thinkers and activists has helped consolidate a culture more given to identitarian thinking and more censorious in its outlook (though also one that is less racist, more accepting of women’s equality and more welcoming of gay people). To confuse that, however, with the claim that it constitutes the new ruling class is to have a weak understanding of how power works and where it lies.