Matt Goodwin： We're in the Post Populist Era
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Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
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172.1756
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8
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Summary
Matthew Goodman returns to the show for the 700th time to discuss his new book, 'Votes, Voice, and Virtue' and his thoughts on post-populism and what it means for the future of British politics.
Transcript
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Our institutions, not just politics, but media, creative industries, cultural institutions, universities, schools, are now in the hands of a new middle class graduate elite who hold values that are simply very different from the values that are held by millions of people out there.
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I polled them and said, look, what do you think about this? The SNP are trying to pass it. Everyone looked at it and said, this is insane. 80% of people said I oppose this instantly when you actually explain what it is.
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I mean, the level of disillusionment out there is palpable. You see it, right?
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We feel it. The reservoir of disillusionment, the fact that everybody is sort of just out there saying, none of these people really represent me. None of these people speak for me, speak for my values, represent my voice.
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We're talking about a level of demographic change and churn that the Brits have not seen before. And it's going to be very, very visible, very, very quick.
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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin.
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our brilliant guest today returns to the show for the 700th time. He's a political scientist and one of our favourites. He's got a new book out, which is this book here, Values, Voice and Virtue.
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Welcome back. We have had you on the show a lot.
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Yeah. It feels like more because we really, you always provide fantastic commentary on British and other politics.
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Yeah. And we always bump into each other at various events.
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Sorry. Maybe the one in the aftermath of the 2019 election was like a bit of a blur. So maybe I forgot that one.
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Yeah. So we've done a few. But my point is, we're always really interested to hear your take on things.
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Yeah. In addition to your books, you have a fantastic sub stack that I read religiously, actually.
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And because, I mean, actually, this will go out a few weeks after we record it.
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But today, your sub stack was about post-populism.
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And this is also something you touch on in the book, of course.
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And this is something I'm very interested in talking about.
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Because, first of all, define for us what you mean by post-populism and where is it happening and why is it happening?
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So I guess one of the things I've tried to do in the book is say we just had this remarkable decade, which has basically overturned a lot of the things we thought we knew about British politics.
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We had, in my mind at least, we had these three big revolts.
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And then we had the Boris Johnson 2019 election and that sort of post-Brexit realignment of politics.
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So in my mind, actually, what we've gone through is a sort of trilogy of acts.
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And in the book, what I've tried to do is say, look, where did these come from?
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And the short answer is that I argue we've got millions of people out there who are holding values that are basically not shared by this new elite in our country.
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But given where we are today, I do think that, you know, we are probably beginning now to see the emergence of what we might call the sort of post-populism era.
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So, you know, all of the leaders from the 2019 election, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon, Nigel Farage, have either been pushed out or they're lying low.
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We've got the technocrats, the grown-ups, the managers back in charge.
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I'm sure many of your viewers will have their own opinion about it.
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But big state, big spending, high immigration, embracing globalisation.
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There's no really longer any difference between left and right anymore.
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And voters, I mean, they're not basically being pushed apart by big divisive issues in the way that they once were.
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If I ask voters in my polls, what do you care about the most?
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They say cost of living, the NHS and the economy.
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I mean, these are more sort of unifying issues.
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So in my mind, you know, it raises this question.
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Are we actually leaving the era of populism in the 2010s?
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Are we moving into, you know, this new era of post-populism?
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In the same way, I think we are entering into potentially a new chapter.
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It's an interesting point, though, because simultaneously with the shift in the politics,
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as you alluded to in your answer there, the fact is people haven't changed how they feel about it.
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And so the fissures that were expressed through Brexit and, by the way, Donald Trump in America and the raging culture wars,
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So I'm almost questioning of your thesis, Matt, only in the sense that we've lived through this period of six or seven years
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where every time, and Francis is the perpetual pessimist and I'm the perpetual,
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and every time, finally, all this crap is over, something new happens and things just get crazier and crazier,
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whether it's the summer of BLM, whether it's COVID and our reaction to it,
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where suddenly a war breaks out in the middle of Europe and people have got all sorts of ways of looking at that.
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And I'm sort of thinking if the underlying disagreements within the body politic are still there,
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aren't we just waiting for another thing to go wrong and then there's going to be another big explosion?
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Yeah, I mean, in my mind, the big challenge we have in our society, like all Western democracies,
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is what I call in the book the new elite, that we are basically in a situation now where our institutions,
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not just politics, but media, creative industries, cultural institutions, universities, schools,
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are now in the hands of a new middle class graduate elite who hold values that are simply very different
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from the values that are held by millions of people out there.
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And one of the things I try and argue in the book, at least, is that, you know,
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it's not just that over the last 10 years, this new elite have sort of drifted away from everybody else
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It's also that they openly exclude the voice of other groups in society, workers,
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people who haven't passed through the elite universities,
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people who hold, let's say, contrarian beliefs, maybe people who question the woke orthodoxy
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or the radical progressive outlook that dominates the institutions.
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And that is why people have been turning to these revolts, because they've been saying,
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look, hang on a minute, I want to reassert my values.
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I want to reassert my voice in the national conversation,
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because I don't really feel that people like me are in this conversation.
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And I think that's basically what's been happening over the last decade.
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And whether it's Nigel Farage, whether it's Boris Johnson, whether it's the Brexiteers, whoever,
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you know, for many voters, these were imperfect leaders for those moments.
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But out there, you know, we've got, you know, large majorities of people who are saying,
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look, left and right don't really speak to me anymore on these issues that you mentioned around
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culture and identity, what we're teaching kids in school, borders, security, community.
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A lot of voters are still saying they don't speak for me anymore.
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And I think, you know, we're maybe not over populism, but I think we're sort of in a brief phase,
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And we can at least maybe take stock of the last decade.
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And, you know, I'm sure we'll be back there maybe sometime soon.
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Isn't it quite dangerous, though, if you think about it?
