"Nothing better illustrates how out of touch Britain’s New Elite are with the rest of us than the Gary Lineker furore"
writes Matthew Goodwin in the Daily Mail
My comments in blue.
There are moments in politics when the governing classes
pull back the curtain and reveal themselves to be dangerously out of touch with
the rest of the country. We have just had one such moment.
We are talking about a football commentator. The “governing
classes” fully support Matthew Goodwin’s views.
Had you listened to the hysterical support for Gary Lineker
after he idiotically compared Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plans to stop
illegal migrants crossing the Channel with Nazi Germany, then you might have
been left with the impression that the British people oppose this policy.
Gary Lineker did not compare Prime Minister Rishi
Sunak’s plans to stop illegal migrants crossing the Channel with Nazi Germany.
He said that the language used to talk about such policies was similar
to that used in Germany in the 1930s – i.e. during the lead-up to the worst
Nazi crimes. The support (or otherwise) of “the British people” (a YouGov poll suggested that the public thought the BBC were wrong to suspend Gary Lineker)
is A) a different question, and B) irrelevant to the morality of Sunak’s plans.
From his fellow sports presenters who refused to appear on
Match Of The Day in Lineker’s absence, to TV personalities such as Carol
Vorderman and Emily Maitlis, as well as the usual raft of virtue-signalling
politicians and pundits on the Left, the outrage over his very temporary
suspension from the BBC dominated the media for days.
Perhaps people who signal their virtue are able to do
so because they really are more virtuous than those who signal their maleficence?
Perhaps they simply agreed with Lineker.
‘I have never known such love and support in my life than
I’m getting this morning (England World Cup goals aside, possibly),’ gushed
Lineker. ‘I want to thank each and every one of you. It means a lot. I’ll
continue to try and speak up for those poor souls that have no voice. Cheers
all.’
And yet the truth is that most people think his views on
illegal migrants are plain wrong.
Is this true (see above)? Even if it is true that does
not make his views wrong (see the argumentum ad populum fallacy).
More than half of Britain, including at least 80 per cent of
Conservative Party voters, believe it is entirely acceptable to remove illegal
migrants from Britain and block them from returning to the country in the
future.
See again the argumentum ad populum fallacy. But that
aside, there’s a problem with the notion of “illegal migrants”. These are people
who cross the Channel in small boats (not in itself illegal) and request asylum.
The UK government has passed laws that kind of make this “illegal” but (as I understand
it) UK law may now be in breach of international law. A lot of this has yet to
be tested and I’m not aware of any successful prosecutions of asylum seekers
under the UK’s new laws.
How do I know this? Because I have been conducting polls
that show it to be true.
I think I prefer to take more notice of truly
independent polling by reputable bodies that don’t have a personal axe to
grind.
These are not just one-off opinions. Consistently, over the
past six months, while holding voter focus groups from the Red Wall to the Tory
shires, I have found that most people want a harder, not softer, approach to
dealing with the immigration crisis.
Remember that “holding voter focus groups” basically
means Goodwin discussing his views with (hopefully) random groups of people. It
is not an entirely worthless way of investigating how people think about various
issues but it is no substitute for objective and quantitative measures of
public opinion.
And only a small minority think it’s acceptable for European
courts and conventions to block decisions about Britain’s borders that are made
here in Britain by democratically elected British politicians.
Erm, it was democratically elected British politicians
who created these institutions and/or signed up to abide by their judgments. And
courts can’t really “block decisions about Britain’s borders”, they decide things
like whether or not we are complying with our own laws or with international
rules we have signed up to. Again, what the majority may or may not think here
is only tangentially relevant.
So, what explains the hysteria against the Prime Minister’s
plans on small boats?
The fact that they are arguably unethical, probably
illegal, and certainly unworkable?
The answer is the power of the elite minority that’s behind
it. And this is merely the latest example of how Britain and its institutions
have been taken over by a new ruling class which has lost touch with much of
the country it claims to represent.
Ah. We have “been taken over by a new ruling class”. I
thought we were ruled by “democratically elected British politicians”?
It’s not just on small boats but a wide range of issues. An
enormous gulf has now opened between those who dominate Britain’s politics,
institutions and culture, and the much larger number of people who have to live
with the consequences of their disastrous policies.
