Matthew Goodwin > Quotes

“Labour was now seen, especially by those who had been pushed aside, as a party for the new elite, immigrants, minorities and big business.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“This was a common tactic not only in Britain but across the West. The new elite have become experts in cloaking their politics in appeals to ‘openness’, ‘tolerance’ or ‘diversity’ while at the same time berating anybody who challenges the direction of travel.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“While Britain’s civil servants initially forecast that 13,000 people would arrive, the number soon soared into the hundreds of thousands and eventually reached 3.7 million.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“The expansion of welfare had also stripped away incentives for people to take control of their own lives while the left’s long march through the institutions, she warned, had cultivated a culture of immorality, envy and resentment.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“And when voters were asked which two or three groups Labour want to help, the most popular answer was ‘immigrants and non-white Britons’, while the least popular were pensioners and white Britons.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“While New Labour had embraced the economic legacy of the New Right, the Conservatives had embraced the cultural liberalism of the New Left. And this new consensus shared by the new elite, would cut much of the country adrift.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“The new elite’s strong and passionate support for Britain’s EU membership might have been less problematic had there not been a glaring ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of the organization. To be democratic, organizations need to fulfil three criteria; they need to give people the right to participate by casting a vote; they need to give them the right to be represented; and they need to give them the right to organize meaningful opposition and compete for control of the executive. While the EU was certainly procedurally democratic, allowing people to vote every five years and be represented in the European Parliament, it was never substantively democratic because its core executive remained out of reach for voters.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“This tendency to see politics as a conveyor belt on which conservatives fall off and liberals stay on reflects how progressives see the world. Rather than see politics and human nature as what they are - unpredictable, chaotic, messy and volatile - the new elite believe they are on a linear path towards ‘progress’, that history will only ever bend in their direction.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“While national politicians never admitted it, the blunt reality was that remaining in the EU seriously constrained what they could offer voters at national elections. While the countries that were members of the EU were national, the policies that were being delivered by the EU were supra-national in scope. Often, they trumped domestic laws, which meant politicians were unable to offer people a genuine alternative from what was decided at the EU level because such an alternative was no longer possible. Whether economic policy, environmental policy, energy policy or migration policy, many laws were ‘locked in’ at the EU level, making it difficult if not impossible for individual governments to overturn them.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“This is clearly problematic for the BBC. A national broadcaster that no longer talks to the nation, and which is no longer trusted by much of it, has no clear purpose.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“Between the 1980s and the 2010s, meaningful choice in British politics disappeared, while power and influence were pushed beyond the borders of national democracy to distant and less accountable institutions. Politics was stripped out of politics; it was depoliticized.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“By portraying their political opponents as an assortment of fascists, racists and closed-minded reactionaries, the new elite seek to shut down the conversation and exclude them altogether.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“Whereas whites, heterosexuals, men and the able-bodied are seen as morally inferior oppressors who should be stripped not just of their power and privilege but their social status, sense of esteem and moral worth, a loose alliance of other groups --minorities, women, the disabled, and their highly educated white ‘allies’ – are seen as morally righteous, superior and virtuous.34”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“Labour and other institutions that are dominated by the new elite increasingly come to see British society in a way that directs favour, status and protection to non-white minorities, women, homosexuals, Muslims and immigrants, while considering whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians and, especially, the English in distinctly unfavourable terms. ‘Favoured groups receive protection against criticism and other negativity,’ writes Cobley, ‘but unfavoured groups receive no such protection, leaving them open to disparagement and generalised disfavour in the public sphere.”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics

“One of the most comprehensive studies, of ten democracies including Britain, finds that when different groups want different things out of politics – with the less-well-educated wanting more done on crime, immigration and unemployment, and the highly educated wanting more done on climate change – the highly educated win.51”
― Matthew Goodwin, Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics