Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

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Good morning. There’s a new lefty elite running Britain, and they hate you because they think you’re a racist. That is the central contention advanced by the scholar of populist politics Matthew Goodwin, and if the idea was already looming in the Overton window before his attention-hoovering new book came out, it is now hauling itself onto the balcony and clambering through. But it is an odd hate in how complete it is. The Woke individual is trained to self hate so completely that they then turn it outwards, and so hate all who will not join in the hatred of all which is Western. They hate the West, they hate themselves, and they hate all who do not hate the West. 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. Each of these revolts won considerable support from ex-Labour voters who wanted less immigration, slower social change and more political influence, while no longer believing Labour represented “people like them”. Yet, too often, they were labelled racists, “ gammons” and “ Karens” for thinking this way.

Goodwin replies to Cummings over new political party". Reaction. 16 August 2023 . Retrieved 26 August 2023. As of September 2022 [update] he serves on the Social Mobility Commission. [2] Early life and education [ edit ] According to Huw Davies and Sheena McGrae, Goodwin's "concerns about wokeism are a recurrent theme in his output". Goodwin has described "wokeism" as "a pseudo-religion". He has acted as an adviser to the Conservative Party and in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership contest supported "anti-woke campaigner" Kemi Badenoch, referring to her as ‘one of the most interesting Conservatives in British politics for a very long time’. He supports the Conservative government's plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, [11] and has advised the party to raise “the salience of cultural issues”. Malik argues that Goodwin now advocates a politics that a decade earlier he would have described as "toxic". [46]Here are the headlines. I’m off on my holidays – Nimo will be with you on Monday. Have a great weekend. Five big stories What will eventually defeat this pernicious ideology is that its ideas are manifestly contradictory. To fully support one facet of woke-dom puts you on the wrong side of another facet. If you stand up to support feminist rights you fall foul of trans-rights etc etc 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. It has been 26 years since the British children’s television show Teletubbies aired on TV for the first time, with its infamous grassy hill, Sun Baby and 10ft tall aliens capturing the hearts of children all over. Like with so much TV aimed at infants, Teletubbies made no sense, but its saturated colours and catchy songs made it a mainstay in children’s entertainment.

it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.” As humans we have evolved to fight and survive, but when you take away the need to fight and all of your survival instincts have been catered for, what do you do? You find a new opponent to fight, no matter how small, and your survival instincts turn into neuroticism; going into overdrive to see monsters in the dark where there are none. Also take into consideration that family, relationships and community have also broken down which has accelerated this stage because people have no sense of belonging anymore so they go out searching for it in other places; this is why identity politics is so prevalent. The self loathing really is the defining feature, but it’s so self conscious… is it in any way genuine?

But just as new scrutiny has been applied to that rarified economic class, others have argued that other kinds of elite wield power of their own. One influential broad definition, from the American sociologist Shamus Khan: elites are anyone who has “vastly disproportionate control over or access to a resource”. Smith, Evan (30 April 2020). No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech. Routledge. ISBN 978-1138591677. Concerned about the increasing normalisation of far right ideas, over 200 scholars wrote an open letter criticising the event 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. 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.