But our politics is entirely dominated by people who share
Matt Goodwin’s view on asylum seekers. Their “disastrous policies” include taking
years to process asylum claims (apparently in the mistaken belief that doing so
discourage asylum applications) and warehousing asylum seekers in hotels rather
than processing their claims and returning them to safe places like Albania (if
they come from a safe country and their applications are found to be unfounded)
or granting asylum and allowing those refugees to begin contributing to the UK’s
economy. After all, our “ruling class” is accepting record numbers of immigrants
(despite having ended freedom of movement). If numbers are the problem, we could
cut the number of immigrants to match the much smaller number of refugees.
As for our “institutions and culture”, what does Matt
Goodwin propose? A kind of new McCarthyism? “Are you now being or have you ever
been kind to a foreigner?”
The ever-higher numbers on mass immigration; the rise of an
oppressive ‘cancel culture’; the deeply worrying imposition of ‘woke’ policies
in our schools, universities and other public sector bodies; the denigration of
British identity and history; the obsession with diversity, sex and gender; none
of these commands popular support and every one of them has come about as a
result of this New Elite.
“The ever-higher numbers on mass immigration” are the explicit
policy of our current democratically elected government. They are doing exactly
what they said they would do after they ended freedom of movement. I don’t think
people like Gary Lineker are responsible for any of this.
Okay, “Cancel culture” is a problem. See how (for
example) Professor Kathleen Stock was treated at Sussex by smoke-bomb throwing
protesters in balaclavas. But smoke-bomb throwing protesters in balaclavas are
not exactly the ruling elite. In fact, the ruling elite has been busy making all
sorts of protest illegal. On the other hand, Gary Lineker was cancelled by the
BBC (for a while) and loudly decried by members of the actual ruling elite …
and by Matt Goodwin.
“The denigration of British identity and history”? I
suppose Matt G means teaching the facts about Britain’s role in things like
slavery, famines, subjugation of foreign countries etc?
“The obsession with diversity, sex and gender”? Well
this one is rather complicated! Just to take one example: J K Rowling – who is the
bête noir of many people who champion trans rights – is fully behind Lineker when
it comes to the plight of asylum seekers and when it comes to many other “woke”
causes. So the notion that there is a monolithic pro-trans-rights pro-asylum-seekers “ruling
elite” seems somewhat wide of the mark.
This chasm between those who rule us and much of the rest of
the population is already having profound consequences.
Again, “those who rule us” are people like Rishi Sunak
and Suella Braverman – the people who have Matt Goodwin’s and (according to him)
the people’s full support.
It is making Britain more and more difficult to govern and
leading to an increase in rebellions and populism.
I presume this is a reference to the mob setting fire
to a police car outside a hotel housing asylum seekers? But isn’t “populism” more
the endorsement (active or tacit) of, or stirring up of, such behaviour by politicians
and propagandists rather than the behaviour itself?
The rise of Nigel Farage, and the fact that 17 million
people voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum were, to my mind, direct
consequences of the disdain this New Elite holds for the majority.
But Matt Goodwin supports Nigel Farage’s views on asylum
seekers and his views on Brexit. In any case, the research suggests that there
are no simple (or single) explanations for the Brexit vote. Support for Brexit
does not correlate well with any other set of opinions or demographic category – save perhaps
for support for the death penalty (see e.g. Brexit Voters: Not the Left-Behind – from an academic who shares many of Goodwin’s values).
And when Boris Johnson won an astonishing mandate by
listening to voters, the New Elite took every opportunity to denigrate him and
his popular policies.
Boris Johnson was denigrated and then deposed by Matt
Goodwin’s heroes on his own side for breaking rules (some of which he had
created) and lying about what he had done. And the people who have replaced him
are far less liberal in their attitudes towards foreigners than Boris Johnson
is.
By ignoring the views of the majority, I believe it is
playing with fire. If things carry on as they are, the drumbeat of rebellion
will only grow — as I explain in my new book Values, Voice And Virtue: The New
British Politics.