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Because what you're essentially talking about, Matt, is this large swathe of the population
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Yeah, well, so one of the things that I show is that most of our politicians lean much further
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to the cultural left and much further to the economic right than most voters out there.
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So conservatives, why have conservatives responded so terribly to the realignment of politics?
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We said there is a unique historic opportunity here for Boris Johnson and the conservatives
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I would suggest, as I argue in the book, is that because conservative elites basically
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are too culturally liberal and too economically liberal to connect with the voters who are
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looking for somebody to reassert their values in the system.
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And so all we've really had since Brexit is a continuation of what you might call the liberal
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consensus, which has basically dominated British politics for much of the last 30, 40 years.
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I'm open to, I accept the idea that, you know, Thatcher's reforms, in my mind, at the time,
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But what she did is she injected this radical economic liberalism, deregulated the economy,
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liberalized finance, embraced globalization, or what Danny Roderick has called hyper-globalization,
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the routine prioritization of big business, of big corporates over the national community.
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And Blair then came along and he injected radical cultural liberalism.
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He said, hey, we're going to strip away the borders of the national community.
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We're going to take meaningful choice out of politics.
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Left and right are essentially going to become the same thing.
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Brexit, populism, the realignment were really an attempt by voters to break that consensus,
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And what we can now see is that actually those revolts have failed to do that.
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And that the elite, the new graduate elite, socially liberal, if not radically progressive,
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has reasserted its political and cultural power and pushed back that rebellion.
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Do you think that part of the reason why things aren't as heated anymore is because of the Brexit
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Yet we look at countries like Italy, like Spain, and they're very much still in the throes of populism.
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Yeah, I think it's remarkable that Britain now is one of the only Western democracies to not have a
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And when I wrote my last book, National Populism, a lot of people were critical.
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They said, well, these movements are going to be a flash in the pan.
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France, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary.
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Record levels of support for national populist parties.
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Meanwhile, the Republicans fell short in the US, but they took back the House.
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Ron DeSantis now or Trump probably have a realistic chance of winning the presidency next year.
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And the reason for that is because the Conservatives basically hoovered up Nigel Farage's vote.
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They hoovered up a lot of these voters who took a punt on Boris Johnson.
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And they said, look, if you're going to be the guy that's going to shake up this consensus, if you're going to deliver Brexit,
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if you're going to reform immigration, if you're going to push back against the woke, we're going to give you a chance.
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Johnson did the reverse on a lot of that stuff.
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I mean, one of the untold stories about British politics today, which I don't think many people out there have yet realised,
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is the extent to which Boris Johnson and the Conservatives liberalised the immigration system in Britain
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to the point that we now have 504,000 as a net migration level, the highest we've ever had.
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And just to make the point, they promised that it would go down, David Cameron promised, to the tens of thousands.
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So what's happened is British Conservatives, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and others,
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have been gaslighting the British people because what they've been saying is we're going to control immigration,
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And then when they ended up in power, they said, well, actually, we didn't mean lower.
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But what is clear, and look, I'm running polls every week.
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Most people out there want immigration lowered.
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And the worst bit of all of it is Johnson not only liberalises migration to this unprecedented extent,
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but he even does stuff like removes the requirement for British companies to advertise jobs in Britain.
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So what you see, contrary to the desire through the Brexit vote to put the national community first,
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is you basically see Conservatives, perhaps best symbolised by Liz Truss,
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kind of doubling down on this hyper-globalisation, mass immigration, London-centric model built around financial services,
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and basically putting their fingers up at many of the voters who turned to them in 2019 and thought,
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well, gee, maybe these are the people that are going to break up the consensus.
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So I suspect that the real winner at the next election won't actually be the Labour Party and Keir Starmer.
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It will be a lot of people saying, you know what, I tried to change the system.
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Matt, we had Nigel Farage sitting in that very seat a few weeks back,
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and he actually said that the reason that populism, not that it failed,
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but it didn't achieve what it could have achieved, and in particular UKIP,
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was because of the two-party system, which is impossible to break.
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Do you think part of the reason that populism founded is because of that?
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And if you look at our European friends, they all tend to have proportional representation.
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That's part of the story, and I've spent a long time following Farage's movement,
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One of the first books that I did was about it.
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And, you know, the European Parliament elections under a proportional system
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were the springboard that he shrewdly used in 1999 to get visibility.
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And then one of the ironies of Brexit is that a moment that was supposed to lead to the reform
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of our politics made our politics more elitist, because it took away the European Parliament
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So the only way you can change a system now is through first-past-the-post-general elections,
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which is an impossible thing to do, or build up through local elections, which has been
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And that's why, I mean, only last week, in early 23, I was in a meeting with Conservatives
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who are now beginning to realise the only way they can actually bring about meaningful change
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within the British system is to change the dominant faction within the Conservative Party,
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which is to basically spark an internal battle with Liberal Conservatives, or self-styled
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progressive Conservatives, and to try and reassert the power of what we might call national
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Conservatives, and to reshape the Conservative Party from within.
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They are saying now that is the only way they will be able to assert power and change the
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And for Farage and others who are on the outside, I mean, the reality now is they are probably consigned
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to taking 5% to 10% of the vote at the next election, making life much more difficult
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The barriers to entry have become a lot higher for the likes of Farage.
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So you don't see reform coming in and then taking a chunk and holding the Conservatives'
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feet to the fire to actually get them to be more conservative?
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It's going to be very, very difficult for them because I think it's going to be difficult
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But one is that I personally don't think that the populace in Britain ever truly understood
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the constituency that was wanting to vote for them.
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They were saying, look, our approach on crime is a joke.
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The institutions are disproportionately dominated by elite graduates who basically hold values
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So on the culture stuff, they were basically where they needed to be.
