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The New Snobbery
An insidious snobbery has taken root in parts of progressive Britain. Working-class voters have flexed their political muscles and helped to change the direction of the country, but in doing so they have been met with disdain and even abuse from elites in politics, culture and business. They have been derided as uneducated, bigoted turkeys voting for Christmas, as Empire apologists patriotic to the point of delusion.
At election time, we hear a lot about ‘levelling up the Red Wall’. But when the votes have been counted, what can actually be done to meet the very real concerns of the ‘left behind’ in the UK’s post-industrial towns? In these once vibrant hubs of progress, working-class voters now face the prospect of being minimised or ridiculed in cultural life, economically marginalised and abandoned educationally.
In this rousing polemic, David Skelton explores the roots and reality of this new snobbery, calling for an end to the divisive culture war and the creation of a new politics of the common good, empowering workers, remaking the economy and placing communities centre stage. Above all, he argues that we now have a once-in-a-century opportunity to bring about permanent change.
At election time, we hear a lot about ‘levelling up the Red Wall’. But when the votes have been counted, what can actually be done to meet the very real concerns of the ‘left behind’ in the UK’s post-industrial towns? In these once vibrant hubs of progress, working-class voters now face the prospect of being minimised or ridiculed in cultural life, economically marginalised and abandoned educationally.
In this rousing polemic, David Skelton explores the roots and reality of this new snobbery, calling for an end to the divisive culture war and the creation of a new politics of the common good, empowering workers, remaking the economy and placing communities centre stage. Above all, he argues that we now have a once-in-a-century opportunity to bring about permanent change.
- GenresPolitics21st Century
Hardcover
Published June 17, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 25, 2021
Horribly biased but fascinating account of how the poor working class have been let down by the "loony left", the BBC & Channel 4 and the cultural elite lefty liberals!
Fortunately the working class are about to be saved by the New Tories! Viva Barnsley!!
Fortunately the working class are about to be saved by the New Tories! Viva Barnsley!!
October 6, 2021
Britain is notoriously obsessed with class, but now there is a new, ideological way of looking down on people. David Skelton, a native northeasterner who is director of the Conservative-supporting think-tank Renewal, argues that we have replaced old forms of snobbery with new ones, based on beliefs rather than birth. Contemporary British politics shows no sign of Nancy Mitford’s famous ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ distinctions (napkin or serviette, long A or short), or inherited privilege, or Captain Mainwaring-like painful insecurity, but has developed new prejudices instead. The new breed of snob is not interested in how a man speaks or what his background is, but in his outlook.
The new political arbiters are the products of the post-1992 expansion of the education system, and for over a generation they have felt that they set the tone of public debate, a debate which often seemed to involve attacking the people they regarded as being beneath them: “Comedians, who are first to loudly claim to be offended in most circumstances, are the first to savage the so-called ‘crap town’ within the UK and ridicule narrow-minded, proletarian values. The likes of the BBC’s The Mash Report and Radio 4’s The News Quiz had a regular habit of punching down.” When, in 2016, a coalition of traditional middle-class voters and even more traditional working-class ones voted to take the UK out of the European Union, their sense of entitlement exploded in a righteous outrage that continues to this day as the reaction to the Conservative victory in the 2021 Hartlepool by-election shows. One writer argued that “a huge number of the general public are racists and bigots,” before going on to ask: “How do you begin to tackle entrenched idiocy like that?” This is not the old middle-class directing its angst at blue-collar ‘inferiors’; today’s snobs are the products of those former polytechnics that now degrade the name university, who almost invariably have well-paid roles as members of the local government nomenklatura.
What Skelton overlooks in his attack on today’s left is that Labour has never been an entirely plebeian party so the problem is not new. George Orwell made that point in The Road to Wigan Pier when he described the average Labour activist as being a rather shabby clerk, with “a background in Nonconformity”, possibly also a vegetarian, and the possessor of a position that he would not give up under any circumstances. Orwell could have been writing about the ancestors of today’s social work industry, teaching trade, NHS managerial caste and ancillary rabble, but what saved Labour in those days were the industrial trades unions. Whenever some insane policy was thought up by the activists, the union block vote could be relied upon to knock it firmly on the head and keep Labour electorally sound. The destruction of industrial Britain, which led to the end of industrial unionism, has left the field wide open to Labour’s middle-class activists. The people they select for electoral office are just as socially liberal as they are, and that factor pulls the party further away from its socially conservative voting base.