“The drumbeat of rebellion will only grow”. Hmm. I
thought this was all about democratic expression? So if mob violence does start
to grow, I wonder which side Matt G will be on.
This sounds a bit like the man who appears in your restaurant
and warns you that you might be at risk from some other people setting fire to
it.
The title reflects what the New Elite is doing to ordinary
people. It is spurning their values and imposing its own ‘progressive’ nostrums
on them. It is stifling their voice by ignoring their opinions. And it is
failing to credit them for their virtues — of patriotism and community, for
example — by dismissing them as out of date and morally inferior.
“Patriotism and community”. Hmm! I mean Goodwin does
have a bit of a point here, but one that has also been made by “woke” commentators
like Owen Jones and Billy Bragg – both of whom support asylum seekers (and trans rights). Life is complicated!
The New Elite has been on manoeuvres for decades. It
consists predominantly of middle-class professionals who went to the most
prestigious Oxbridge and Russell Group universities, individuals who mostly
come from affluent and privileged families.
They tend to live in the big cities and university towns, to
marry and socialise with fellow members of the elite: people who, over the last
50 years, benefited handsomely from an economy that was reshaped around the
prosperous South East with an emphasis on academic rather than vocational
achievement.
Well yes, we still live in a class society and
individuals who come from affluent and privileged families tend to go to
Oxbridge and Russell Group universities and do better in life. But what is to
be done about this? And what has this got to do with refugees?
BTW, Gary Winston Lineker came from a family that ran a fruit and veg stall in Leicester Market and left school with four O levels.
Britain has always been dominated by an elite, of course.
But in days gone by the governing classes had much more in common with the
millions of ordinary people who shared their nation.
“In days gone by”.
Okay let’s take the 1930s since we’re on the subject.
The governing classes (including the Royal Family) were
hopelessly split between support for and opposition to Hitler. The ordinary
people were too – though many were also indifferent.
Even after we went to war, the divisions continued.
Winston Churchill (who was a great wartime leader who we were lucky to have but
also a white supremacist and antisemite) led an ultimately successful fight
against German fascism and much of the British governing classes. It's probably
true to say that “the ordinary people” only fell fully in line behind the war
effort after the end of the “Phoney War” and (later) Operation Barbarossa (though
we didn’t really have sophisticated polling going on in those days).
After the War, the ordinary people voted Churchill out
of office.
Again, it’s all very complicated and trying to apply Goodwin’s
simplistic analyses here would be ridiculous.
Certainly, they were very rich but they also shared the
instinctively conservative outlook of voters who believed in Britain, its
history, and saw the best not the worst in the country.
Some of us see the truth in our country – like the fact
the Churchill won a great victory over German fascism but also denied help to famine victims in Bengal to stop them “breeding like rabbits”.
The truth about Britain is complicated. There’s much to
be proud of and some things to be ashamed of.
This is what I mean by the ‘values’ in the title of my book.
The values of the majority chimed with those of the elite — both parties
understood and, to a certain extent, sympathised with each other.
Well yes. In 1930s Britain, I suppose most ordinary people
shared the ruling elite’s view that we shouldn’t let in "floods" of Jewish refugees
from Nazi Germany. Fortunately, some ordinary people (at Liverpool docks for
example) ignored the values of the majority and smuggled such people in. Many
lives were saved as a result.
In contrast, members of the New Elite are defined by values
that could not be more different — and foremost by their strongly liberal
views.
“Members of the New Elite”. Are we talking the ruling
elite (very much on Matt G’s side) or graduates from good universities or entertainers
in the public eye or what?
They have in common a tendency to prioritise the rights of
minorities over the rights of the majority and an insistence on rapid and
relentless social and cultural change — for example by redefining the
definition of a woman, or pushing through endless measures to boost diversity.
As noted, there’s huge controversy and differences of
opinion about “redefining the definition of a woman”[i]
among people who don’t support Matt Goodwin’s values when it comes to refugees.
But on diversity, a moment ago Matt G was complaining that people from poor backgrounds
are under represented in our institutions and national life. If we are going to
fix that, surely we need more measures to boost diversity? Or is making our institutions
more representative of our population only a problem when those involved are
brown or whatever?