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On the economic axis, however, a lot of them were basically Thatcherites, were basically
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focused on lowering tax, deregulating financial services, being fairly comfortable with big
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Now, if you look at the Republicans in the US, if you look at Maloney in Italy, if you
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look at what's happening in France or Sweden, actually, the nature of conservative politics
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You know, some conservatives today have grasped the fact that they cannot simply offer an anti-state,
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low-tax, pro-business message that the world has moved on.
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And so national conservatives are saying the time is now here to make the case for an active
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state that can intervene in the economy to make things fairer, that is sceptical of business,
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especially when business becomes political, especially when business starts to promote
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values that are seen to be anti-conservative, and which is much more realistic about globalisation
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I mean, this is one of the things I talk about in the book is how basically Thatcherites
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became so obsessed with free trade and globalisation that they lost sight of the damage it was doing
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I mean, globalisation wasn't just negative for economic reasons.
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It smashed communities in areas in Northern England that were subjected to higher imports
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The result was not just lower wages, was not just a lower share of the national income
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It was also weaker relationships, higher rates of family breakdown, higher rates of alcoholism,
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drug addiction, people being pushed onto welfare benefits.
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Now, conservatives, I thought, you know, care about community, care about family.
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But too often I meet conservatives who routinely prioritise the market and globalisation and free
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trade over these issues around community and family.
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And I think if you look at just how much territory conservatives have ceded over the last 10 years,
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I mean, essentially, conservatives have allowed issues such as family, children's welfare, women's
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rights, history and national identity to be reframed as culture wars.
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I mean, it is one of the biggest retreats in recent political history.
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They've completely lost all of that territory and are now on the defensive and are having
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to make the case for why we should be allowed to talk about what we teach kids or whether we
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should be allowed to feel uncomfortable with kids being exposed to drag queens or whatever
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So they've completely, you know, lost that space, which again goes to show how I think
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they've been far too focused on these issues like globalisation and free trade.
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Matt, can we come back to the economics of this?
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Because, I mean, as you know, I'm not conservative, but on the economic side of it, I'm always very,
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Because my concern is, and we've seen it with, you know, we're seeing these lockdown
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The bigger the government, the more the, you know, the government can, you know, they'll
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give you money, but they're also going to tell you what to do a lot.
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And I really don't want that as much as it can be avoided.
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But am I right in thinking that I'm basically in the wrong country for that world view to
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ever get a fair hearing in terms of the national political conversation?
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Is there any constituency of people in this country who'd quite like to, you know, make
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I mean, let's take, for example, the Liz Truss worldview.
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Let's have a small state, low tax, and let's roll back the frontiers of government.
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When Liz Truss was in power, I looked at the data on her position and concluded it was kind
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of like a 6% to 10% of the population position, roughly about 6% to 10% were holding that kind
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In Britain, most people today are actually pretty comfortable with the state, with spending
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on, as we are, with big spending on the NHS, with public services.
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You know, the libertarian instincts, if you want to call it that, are actually very fringe.
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So when I say national conservatives need to revise their relationship with the state,
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what I'm not saying is that national conservatives should be suddenly pro-government and have
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What I mean is, I think there's an acceptance on the right of global politics now that they
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are going to have to use the state in order to intervene in institutions in the marketplace
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So an example might be a Ron DeSantis in Florida using the organs of the state to intervene to
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try and rectify how we teach kids certain issues.
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Or it might be the UK government intervening using the state to create a mechanism whereby
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academics and those people who hold non-conformist views who may be a gender critical or, you know,
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don't want to go along with the woke orthodoxy, that they don't get sacked.
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So I think that debate now about, you know, conservatives using the state in order to try
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and intervene has become much more, much more prominent.
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You won't meet many mainstream US Republicans today who are advocating a Reagan-type view of
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Conservatism is changing in big ways, in important ways.
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I know you had Yoram Hazoni on the show, and, you know, he's often made that very argument.
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Matt, aren't we really just talking about the political system no longer being fit for
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If it doesn't represent the people that it should, then quite frankly, what's the point?
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Well, I think the issue, and I talk a lot in this about the book, the issue is that the
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institutions have basically been taken over by new middle-class graduates who tend to come
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from privileged families and share the same values.
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What we are seeing is what academics call education polarisation.
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So graduates have gradually, graduates have moved sharply leftwards, and non-graduates
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are basically moving rightwards or staying where they are on cultural issues.
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But Matt, is that fair, though, saying moving gradually leftwards?
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Well, in some cases over the last 10 years, they've moved very quickly to the left, the
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so-called Great Awakening, where white liberals, noticeably in the US, have doubled down on
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So they have become much more convinced racism's a major problem, that African Americans and
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other minority groups are being discriminated against.
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And they've become more concerned about those issues than minority groups.
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So this Great Awakening is really important, because if those same groups disproportionately
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dominate institutions, they've taken the institutions with them too, which is where
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we can see the debates about the New York Times, the BBC, and others.
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Because these institutions have now really become such an echo chamber, they've become so
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narrow in the range of voices that are included within them, that if you're working class, if you
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haven't gone to university, if you come from the small towns, medium towns, well outside
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of London, if you hold culturally conservative small C values on issues like crime, immigration,
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sex and gender, Britishness, who we are, you are probably looking at our advertisements, at
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our museums, at our political debates, at the bestseller lists, in the bookshops, and our
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writers, and our celebrities, and you're probably thinking, what the hell's going on?
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Because they are reflecting the values of this new elite, they're not reflecting the values
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And Matt, is there a, you know, because it's very hard to judge these things, because those
00:25:38.640
of us who are quote unquote, very online people, we see, I think, perhaps a slightly different
00:25:45.320
Is, do you see in your, in your polling, and in your research, a sort of backlash forming
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I mean, what, what, what do you see differently?
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I'm just curious as to how, what, what, what's the side that you see that's, uh, well, what
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I see is an increasing, and it's interesting, because a lot of people weren't, wouldn't have
00:26:08.460
expected this, but we just had Lawrence Fox on the show.
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And when we asked him our final question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking
00:26:16.440
And I do see a lot of that online, where people who oppose wokeness are now starting to feel
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that the only way to deal with the problem is to become the thing that they're fighting,
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to cancel people, to, um, to get offended by words, to try and, you know, prevent certain
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conversation from even being had to, et cetera.
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Now, this could be a completely online thing that we're not seeing, but I, but that is
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I haven't seen too much of that, but I think there's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest
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that conservatives and center-right parties have not really known what to do with this
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And you can see that very clearly with the British conservatives.
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I mean, they have floundered, they have completely failed to understand where voters are on many
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We are, we are talking against the backdrop of the fall of Nicola Sturgeon and, uh, what
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a remarkable, uh, week that was in, in British politics.
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Um, and you know, what was interesting is before that, everybody said to me, you know,
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this culture war stuff doesn't matter, doesn't make a difference.
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It's all generated by right-wing culture warriors and nobody's interested.
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Then you look at the gender recognition reform bill that was brought by the SNP and it's
00:27:39.080
A lot of voters said, you know, this isn't a top five issue for me.
00:27:42.280
But then when I polled them and said, look, you know, what do you think about this?
00:27:47.900
Everyone looked at it and said, this is insane.
00:27:53.520
When you actually explain what it is, let's let 16 year olds legally change their gender
0.99
00:27:59.580
Let's let kids change their gender after living in that new gender for only a couple of weeks.
1.00
00:28:05.660
You know, mums and dads were like looking at this thinking, this is insane.
00:28:08.820
And the moment you actually put these woke issues in front of people and they really think
00:28:15.460
about it, you begin to see the scale of the opposition to it.
00:28:18.640
Another example is let's rename pregnant women pregnant persons.
00:28:21.880
That's a 5% issue, meaning only 5% of the country think that's a good idea, right?
00:28:26.520
So I've been just polling all of these little, these policies that we associate with wokeism.
00:28:31.320
And the key point is, if you look at the US, the lesson is for politicians who want to
00:28:36.600
step into those debates and want to politicize those debates and want to turn up the volume
00:28:41.600
on those debates, as we've seen in Virginia, California, Florida, there is an ample market,
00:28:48.820
big market for that, for the space that exists for that.
00:28:54.460
Talking about the rights of kids, talking about women's rights, it's not a culture war.
00:29:02.260
So I think that's where our debate has gone a little bit wrong.
00:29:05.940
And why conservatives, you know, have just shot themselves in the foot, because they've
00:29:10.580
not really acknowledged where people are on a lot of these issues.
00:29:14.000
And, you know, we talk a lot about Kemi Badnock, and we talk about, you know, these individuals
00:29:21.240
But in reality, the whole Conservative Party should understand this.
00:29:25.640
It shouldn't be this hard to convince a Conservative Party to get involved in these debates.
00:29:33.640
But as it stands now, Labour stand a very good chance of winning the next election, particularly
00:29:38.220
when you see what's coming out with the telegraphs and the lockdown files, etc.
00:29:43.260
It's only going to weaken the Conservatives' chance of winning.
00:29:46.920
So that being the case, things are only going to get worse, aren't they?
00:29:49.880
Well, the Labour Party is having a really good time, averaging just close to 50% in the polls,
00:29:58.840
You ask voters, who do you want to be Prime Minister?
00:30:16.640
I mean, the level of disillusionment out there is palpable.
00:30:23.100
But the reservoir of disillusionment, the fact that everybody is sort of just out there
00:30:28.720
saying, none of these people really represent me.
00:30:31.060
None of these people speak for me, speak for my values, represent my voice.
00:30:35.500
I was running focus groups in the Red Wall a couple of weeks ago.
00:30:39.760
And I sort of said, you know, OK, so how do you feel about how the country's going?
00:30:43.860
First 20 minutes, everybody's screaming at the Conservatives, can't stand the Conservatives,
00:30:59.700
There's still a disconnect, I think, between Labour and the country.
00:31:02.900
And I think there are two areas where people are suspicious of Labour.
00:31:08.400
And the other is, can Labour manage immigration?
00:31:11.000
And those two issues obviously really matter for people.
00:31:16.420
If you talk to people around Sunak, they'll say he's cultivating an image as the quiet Prime
00:31:32.180
He's gambling that inflation will fall from 10% to below 5% by the end of the year.
00:31:42.340
He'll go into 24 and he'll say to people, you know, we're turning the corner.
00:31:49.160
That will be the sort of, you know, the narrative.
00:31:52.120
But I still, every time I talk about Sunak and the Conservatives, and you can see it in the data,
00:32:02.780
You know, I think people are just frustrated, utterly frustrated with the political class.
00:32:07.300
And it goes back to what I talk about in the book.
00:32:09.400
I mean, we've never really had a political class that has been this dominated by people from particular groups.
00:32:18.660
I mean, university graduates and political careerists, people who have only ever worked in politics.
00:32:27.440
But, you know, in the old days, the elite also typically went into politics having done other things.
00:32:34.460
You know, different jobs, different things, you know, running companies, being out there.
00:32:41.920
And so this, the political class in my book has become much more homogenous, much more uniform, very narrow.
00:32:49.320
The range of voices in Parliament, the range of voices in the media, in our culture has become much narrower.
00:32:55.540
And maybe, as you say, maybe you're right, maybe the conversation really is happening online, rather than in the public square, in the main arena.
00:33:04.660
And Matt, this dominance by a particular worldview, if we assume that Labour are going to win the next election, which is not guaranteed.
00:33:11.560
When we interviewed David Davis the other day, he said, I'm very optimistic.
00:33:14.880
I think we've gone from one in 10 to one in five.
00:33:19.180
So even Conservatives don't necessarily feel very confident about their party's chances.
00:33:27.360
Isn't this actually a much bigger problem for Keir Starmer?
00:33:30.460
Because that elite of the middle class educated people, they are going to be expecting him to come in and deliver on all of their work priorities.
00:33:42.020
And I don't think he's going to be able to do that without sparking a major rebellion with the country at large.
00:33:46.760
I think you saw that in the reaction to Scotland.
00:33:49.300
I mean, to his credit, Starmer said, look, I think allowing 16-year-olds to legally change their gender is not the way to go.
00:33:57.840
Lisa Nandy followed up shortly afterwards saying we should allow 13-year-olds to legally change their gender.
00:34:05.960
I mean, we have entered a politics where the activist space has become dominated by the sort of Brahmin left, the high income, highly educated, not just socially liberal, but radically progressive activists.
0.65
00:34:20.500
And that is severely constraining where left-wing parties can go.
00:34:27.300
I mean, one of the problems facing Labour is most of their votes are still concentrated in the cities and the university towns, which is why Starmer's going to have to make some headway in non-London England, unless they can get big gains now in Scotland, which would offset that.
00:34:43.460
And to do that, he needs to talk to voters still about the cultural dimension.
00:34:47.040
Now, when he came out recently and said, I've got five missions, which is interesting because Rishi Sunak said he's got five tests.
00:34:54.280
So you've got, you know, these big five pledges on both sides.
00:34:58.160
Starmer didn't mention immigration at all, didn't mention small boats, talked about crime, a little bit like Blair, tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
00:35:08.360
But I do think Labour still have left a big open goal for the Conservatives.
00:35:12.980
If the Conservatives were smart enough to kick a football into it, they probably would have a chance.
00:35:18.280
Because I think this issue is only going to become more important, especially as the cost of living crisis fades from view.
00:35:31.980
You know, we get through, let's hope, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis.
00:35:37.780
We begin to get back to some sense of normality.
00:35:40.900
And then I think people are going to realise that the pace of change in Britain, because of the things that have been unleashed, I think they're going to find that very, very difficult, very challenging.
00:35:52.700
We're talking about a level of demographic change and churn that the Brits have not seen before.
00:35:58.740
And it's going to be very, very visible, very, very quick.
00:36:03.160
And that's going to raise all kinds of political effects.
00:36:06.280
Before we go any further, I just want to say that I think it's quite unfair.
00:36:10.080
Lisa Nandy was only reflecting her constituency of Wigan and their opinions on the agenda.
00:36:16.280
But isn't part of the problem as well is that you look at these major political parties, Conservative Labour,
00:36:23.680
and essentially they are a union of people who in many ways believe completely different things.
00:36:31.060
If you look at the old school left of Labour, typified by, let's say, you know, Tony Benn, Barbara Castle,
00:36:37.860
and then you look at Asharka, that is a union which doesn't really work because they believe completely different things.
00:36:46.180
And the same with the Conservative Party where you've got the woke progressive Conservatives
00:36:50.840
and then you've got the old school Conservatives, the One Nation Tories.
00:36:58.820
Well, I mean, politics has become, politics has moved into a very different era, a different chapter.
00:37:07.160
I mean, the first century of politics was primarily economic.
00:37:15.620
Culture and identity have really come into this and crossed over that economic axis.
00:37:20.600
So parties have been, you know, facing these cross-cutting divides and it's not been easy
00:37:27.040
because we're also in a majoritarian first-past-the-post system.
00:37:30.300
We don't have proportional representation where the Conservatives would be two parties,
00:37:34.580
the Labour Party would be two parties, maybe three parties.
00:37:37.620
So they're all forced to coexist uneasily and that's not an easy thing to do.
00:37:43.760
I mean, Labour and the Conservatives basically were born against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution.
00:37:48.460
I mean, they have been shaped by a history that is very different from where we are now
00:37:54.560
and they've been struggling to adapt to this new climate.
00:37:57.480
If you look across Europe, many of the parties that have been really successful recently
00:38:01.640
have been entirely new parties that have been much more flexible, much more able to speak to the constituencies today
00:38:10.920
You know, you look at whether it's Macron, whether it's Maloney, you know,
00:38:14.600
these parties are, you know, pretty new, flexible and can take on, you know, the monopoly.
00:38:21.540
We don't really have that and our system makes it much harder.
00:38:24.340
So the challenge is going to be whether the people who are within those parties can change the dominant factions within them
00:38:33.420
and can they actually try and reposition them, you know, in an important way.
00:38:40.000
I mean, the US Republicans would be an example of that.
00:38:42.160
I'm not saying the British Conservatives should become a Trumpian party,
00:38:45.840
but the US Republicans have fundamentally changed their axis, right?
00:38:53.700
Maybe we're at a point now where both Labour and the Conservatives need to adapt
00:38:58.760
and readjust to this new reality of where we are.
00:39:04.140
Do you think as well we're going to see a rise of the hard right,
00:39:10.020
as typified by Marie Le Pen, who did very well in the French general election?
00:39:14.300
I don't think people were aware of how well she actually did
0.75
00:39:20.780
Do you think we're going to see that in the UK?
00:39:24.000
I think one of the things I've talked about in the book is the restoration of our civic culture.
00:39:29.560
And it's worth remembering what is it that makes Britain different from the French and the Germans and the Italians.
0.89
00:39:35.040
And one of the arguments from the 50s is that we have a very different political culture.
00:39:43.020
I mean, you know, we have historically prioritised consensus over conflict.
00:39:48.200
We've prioritised moderation over messianic figures.
00:39:51.760
We have prioritised politeness over polarisation.
00:39:56.140
And that was one of the big arguments in the 50s.
00:40:03.320
Spain and Portugal would descend into authoritarianism.
00:40:06.520
And why is it that the Brits have never really done that?
00:40:10.680
You know, the British Union of fascists went nowhere.
00:40:16.480
The National Front in the 70s never won a seat in the first part of the post-election.
00:40:25.380
So, you know, we have had a very different politics.
00:40:30.440
It is about our culture that we have historically put an emphasis on this civic culture.
00:40:36.020
And I do think maybe that is beginning to return in some way that after the last decade,
00:40:42.160
the polarisation, the division, I think, you know, maybe, you know,
00:40:46.180
the Brits are returning to that culture and maybe saying, you know what, okay,
0.81
00:40:50.160
there are these loony wokesters on Twitter and these nutters over here.
00:40:54.980
But actually, the moderate middle, you know, is perhaps beginning to say,
00:41:06.820
Well, that is why I talk, as you mentioned, about the post-woke and how that comes about.
00:41:12.060
And that will take new institutions and ecosystems.
0.92
00:41:14.340
And I'm very hopeful and I hope that what you're saying is correct.
00:41:17.760
The one challenge to what you and I are both saying, I suppose,
00:41:22.580
is the extent to which our culture is now dominated by American culture.
00:41:28.500
And all it takes is the big orange menace to run, which he will.
00:41:38.340
And, I mean, God only knows what happens then, right?
0.96
00:41:41.960
And then before you know it, we've got all the same crap here in the UK.
0.97
00:41:46.380
I don't think we, well, I don't think we could ever have a Trumpian.
0.98
00:41:50.840
But culturally, we'll import all, like, Sadiq Khan spends more, during the Trump era,
00:41:55.140
spend more time talking about Trump than he did about London, right?
00:41:58.640
So you get into this place where we did download a lot of the-
00:42:10.740
We download a lot of our cultural conversation from America.
00:42:14.480
And they are going to get even more polarised than they already are.
00:42:18.820
And the reality, I think, is white graduate liberals in Britain have sort of co-opted the
00:42:24.640
same belief system as their counterparts in the US.
00:42:28.480
And it's important to try and think, why is that the case?
00:42:33.400
Well, the main reason, I think, is because wokeism has become a new status system for this
00:42:40.540
It has become a new source of status, of moral righteousness.
00:42:44.400
And it's become a system that the elite can use to send a signal to other elites that
00:42:53.200
They've got the vocabulary to show off the new knowledge, to show people they went to
00:43:00.160
It's cisgender, heteronormative, white guilt, white privilege.
0.52
00:43:03.860
I mean, it comes with its whole vocabulary.
0.67
00:43:06.480
It is, as John McWater and others have noted, it is essentially a new religion for the new elite.
1.00
00:43:11.560
And along the way, I don't think voters are idiots.
1.00
00:43:16.120
And I think they can sense that there's a new moral hierarchy in society.
00:43:23.000
You know, and the way in which the elite project this now, you know, in the old days, it was
00:43:27.240
money, it was leisure, it was going on holiday, it was showing off fashion.
00:43:31.600
Now it is very much about showing off their sense of virtue.
00:43:38.580
I mean, it is a very sort of inward looking kind of self-righteous belief system that inevitably
00:43:47.660
entails looking down on those other groups that you now perceive to be morally inferior.
00:43:54.580
And the evidence on this, which I talk about in the book, is now clear that, you know, a
00:43:58.960
reason Labour lost a lot of white working class voters over the last decade is because those
0.99
00:44:04.180
voters came to the conclusion that Labour was prioritising minority groups over the majority.
00:44:11.960
You look at the US, similar studies have found Trump did very well among white non-graduate
0.55
00:44:19.040
Americans who felt, had a keen sense that they had been pushed to the bottom of the social
00:44:25.060
ladder or that, to quote one study, minorities were basically cutting in line for the American
00:44:30.700
dream. You know, and there was this sense that they were now sort of being pushed down
00:44:35.460
this ladder simply because of their fixed group identity.
00:44:38.740
And I think that's what Michael Sandel has called the politics of humiliation.
00:44:42.660
And I think a lot of people out there can feel that.
00:44:47.180
You know, the recent study, recent report from Cambridge found that now we have universities
00:44:52.400
that are offering courses only to children from minority ethnic families and not offering
00:45:01.220
You know, people read this, they pick up on this and they have a, I think they conclude
00:45:05.180
that, you know, they're, they're, they're no longer seen by the elite as being virtuous
00:45:11.100
So coming back to my question, are you not concerned that...
00:45:17.980
It was a great answer to a different question, which we love.
00:45:20.440
But my question to you is this, if the culture war and the actual political discussion gets
00:45:28.060
re-inflamed, as it will do in the United States imminently, are we not going to take that
0.99
00:45:34.860
And the example I always use, because it just, I found it mind boggling, but also illustrates
00:45:39.460
the point very well is the summer of 2020, when in central London, you have protesters saying
00:45:44.460
hands up, don't shoot to police officers who don't have guns.
00:45:47.640
And to me, that is the encapsulation of just how much we are infected with everything that
00:45:57.400
And I think Trump too would, would again, put that on steroids.
00:46:01.020
I mean, the great awokening, you know, the kind of sharp leftward turn among white, white
1.00
00:46:05.600
graduate liberals basically tracked the Trump presidency.
00:46:08.900
It kind of began, it began in 2012, 2013, but then accelerated through the Trump presidency.
00:46:14.780
And I think we had something similar here with Brexit.
00:46:17.420
I think if you look at the folks who dominate the national conversation, the BBC presenters,
00:46:23.320
the columnists, the editors, and so forth, the kind of new middle class graduate elite
00:46:27.900
became much more supportive, much more positive about immigration, diversity, all of those things
00:46:34.980
So it's what academics have sometimes called the populist paradox.
00:46:39.020
On the one hand, Britain becomes more populist.
00:46:41.620
On the other hand, we become way more socially liberal.
00:46:45.240
Well, one big reason is because the graduate elite basically doubled down.
00:46:50.260
They doubled down on their own values and they kind of went off a cliff with a lot of this
00:46:54.980
And so I think there is a very real risk that culturally they'll continue to embrace what
00:47:02.320
But I think that's also partly inflamed by social media and the fact that a lot of people
00:47:09.480
They're sort of, we're all just out there with no attention span and we're just, you
00:47:21.400
So a lot of people in the debate in the UK around race and slavery and discrimination, you know,
00:47:28.260
you often hear will sort of lapse into this belief that we are somehow comparable to US
00:47:37.340
And Nigel Bigger's book, and I know you've got Nigel coming on the show, you know, he does
00:47:41.660
a very good job of explaining just the difference between the two.
00:47:45.300
But we are now at a point in our cultural debate where we have to explain this to people.
00:47:49.080
We have to say, actually, we have completely different histories.
00:47:56.240
We have a very different history when it comes to race integration.
00:48:00.880
When it comes to prejudice, we are actually one of the least prejudiced societies in the
00:48:10.800
But for the kind of white graduate liberals, that is, you know, blasphemous.
0.89
00:48:17.740
I mean, I'm a heretic for saying that because it challenges the new creed.
0.99
00:48:24.040
But isn't that a failure of education as well, Matt?
00:48:26.460
Because you can, you know, blame the kids, blame the young people all you want.
00:48:30.720
But if that's what you've been taught since year dot, is it really their fault?
00:48:34.080
I think the education system has a lot to answer for, yeah.
00:48:38.640
I think the way we're teaching kids, primary, secondary and university, I think we've got
00:48:48.260
We are not exposing students to a diverse range of views, beliefs and perspectives.
00:48:55.020
We are not developing critical thinking as much as we should.
00:49:06.400
I think we have, in the universities, we've been far too quick to embrace online learning,
00:49:11.640
remote learning, whereby the interactions with students have become pretty minimal, actually.
00:49:19.120
Many universities have carried on using the practices they developed during COVID, hybrid
00:49:25.680
So the social interaction aspect of university life, where you are exposed to those different
00:49:31.500
views and beliefs has become much less visible, much less regular.
00:49:39.660
But also, to be blunt, the politicization of institutions.
00:49:43.460
I mean, if you look at the ratio of left to right academics, and from the 1960s, it's gone
00:49:52.920
So if you are a student, the likelihood of you meeting a professor who isn't kind of radically
00:50:01.040
progressive or just very socially liberal is minimal.
00:50:10.940
And then we've got all of the evidence of self-censorship on campus, where we know from
00:50:16.700
the surveys about 40% of students now say, I'm not going to share my views because I'm
00:50:22.140
scared of the impact that will have on my social networks or my reputation, because we're now
00:50:29.120
in this kind of culture whereby, you know, you will lose status and friends and standing if you
00:50:39.360
And I do think the institutions have a lot to answer for.
00:50:42.700
I mean, gender identity theory is a great example of that.
00:50:46.280
I mean, we are being asked to embrace something that is a belief system.
00:50:55.000
And some people will support it and others don't.
00:50:57.640
And if you don't, you should be allowed to say, I don't believe in this.
00:51:13.960
Because if no one pushes back, then the ideology just runs rampant.
00:51:17.420
But what do you do if you don't have financial security or you don't have seniority?
00:51:21.880
I cannot tell you, Francis, how many emails I've had from junior academics who have already
00:51:29.820
spent 10 years making no money, studying for a PhD, doing a postdoc, trying to get one
00:51:37.420
of the very few positions that are available, and have then come into universities, have often
00:51:42.860
been horrified at the extent to which they are openly political.
00:51:51.680
I mean, it is, well, I mean, in the same way that you walk into the National Health Service
00:51:59.180
I mean, there's from lanyards to flags to posters.
00:52:02.440
I mean, it is a sort of, it's an experiment in cultural, in sort of almost revolutionary
00:52:09.920
I mean, it is quite remarkable, you know, sort of flags hanging around.
00:52:16.680
But junior academics, I think, are coming into these institutions and saying, well, if I want
00:52:21.200
to get job security, if I want to make professor, I can't really say what I think.
00:52:28.360
Administrators aren't going to talk because they want to expand a lot of the diversity,
00:52:32.500
equity, inclusion, bureaucracy, because it's good for them, sort of justifies position.
00:52:36.780
So recently, Florida, it was revealed that public universities, state universities in
00:52:42.660
Florida are now spending $35 million every year on diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives.
00:52:49.840
Michigan is spending $18 million, which is equivalent to sending about 1,000 kids through college
00:52:58.120
So this has become a massive industry, as you know.
00:53:00.900
So the administrators don't really have any incentive.
00:53:02.860
The vice chancellors don't really have any incentive to change it because they're deriving
00:53:06.840
status and they've got all of these internal pressures to keep doing it.
00:53:11.440
And so the whole thing kind of continues to carry on.
00:53:15.560
Meanwhile, we are routinely prioritizing ideology above the things that universities were set
00:53:21.500
up to do, which is search for truth, to be objective, to study subjects, you know, in
00:53:29.880
a rigorous way, because now social justice is a priority.
00:53:35.100
So if you want to apply for a job, you submit a diversity statement, which you have a page
00:53:40.240
of A4 and you have to explain to me how you are committed to diversity.
00:53:44.820
If you want to apply for a research grant, which you need to win grants to be successful
00:53:50.020
in universities, in order to do that, you have to write a diversity statement.
00:53:54.000
You have to tell me why you believe in these, in the goals of this political project.
00:53:59.400
You have to tell me in what way have you advanced the goals of diversity, equity and
00:54:18.280
Universities are not supposed to be political projects.
00:54:21.340
Schools are not supposed to be political projects.
00:54:26.560
And that explains very much the new elite and how it's becoming more and more culturally
00:54:33.380
Because if you go to university and this is what you are exposed to, then of course, you're
00:54:38.420
more likely to end up being that way in the long run.
00:54:46.160
You've also made this point that maybe if this becomes the orthodoxy, and also culturally,
00:54:53.200
And kids, Zoomer students or Gen Alpha or whoever's coming next, I suspect there will
1.00
00:54:58.780
be a generation that comes along and thinks, this is just really naff.
