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.

Values, Voice and Virtue is certainly a work of sociological insight. But it’s also a much-needed corrective. It gives voice to those whose values are scarcely heard or represented by the media. As Goodwin writes of these members of the devalued majority, ‘they no longer feel their voice is represented in the institutions; and they no longer feel that, relative to others, their group is recognised as having the same amount of social status, prestige, dignity and moral worth’. Goodwin replies to Cummings over new political party". Reaction. 16 August 2023 . Retrieved 26 August 2023. Football | Premier League clubs have agreed to ban gambling sponsors on the front of shirts from the start of the 2026-27 season. But while campaigners welcomes the move, they also said it was “incoherent” as gambling brands will still be able to advertise on sleeves and pitch side hoardings. a b "Gerry Hassan: Matthew Goodwin's take on the current state of Britain is flawed". The National. 2023-04-11 . Retrieved 2023-07-12. In Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, Matthew Goodwin claims that recent upheavals in British society (like Brexit) have emerged in response to the rise of a liberalised, globalised ruling class, or “new elite.” Goodwin’s emphasis on “culture wars” over empirical evidence fails to convince Vladimir Bortun.As of September 2022 [update] he serves on the Social Mobility Commission. [2] Early life and education [ edit ] 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] 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”.

In the last 20 years, as the gap between the group shorthanded as the 1% and everyone else has grown, academic studies of elites have grown with it. “It’s quite an old tradition,” said Mike Savage. “But it fell away in the 1980s. Recently, after Thomas Piketty and other economists starting talking about the 1%’s wealth, sociologists have started to look again for answers about who these people are.” It is a facet of globalisation that not only are there huge flows of people across national boundaries, there are concomitant huge flows of ideas too. And the facilitator of this flow is technology – because it is heedless of human scale notions, not just human superpositions, constructs if you like, such as nation states and national boundaries, but also the ‘constructs’ of nature like physical geography. But there’s something more – technology is shining searchlights on aspects our nature which we never knew existed and would have remained hidden otherwise. Only in America was inequality higher than under Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. London was made an open hub for business, tax havens, gangsters oligarchs and kleptocrats. A stateless elite seized power accordingly and the rest were left to rot. The British working class is exemplified by statistics on poor health, low life expectancy and East European level living conditions. I found this to be a fascinating and determinedly objective analysis of the changing political alignments in Britain today. It examines the widening gulf between the ‘new elite (typically liberal progressive graduates with left leaning views)that runs the country and its institutions and the ‘Traditionalist’ majority (mostly non-graduate, patriotic, culturally conservative). It charts the rise of this new elite over the past 60 years as they supplanted the old land owning, aristocratic elite of the previous era.Who benefits from deflecting away from material issues during the biggest living cost crisis in a generation? These value conflicts are also being exacerbated by the second big divide over voice, namely who has one and who does not. Over the past two decades, Labour has been seriously weakened by its decision to exclude the voices of working-class and non-graduate voters. This has been visible not just in Westminster but in media, creative, cultural and educational institutions, where the voice of these groups is usually only noteworthy because of its absence. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually.” Kenan Malik wrote that Goodwin's argument that members of what he portrays as the "new elite", including Gary Lineker, Mehdi Hasan and Sam Freedman, shape people's lives more than figures such as Rishi Sunak or Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England "is, to put it politely, stretching credulity". [8] Similarly, Vladimir Bortun wrote that Goodwin "fails to demonstrate that the people occupying the most influential positions in British economic and political spheres share a “radically progressive” outlook." [9] Matthew D'Ancona asked "Are Hugh Grant and Emma Watson really running Britain into the ground?", arguing "Maybe it helps the populist right and their cheerleaders to believe such nonsense." [10] Malik asserted that it was plausible that "Goodwin himself shapes public debate more than most of the "new elite" to whom he points". [8] Sunder Katwala suggested that Goodwin employs evidence selectively and argued that "The wish to rebut one-dimensional caricatures of the Leave tribe is a valid one, but Goodwin is not above dishing out caricatures of the other half of the country all the same." [11] Archie Bland has written that when critics point out that those in positions of political power have actively pursued the type of "anti-woke" politics that Goodwin approves of, "Goodwin and his allies argue that these developments are all part of a rearguard action to defend traditional values against an agenda driven by a shadowy minority" and that disagreement with this view is portrayed as "simply proof of their original thesis: that the new elite is out of touch." [12]