They support the march towards globalisation — the closer
interdependence of economies across the world — which routinely puts the
interests of big business ahead of the national community.
“They”. Again, who is this “they”? Daniel Hannan?
They are less concerned about the notion of national borders
than most of us, which explains their strong desire for a much softer approach
towards the small boats.
I don’t even know what this means. We have a controlled
sea border with France, and also with NI (though it’s part of our nation), and
an open land border with the EU (in Ireland). These are facts not “notions”. I’m
not quite sure what any of this has got to do with our attitudes towards people
seeking asylum.
On many of these issues, the Left-leaning New Elite are
often in a galaxy of their own, with views — or ‘values’ — that are simply not
shared by much of the rest of the country.
Ah! So the New Elite is ruling and pro-globalist and pro-big-business and left-leaning and in its own galaxy? That explains it then.
And what really sets them apart from the old Right-leaning
elite is their open scepticism about the things that have long held Britain
together — our remarkable history, and our very distinctive national culture,
traditions and ways of life.
We do have a remarkable history: Neolithic farmers from
Spain via Belgium, Beaker people (probably) from central Europe, Gauls, Romans,
the Scotti (from Ireland), Saxons, Vikings, Normans (originally from
Scandinavia but, by then, from France), Flemings (from Belgium), Roma (originally
from India), Huguenots (France), South Asians, Irish people (again), Africans,
Germans (again), Belgians (again), Jews, Italians (again) … and, since the 1930s,
people from the entire world. All of these people have contributed to our national
culture, traditions and ways of life.
Whereas members of the old elite derived their sense of
status by projecting their wealth and inherited family connections, the New
Elite derives its self-worth from what it perceives to be moral righteousness
over others, whether in the present day or in the past — insisting wrongly, for
instance, that Britain is institutionally racist or that the Empire was
universally evil.
Well it’s hard to speak for the intergalactic New Elite
so (from now on) I’ll simply provide my own reflections:
Until relatively recent times, Britain was certainly,
and deeply, institutionally racist. It’s changed a great deal for the better in
my lifetime but there’s still work to be done.
It is evil to invade and subjugate people in other
parts of the world but I also recognize that we exported things like education
and democracy and advanced technology to some of those countries and thereby
did sometimes did much good.
Like everything, it’s complicated.
Unlike a large swathe of Britain, the New Elite disparages
its country and feels less attached than others to our shared national
identity. Its members are less likely to see Britishness as an important part
of who they are, and more likely to see it as a source of shame and
embarrassment.
I used to feel quite proud to be British. Post Brexit I
do find my Britishness more of an embarrassment when I mix with other
Europeans. I’m not sure how to fix this.
So there is a yawning gap between the values of the New
Elite and the majority. But what about the ‘voice’ — namely, do the majority of
people any longer feel they have a voice that is heard and respected in our
politics and culture?
Gary Lineker, in that tweet supporting the people who arrive
here on boats across the Channel, lamented the fact that these “poor souls”
have “no voice”. But my contention is that it is the majority of Britons who
now have no voice.
Well apart from the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail,
the Sun, the Daily Express, GBNews.…..
Over the past half-century, members of the new middle-class
graduate elite have not only reshaped Westminster and much of the prevailing
culture around their strongly liberal values. They have also, as I say, taken
over almost all of the most important and influential institutions, where their
voice now booms out to the rest of the country through a megaphone while the
voice of others is silenced.
Matt G mustn’t read any of our most widely sold
newspapers; or watch BBC Question Time, or listen to the Today programme, or have
noticed who currently runs the BBC or our national Parliament.
Just look around. The House of Commons, the civil service,
the creative industries, the cultural institutions, the BBC and a large swathe
of the media, the charities and the NGOs, the public bodies, and the
universities, are all now dominated by an elite graduate class who talk a great
deal about diversity but are themselves not diverse at all.
As just noted, the House of Commons and the BBC are
currently dominated by an elite graduate class who share Matt Goodwin’s enthusiasm for the indefinite incarceration of all asylum seekers (while we exile a few
hundred of them to Rwanda to show how tough we are).
And “diversity” again? I’m losing track of whether our
institutions should reflect the diversity of our population or should not. Our prime
minister and home secretary are on Matt G’s side, but neither of them are poor
and white it's true.
