Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

Product Information

Her brand-washing, gender and comparatively youthful support do important work in Eatwell and Goodwin’s narrative, providing a face of national populism that convincingly defies the prejudices of liberal elites. To be sure, there are people in universities, and journalism, and other places who have a degree of power – but they are not as cohesive or as dominant as that view suggests. After all, “only” 20% of Ukip supporters are happy to tell a pollster that black people are less intelligent than white. This radical turn, we are told, is a last howl of rage from an ageing electorate on the verge of extinction.

Matthew Goodwin

He traces the recent eruption of such sentiments back to the Thatcher era, which destroyed Britain’s traditional industries and economic boundaries, effectively internationalising the state. Did you know the UK runs a scheme that flies Ukrainian civilians here, gives them intensive military training, then sends them back as rookie soldiers with the basic skills they need to fight Russia? The Spectator magazine devoted its cover to the “new elite” and how “the woke aristocracy” is on a “march through the institutions”. The first major academic study of the Brexit vote, Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Unionhas since become one of the most highly cited studies on the subject.As Will Davies wrote in 2020, disdain for the humanities is a useful feature of contemporary conservatism since it helps “free marketeers to find common ground with nationalists … The figure of the publicly funded humanities graduate, whose cultural privilege grants them access to the London elite, fuels a paranoid fantasy that is now central to conservative ideology. Although one cannot know what disasters are about to occur, the hysteria provoked by Boris Johnson does not seem any greater than the hysteria provoked, in their different ways, by Enoch Powell, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson or Margaret Thatcher. It is both a garish picture of what the British right looks like when it has had one beer too many, and a sympathetic and occasionally touching account of the frustrationsof the white working class voters progressive culture and conservative economics have decided they can do without.

Friday briefing: Has a ‘woke aristocracy’ really taken

Their review of postwar political and economic history is informative and often compelling, providing clarity around a number of key debates within political science and political theory for the uninitiated. The Times says a fresh nurses strike is likely: “Unions looks set to reject final deal on nurses’ pay”. It exposes the postliberal concern for the working class as being as performative as the antiracism of the “new elite”. 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.The book's argument has proved to be controversial and it has attracted some highly critical reviews.