Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

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Matthew Goodwin’s argument is that the vote for Brexit in 2016 and the general election result of 2019 were just part of a broader rebellion against the ‘new ruling class and the political project they have imposed on the country over the last fifty years’.

Financial Times where next for the Conservative party? - Financial Times

Matthew Goodwin is author of Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, which is published by Penguin. Embarking on a profound and ranging analysis of postwar British politics, Goodwin shows how the liberalising projects of the Thatcher and Blair years gave rise to new, cultural divides - over 'values,' 'voice,' and 'virtue' - which have now begun to define political debate and determine elections.One influential broad definition, from the American sociologist Shamus Khan: elites are anyone who has “vastly disproportionate control over or access to a resource”. Many 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”. 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. He makes a start by pointing out the massive rise in the number of people attending university, but universities are themselves becoming ever more 'liberal'.

Values, Voice and Virtue - Google Books

They are among the most likely to block, unfriend and insult anyone who exposes them to an alternative view. But there is such a lovely chemistry between Seydoux and Greggory, and between her and Poupaud there is real erotic languor and romance. They’ve doubled down on their existing beliefs while simultaneously denouncing these voters as an assortment of racist gammons, thick bigots and ignorant buffoons. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform.Members of other elites to the one Goodwin is interested in may not be as obvious as they once were. And over the past decade, many of these voters have felt pushed away from Labour by their growing awareness of the third big divide over virtue, how some institutions and activists today have simply come to see some groups in British society as more virtuous, more morally worthy, than others. Apparently, the 'new elite' are different from the old because they have Oxbridge educations, have a 'loud and dominant' voice in institutions, and have a sense of moral righteousness that makes them believe they are superior to non-elites. This new elite, according to Goodwin, has captured the country’s key economic, political and cultural institutions.

Labour is doing well, but it could still lose the election

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. While the author recognises that some of Mrs Thatcher's reforms were good and necessary, the key fault of Thatcherism is that it prioritises the market over the country, which, in turn, creates the conditions for greater globalization and feeds the demand for mass immigration.These three voting shifts don’t come from any particularly deep held belief in Brexit or any potential goals as much as a wish to lash out at The New Elite. 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. The cover displays a political schism and Goodwin hits us with stats on how many of the public consider Britain to be broken, seven in ten feel misunderstood and points to the three big revolts; namely the rise of UKIP, Brexit and Boris Johnson breaking down ‘the red wall’ in his crushing victory over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. I’m not going to name names, but how, for example, can you work at a newspaper like The Times, at senior levels in the BBC, in publishing, or at an Oxbridge or Russell Group university and still claim there’s no such thing as a New Elite?