They went to the same schools, the same universities, share
the same values and a view that the voice of people who come from different
backgrounds, who hold different views, should either be silenced or stigmatised
as unacceptable, as an underclass of racists, gammons, Karens and bigots.
Well they all went to different schools and different universities
and have a range of values. But, yes, the elite graduates who dominate our
Parliament and who share Matt G’s values do despise poor people; but these elite
graduates have been busily engaged for many years in encouraging this demographic
group to blame their plight on foreigners. None of them openly refer to the underclass
as “racists, gammons, Karens and bigots”. They want those votes.
Today, a large majority of workers and people who do not
belong to the graduate class feel that ‘people like me have no say in
politics’. And they are right to feel this way.
A valid point and one often made by people like Owen
Jones – who disagree with Matt G on almost everything else he says.
The blunt reality in Britain today is that if you come from
the working class, have not graduated from one of the elite Oxbridge or Russell
Group universities, and hold a more traditionalist set of values, then you have
been pushed out of the national conversation about who we are as a country.
Again, has Matt G ever watched BBC Question Time?
Look at the Labour Party, for goodness sake, the ‘party of
the working class’. Whereas Labour used to ensure there was a wide range of
voices in our politics, ever since the era of Neil Kinnock the number of Labour
MPs who have previously held a working-class job has completely collapsed, from
64 to just seven today. Like one of those strange creatures on a David
Attenborough documentary, the working-class MP has become an endangered
species.
Working-class MPs have become an endangered species but
do any of those left agree with Matt G’s views on refugees?
Remarkably, Labour MPs are now more likely than Conservative
ones to belong to the graduate class and are a staggering 20 times more likely
than the average voter to have a degree from either Oxford or Cambridge.
Why this this statistic “staggering”? I’m surprised it’s
not greater.
And when it comes to their professional ‘experience’, the
largest single group of MPs in Westminster today are political careerists —
people who have only ever worked in politics.
Yep! This is a problem too. But, as Lenin asked, “Что
делать?”.And if there were more factory workers (also an endangered species) in
Parliament, is there any guarantee that such individuals would share Matt G’s
antipathy towards refugees?
We have entered, in other words, a ‘diploma democracy’, in
which the entire political system has been skewed around the graduate minority
at the expense of the forgotten non-graduate majority.
Well except that the forgotten non-graduate majority
regularly vote for the graduate minority who do share Matt G’s antipathy
towards refugees.
Understandably, this has left millions of voters with a
palpable sense they have no voice at all. When people look at the adverts on
television, the museums, the latest book releases, the BBC home-page, the
newspaper columns, they often feel they are living in a foreign country, a
world that is simply no longer interested in listening to, or hearing from,
people like them.
“The adverts on television”? The ones designed to
appeal to as many people as possible so they can sell more stuff? “The museums,
the latest book releases” – seriously? “The newspaper columns”. What? “They
often feel they are living in a foreign country” – well I suppose they are as
far as 99% of the world’s population is concerned. And we have a brown leader
too! But one who is fully on side with Matt G and all the white working-class
voters who hate refugees.
Just look at the adverts on television at the moment — do
they look like a realistic portrayal of Britain to you? Or do they reflect the
world of the New Elite?
Ah! “The adverts on television”. Again!
Yes they look like a realistic portrayal of Britain to me
– though not always literally. Families with brown and white people in the
same family are not as common as some adverts might suggest. But my interpretation
has always been that the advertisers are trying to represent the country as a
whole within the microcosm of a single family. I think this works quite well. And
the advertisers must be finding it does too or they’d do something else.
As polling shows, around half of viewers believe that ethnic
minority and LGBT communities are over-represented on television.
Viewers may believe this. That doesn’t necessarily make
it true.
And now this profound sense that people’s values and their
voice are being written out of the story, is being compounded by something else
— how today’s elite now think that only certain groups in Western societies
have virtue, while others are morally inferior and to be stripped of social
status.
Funnily enough, some of the strongest claims of moral
superiority I’ve encountered in life came from better off white working class
people talking about poor working class people in the “underclass”. The educated
“elite” always seem far more sympathetic to the people in the underclass. But
perhaps Matt G has different experiences.
