Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

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People in all kinds of elite have a tendency to downplay their privileges,” said Savage. “My point would be: separate out what they say from the sociological truth. So when Liz Truss emphasises that she went to a comprehensive school [where she said children were ‘let down’] but it turns out to have been very good, we should interrogate that.” McGee, Luke (18 May 2023). "Why are some British Conservatives behaving like the next election is already lost?". CNN . Retrieved 18 August 2023. The book fails to demonstrate that the people occupying the most influential positions in British economic and political spheres share a “radically progressive” outlook

Goodwin, Matthew (2011). New British Fascism: The Rise of the British National Party. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415465007. The key difference between the traditionalists and the liberal elite is higher education. A large graduate elite has emerged with often extreme liberal views. Goodwin places the main blame on the universities which have morphed into ideological monocultures. When liberal cosmopolitan and progressive values are completely dominant, he argues, those who do not share them feel they cannot speak. Political minorities, such as conservatives and gender-critical scholars, are either marginalised or openly discriminated against. This group “creates, filters and determines what is or what is not acceptable or desirable within the national conversation”, Goodwin writes. “The new elite watched the prevailing culture be completely reshaped around their far more socially liberal values, tastes, political priorities, and interests.”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. 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. 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.

Freedland, Jonathan (26 October 2018). "Don't normalise the far right. But sometimes we must take it on". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 12 July 2023. 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.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. Cutts, David; Goodwin, Matthew; Heath, Oliver; Surridge, Paula (2020). "Brexit, the 2019 General Election and the Realignment of British Politics". The Political Quarterly. Wiley. 91 (1): 7–23. doi: 10.1111/1467-923x.12815. ISSN 0032-3179. S2CID 214063692.

Many still believe that the vote and will of the majority should count and that the emphasis on differences isn’t culturally cohesive. This often shows itself as a divide in pride over being British, a censoring of alternative views and the idea that the floundering British working class have somehow squandered their “white privilege.” Here are the headlines. I’m off on my holidays – Nimo will be with you on Monday. Have a great weekend. Five big stories Going native: Populist academics normalise the anti-immigrant right". Politics.co.uk. 31 October 2018 . Retrieved 21 August 2023. By contrast, the “traditional values” displayed by conservatives are presented as almost natural, despite the vast literature showing how notions such as “national identity” or “whiteness” may be constructed in a top-down way that benefits the elite. Goodwin’s argumentation bears another contradiction: if the new elite imposes its progressive values on the rest of society, was that not the case also with the old elite and its traditionalist values? Indeed, Goodwin fails to explain what exactly is wrong with questioning received knowledge about the past, the Empire, British identity etc. Shouldn’t social scientists welcome this kind of critical interrogation and debate? Isn’t history a science to be rewritten in the light of new evidence and arguments? Clarke, Harold; Goodwin, Matthew; Whiteley, Paul (2017). Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781316605042.An excellent book for understanding the current state of play in British politics. Matthew Goodwin argues that the economic liberalism of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government combined with the cultural liberalism of Tony Blair's New Labour regime has created a political culture in the United Kingdom that is now just as polarised as that of America or continental Europe. The divide is now mainly between the university-educated, socially liberal, and pro-mass immigration elite on the one hand and the culturally conservative national populists on the other. The latter group tend to be more right-wing on cultural issues, but more left-wing on economics.

A major theme of Goodwin's work has been to explain what he calls "the realignment" of British politics, which has seen the Labour Party becoming more dependent on the liberal, a b Malik, Kenan (22 December 2019). "The idea that the British working class is socially conservative is a nonsense". the Guardian . Retrieved 21 August 2023. Zoe Williams writes about the iconic, 83-year-old plastic storage container brand Tupperware as it teeters to the brink of insolvency. NimoMany people disagree with Goodwin – and we might think that the ease with which his ideas have spread is evidence against his claim that progressives are exercising such an iron grip on what is “acceptable … within the national conversation”. But he claims that his critics are simply in denial about the fact that they are part of the same elite that he says has cut ordinary voters adrift from a say in how the country is run. Today’s newsletter, with the London School of Economics sociologist and expert on elites Mike Savage, is about how much of this is true, and what other elites might also have a say. Postmodernism is a social pathology from Nietzsche, Existentialism, Solipsism, Marxism. Freud, Nihilism, Secular-Humanism, Marx, and likely Satan. Goodwin replies to Cummings over new political party". Reaction. 16 August 2023 . Retrieved 26 August 2023. 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.