00:55:02.660
It's going to be cool to kind of call some of this stuff out.
00:55:05.760
And also, I think the evidence is going to undermine it.
00:55:08.560
We are on the cusp of developments with genetic coding and science that are going to be complete
00:55:16.700
game changers in how we understand health, medicine, life expectancy, all of that stuff.
00:55:22.900
So the idea that there are not inherent differences between groups is just going to be completely
00:55:30.960
I mean, it already is, if you look at the evidence.
00:55:32.980
But over the next five to 10 years, it's just going to look utterly ridiculous as a lot of
0.97
00:55:41.220
Because if this is going on, and as you say, and look, I fully believe you that this is
00:55:51.640
If they're being overtly political, then something needs to be done, some type of reform.
00:55:58.760
I mean, the one good thing that the Boris Johnson Conservative government did was bring the Higher
00:56:03.680
Education Academic Freedom Bill, which will do two things.
00:56:06.780
It will require universities to protect and promote academic freedom.
00:56:13.760
And secondly, it will create an independent body that academics who are being persecuted,
00:56:21.340
like Kathleen Stock and others, can go to and essentially sue the university for harassing
00:56:29.620
Now, a lot of liberal conservatives have spent the last two years saying, well,
00:56:33.680
you know, this is unnecessary, we don't need this, then why are people getting sacked?
00:56:41.380
That legislation is about to receive royal assent in 2023.
00:56:45.660
That will become the first significant pushback against wokeism in higher education in the Western
00:57:00.540
And in that sense, I think actually, you know, I'm an optimist.
00:57:05.380
Nothing moves universities like the fear of being sued.
00:57:11.520
You create a league table for academic freedom and commitment to free speech.
00:57:15.340
Every university will want to be at the top of it.
00:57:17.500
So I do think culturally we can begin to change things.
00:57:21.700
And you might think I'm being naive, but I do genuinely think the fight is not over, which
00:57:27.120
is why I would just say I've always opposed the idea of setting up parallel institutions,
00:57:32.920
because I think it's too early to leave the legacy institutions.
00:57:37.480
You know, this move in America to set up entirely new universities.
00:57:40.540
I think it's too early to be retreating from the old ones.
00:57:44.660
I think, you know, I think the fight is still on.
00:57:48.860
I mean, obviously not to compare ourselves to a national broadcaster, but you are kind
00:57:53.900
of participating in a small part of a set of new institutions that are an alternative
00:58:02.000
And in terms of mainstream comedy and all of these things, I mean, they're eating themselves
00:58:16.440
And it'd be interesting to see how that fight plays out.
00:58:19.000
I mean, Christopher Rufo, who we've had on the show, there's a lot of debate about what
00:58:24.620
And it's just interesting to watch how these things are going to play out.
00:58:27.980
Chris Rufo is in some ways a mirror image of the people that he is campaigning against.
00:58:38.140
But what he has shown is what you can do if you are highly organized, well-resourced, connected,
00:58:48.840
And we tend to forget this, but take Britain, and I talk about this in the book, the woke
00:58:53.260
percentage of the population, right, is about 15%.
00:58:56.300
It's a significant number, but they're very much in the minority.
00:59:02.140
But when you look at how they spend their days, always on social media, five times more
00:59:07.420
active on Twitter and Facebook, constantly churning out the belief system, like just there
00:59:14.100
every day, racism, racism, discrimination, white privilege, the whole thing, just out there
00:59:23.100
And so moderates often feel sort of, you know, under pressure, as if they can't speak, as
00:59:28.000
if, you know, God, look, there's so many of them, they're everywhere.
00:59:32.500
But Rufo, I think, is shown in a different way.
00:59:34.540
To the right, I think he's shown them what you can achieve if you are highly organized,
00:59:44.600
I remember having this conversation with Jordan Peterson, who made the argument that you can
00:59:49.640
only really get seriously involved in, quote, unquote, the culture war, if you are completely
00:59:58.600
Because otherwise, you know, they'll destroy you.
01:00:04.580
So lots of people who I know who have been doing, you know, outspoken things, who have
01:00:10.000
been contrarian, have only done that after getting themselves into positions, which meant
01:00:31.920
As you well know, we always have a final question, which is, what's the one thing we're not talking
01:00:50.300
If you look at all the data on young, university-educated women, something weird is happening.
01:00:57.340
They are not only outperforming their male counterparts in every part of the education system, but they
01:01:04.400
are also moving sharply to the left politically and culturally.
01:01:08.340
And I think this is going to be one of the really big, interesting trends to watch play
01:01:13.400
out over the next 20, 30 years, because it's going to have all kinds of effects.
01:01:19.140
I think men and women are going to move in quite different directions politically and culturally.
01:01:23.960
But I also think for society, we're going to be left with a group of men who have not gone
01:01:29.960
to the university system, who are very culturally conservative, maybe quite populist in their
01:01:36.360
outlook, who will also perhaps struggle to be connected to wider society and may not be
01:01:44.840
seen by women as a particularly enticing prospect.
01:01:53.300
And let me just say, just before I go, it's been a delight to watch the show blowing up
01:01:58.540
and it's been a delight to watch the reaction to your Oxford Union talk and the success is
01:02:08.740
I remember you coming to what would have been our second studio in a very hot sweat box,
01:02:24.920
And, you know, you are one of our favorite guests.
01:02:27.560
Whenever anything big happens in British politics, we're always keen to get you on.
01:02:34.640
We're going to obviously, as always, ask Matt a couple of questions from our supporters
01:02:38.700
that they've already submitted that only they will get to see the answers to.
01:02:42.020
But for now, thank you for watching and listening.
01:02:43.880
We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show.
01:02:50.140
And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast.
01:02:58.000
Can you ask Matt why populism seems to be viewed as a right-wing manifestation by the mainstream media?