Let’s be clear. Increasingly, the New Elite is reshaping
British society around an entirely new hierarchy. At the top, with the most
status, esteem and recognition are the elite graduates and racial, sexual, and
gender minorities, who score points simply because of their minority identity.
At the top we have Rishi Sunak (from a “racial”
minority) who got there because he is stinking rich and was up against a narcissistic
congenital liar and, unlike that narcissistic congenital liar, could actually answer
questions using coherent sentences when he stood beside him. He also got there
because we are no longer the institutionally racist country that we were – in a
past which Matt G seems to romanticize. And as I keep having to point out, this
top elite graduate from a racial minority wants us to be just as beastly towards
refugees as Matt G and all the white, straight, working-class, non-graduate “traditionalists”
who voted for Sunak's party do.
At the bottom are the white working class, straight men,
non-graduates, and those who cling to more traditionalist views, such as
supporting Brexit.
See above.
But what is “traditional” about supporting Brexit?
One powerful symbol of this is how white working class kids
have been treated. While elite universities have fallen over themselves to
recruit minority ethnic children, their white counterparts have been left
behind.
So I looked this up.
It seems that 24.2% of students getting AAA or above at A level are “Black and
Minority Ethnic” and the proportion of students at Oxford (who’d normally
require AAA or above at A level) who are “Black and Minority Ethnic” is 24.6%.
This looks about right to me.
The New Elite, of course, denies this is happening, but
recently the University of Cambridge was revealed to have initially advertised
a programme for under-privileged students only to those from minority ethnic
backgrounds, while failing to mention their white counterparts.
Reference? Anyway, if they did this “initially”, that
suggests they have now corrected their mistake. How common are such mistakes
and what do they really tell us?
Another symbol is how the New Elite has shovelled money into
expanding the universities while failing, for much of the past 30 years, to
invest seriously in further education and technical colleges. Once again, if
you belong to the wrong group you are simply not taken seriously, not shown
respect.
I agree! We should invest far more in further education
and technical colleges. Britain has always awarded far too little status to
people with manual skills. But if you really want to belong to “the wrong group”
(in the Matt G sense of “wrong”) I guess you need to be a brown, gay, middle-class,
graduate, modernist, refugee … or something?
People are not idiots. Up and down the country, many of them
can now keenly sense that their values, their voice and their sense of virtue
are being undermined, if not ignored.
I’m afraid that some people are idiots, but I’m to
polite to say whom I’m thinking of.
This is why, over the past decade, so many have been
rebelling.
You should see the French!
And unless the New Elite does a better job of listening to
the forgotten millions — by ensuring their values are represented in the
national conversation, by giving them a voice in the institutions, and by
showing them as much respect as they show to the elite and minorities — then
the cry of rebellion will be deafening. And the chance of successfully
governing this country will disappear altogether.
So, in summary, “the elites” have to start being even
more beastly towards foreigners and minorities or the forgotten millions will
form a huge pitch-fork mob and overthrow the democracy that gave us the Rwanda
policy?
############
As we have seen, not everything Matt Goodwin writes is
complete nonsense. Poor people and less well-educated people in Britain really are often looked
down upon. The question is whether such people looking down even harder on people in an even worse plight than theirs will help them in any way. And whether the rest of us should join in.
But most of what Matt Goodwin writes is complete
nonsense.
People in the UK vary: by wealth and income, by
education levels, by ethnicity, by age, by the social milieu they grew up in, by the amount of political power they wield, by
social attitudes and values, and so on. But none of these parameters correlate in
a simple fashion and if we delve into one of them – such as social attitudes and
values – we discover a plethora of new criss-crossing dimensions. There are left-wing
Brexiters and right-wing trans-rights supporters and supporters of every possible
permutation of views imaginable. Matt G’s notion that we all cluster into “the
elite” and “the people” is simply risible (as his attempts to characterize these "groups" reveal).
And this division between “the elite” and “the people” used in the service of a propaganda campaign to otherize another group of people really is redolent of the language of the 1930s.
[i] I suppose
he means redefining the word “woman”.
