LAST week on these pages, I pulled back the curtain to reveal a new elite . . . and the article went viral.
Why?
Because I dared to call out a new class of left-leaning elite graduates who live in the cities and the leafy commuter belt, who have hoovered up most of the gains from an economy built around them, who dominate the institutions, who impose their values on others, and who exclude the voice of millions.
And the members of this new elite really don’t like to be called the new elite.
Despite often coming from privileged backgrounds, with their parents in the professional and managerial class, the new elite like to think of themselves as the oppressed underdogs — the brave souls who are taking on the “real” elite.
From tongue scraping to saying no, here are 12 health trends to try in 2023
This bizarre state of affairs was brought home to me after last week’s article spread far and wide on social media.
Remarkably, one Oxbridge graduate after another, many of whom have also gone to private schools, lined up on Twitter to claim they are not part of an elite.
The likes of think-tank “guru” Sam Freedman, author and broadcaster Mehdi Hasan and activist radio presenter James O’Brien (OK, he went to the top-notch London School Of Economics), among many others.
But they are an elite. They really are.
Shame and silence
As I say in my new book, whereas the old elite dominated economic power, the new elite now wield not just immense economic power but political, social, and cultural power.
With their dominance over the institutions, they shape the national conversation around their values, their tastes and their priorities while simultaneously shrieking, harassing, and trying to “cancel” anybody who dares express a different view.
This is not my personal opinion but is backed up by evidence.
The new elite, consistently, are the most likely to block, unfriend and distance themselves on Twitter, Facebook and in real life from people who hold different views to their own.
They just can’t handle it.
While they claim they are the most liberal, the most enlightened of all, they are often the most illiberal, the most likely to try and shame and silence those who disagree.
How to de-clutter if you have a beauty stash to last you a lifetime
Just look at what happened after Brexit when one Oxbridge graduate after another lined up to berate Leavers as ignorant gammons, thickoes and racists.
Or look at what happened before that, when the new elite in the Blair years told voters they were idiots if they questioned globalisation and mass, uncontrolled immigration.
Yet this too was wrong. As we now know, these things gutted the national economy, hollowed out communities, weakened families and unsettled ways of life. This is why over the last decade it’s become clear that millions of people are utterly fed up with the new elite.
They’re fed up with the strict, politically correct speech codes they use to try and control debate and silence others.
They’re fed up with how they’re imposing their increasingly radical woke values on others, proclaiming men can become women and women become men, that children should be able to change their gender without any supervision, or be taught there are 72 different genders.
And they’re fed up with the new elite’s general narcissism and misplaced sense of moral righteousness over others.
It is this general sense of exasperation out there in the country which explains, more than anything, why three specific groups have been rebelling against the new elite.
The first are people who did not join the elite graduate class, either by steering clear of the universities or going to a less prestigious “non-elite” university.
They’ve grown sick and tired with how the new elite doubled down on graduates like themselves while failing to invest or even respect those who follow a different path.
The second are older Britons who were born in another era and can remember a time before the new elite, like a drunk gambler in Las Vegas, went all in on hyper-globalisation, mass immigration, and woke ideology.
Badly managed
And the third are ordinary working-class Brits, the patriotic plumbers, electricians, mechanics and others who look at this new elite and no longer see a ruling class who are remotely interested in speaking up for people like them.
It’s these three groups which, over the last decade, joined together to rebel against the new elite by pushing through the rise of Nigel Farage’s national populism, then Brexit and then Boris Johnson.
None of these vehicles were perfect.
Brexit was badly managed. Boris ultimately let down the country.
And too many people who claim to speak for the masses in Westminster are secretly obsessed with turning Britain into an ugly Davos-on-Thames where elites prosper while workers are again pushed aside.
But at least these rebellions did give many people what the new elite have long denied them — a voice and a chance to reassert their values.
And this might not be the last time.
The new elite, as we learned again last week, does not respond well to being challenged.
But unless they do, unless they make more room for others, then challenged again they most definitely will be.
- Matthew Goodwin’s book Values, Voice, And Virtue: The New British Politics (Penguin) out now, £10.99.