These ‘hyper-globalists’ have lost touch with the electorate they purport to represent and cater to. The values from unfashionable non-urban regions are undesirable and excluded in the voice of institutions such as academia, media, creative cultural institutions. Virtues of certain groups are upheld as desirable, honourable and rewarded with high status while others are slammed as ignorant ‘Karens and Gammons.’ In 2018, Goodwin along with other commentators including Eric Kaufmann, Claire Fox, Trevor Phillips and David Aaronovitch was due to take part in an event titled "Is Rising Ethnic Diversity a Threat to the West?" Some researchers argued that the event would encourage "normalisation of far right ideas" and criticised the framing of the title; [42] [43] [44] the debate was retitled "Immigration and Diversity Politics: A Challenge to Liberal Democracy?" [45]Given all of that, it might seem bold to argue that it is the sneering cognoscenti who rule the roost. But Goodwin and his allies argue that these developments are all part of a rearguard action to defend traditional values against an agenda driven by a shadowy minority. If anyone disagrees, that is simply proof of their original thesis: that the new elite is out of touch. Goodwin’s book is the best we know in analysing the strong tides in current politics and we offer the following paragraphs as brief guide to his ideas. For those who want a longer introduction Goodwin’s speech at the National Conservative conference last week is a good place to start. Daniel Lavelle spoke to people who have decided, or been forced, to live in caravans as rising rents and section 21 evictions make housing increasingly precarious for many. Nimo

Goodwin, Matthew; Ford, Robert (13 February 2009). "Prejudice is declining, but there is still huge support for the BNP". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 17 January 2012. Many would also agree with his view that this group was blind to the evidence that a majority would vote for Brexit in the 2016 referendum, arguably Britain’s defining anti-elitist event of the 21st century. metropolitan middle-class for its votes while the Conservative Party appeals increasingly to working-class, non-university educated voters in former Labour heartlands (the " red wall"). [20] Goodwin recommends that political parties "lean into" this realignment, by moving "left on economics and right on culture". [21] [22] [23] The morning after the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won the 2019 general election Goodwin tweeted "it is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on identity & culture." [24] Kenan Malik wrote that this view was based on an assumption the working class are socially conservative, and "the trouble with this argument is that the key feature of Britain over the past half century has been not social conservatism but an extraordinary liberalisation", citing examples such as attitudes to sexuality, premarital sex and interracial relationships. [24] The dissatisfaction has been fermenting for decades. There is little public trust left in social media so Russian bots aren’t to blame either. Rather there is a distinct period (begun under Margaret Thatcher|) that has culminated in a paper thin difference between the two political parties and leaves little in the way of traditional left/right democratic alternative. How many people ever preface a statement with – “Speaking as a …… ……” unless they believe that belonging to that specific, arbitrary group confers on them special insight, or a ‘right’ to speak, that is denied to those outside the group?Goodwin was the director of the Centre for UK Prosperity, itself an offshoot of the Legatum Institute, a pro-Brexit, libertarian think-tank funded by a New Zealand-born billionaire. He has had support for his thesis from fellow anti-elitists Lord Frost, the former diplomat and civil servant who was Boris Johnson’s chief Brexit negotiator; Melanie Phillips, a newspaper columnist since 1987; and Piers Morgan, a television presenter. Prashant, this is true, but needs the addition that these flows of Ideas are almost entirely from the West. The West basically created Philosophy and Psychology and individualism and Marx, existentialism, Feminism, and on and on.. Goodwin is a former senior fellow for the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, and was the founding director of the Centre for UK Prosperity within the Legatum Institute. [9] [10]