The snobbery and open contempt that Labour’s members have for their electorate is covered in great, depressing detail in Skelton’s work. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, far too many of them “hoped the Nissan plant in Sunderland would close” as the people there were “stupid” and deserved everything that was coming to them. “Others said they would be ‘pleased’ if the fishing industry was harmed by Brexit” as that was what people had voted for. At root, as Skelton says, this attitude is based on the belief that low-income workers are the authors of their own misfortune. The new snobs are meritocrats, who managed to wangle themselves a berth in a post-1992 “university” and believe that people who haven’t followed that road are too thick to bother about. This attitude now seems to encompass a sizeable chunk of the middle-class as a whole.
The problem is that the working-class is not stupid. They may have rejected Labour, but that is because whenever a Labour MP sneers at a house that flies an English flag, or the party opposes the opening of a new coal mine, as it did this year in Cumbria, the message that goes down the wires is that Labour is not the party of their values or economic interests. This is important because The New Snobbery is also a plea for a politics that treats the working-class vote as something to be fought for. Skelton may be a Conservative, but he realises that unless Labour takes on board policies that appeal to its old, core voters, his party is not likely to do it entirely on their own. The Tories need always to be moderated, and pushed, by a Labour Party that has regained its sanity.
Skelton’s analysis is shrewd and worthy of attention. The only problem is that having put his finger on the problem, he does not come up with any solutions. On the other hand, perhaps there isn’t one.
An edited version of my review first appeared in The Brazen Head, an online political and literary quarterly journal. https://brazen-head.org/
The new political arbiters are the products of the post-1992 expansion of the education system, and for over a generation they have felt that they set the tone of public debate, a debate which often seemed to involve attacking the people they regarded as being beneath them: “Comedians, who are first to loudly claim to be offended in most circumstances, are the first to savage the so-called ‘crap town’ within the UK and ridicule narrow-minded, proletarian values. The likes of the BBC’s The Mash Report and Radio 4’s The News Quiz had a regular habit of punching down.” When, in 2016, a coalition of traditional middle-class voters and even more traditional working-class ones voted to take the UK out of the European Union, their sense of entitlement exploded in a righteous outrage that continues to this day as the reaction to the Conservative victory in the 2021 Hartlepool by-election shows. One writer argued that “a huge number of the general public are racists and bigots,” before going on to ask: “How do you begin to tackle entrenched idiocy like that?” This is not the old middle-class directing its angst at blue-collar ‘inferiors’; today’s snobs are the products of those former polytechnics that now degrade the name university, who almost invariably have well-paid roles as members of the local government nomenklatura.
What Skelton overlooks in his attack on today’s left is that Labour has never been an entirely plebeian party so the problem is not new. George Orwell made that point in The Road to Wigan Pier when he described the average Labour activist as being a rather shabby clerk, with “a background in Nonconformity”, possibly also a vegetarian, and the possessor of a position that he would not give up under any circumstances. Orwell could have been writing about the ancestors of today’s social work industry, teaching trade, NHS managerial caste and ancillary rabble, but what saved Labour in those days were the industrial trades unions. Whenever some insane policy was thought up by the activists, the union block vote could be relied upon to knock it firmly on the head and keep Labour electorally sound. The destruction of industrial Britain, which led to the end of industrial unionism, has left the field wide open to Labour’s middle-class activists. The people they select for electoral office are just as socially liberal as they are, and that factor pulls the party further away from its socially conservative voting base.
The snobbery and open contempt that Labour’s members have for their electorate is covered in great, depressing detail in Skelton’s work. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, far too many of them “hoped the Nissan plant in Sunderland would close” as the people there were “stupid” and deserved everything that was coming to them. “Others said they would be ‘pleased’ if the fishing industry was harmed by Brexit” as that was what people had voted for. At root, as Skelton says, this attitude is based on the belief that low-income workers are the authors of their own misfortune. The new snobs are meritocrats, who managed to wangle themselves a berth in a post-1992 “university” and believe that people who haven’t followed that road are too thick to bother about. This attitude now seems to encompass a sizeable chunk of the middle-class as a whole.
The problem is that the working-class is not stupid. They may have rejected Labour, but that is because whenever a Labour MP sneers at a house that flies an English flag, or the party opposes the opening of a new coal mine, as it did this year in Cumbria, the message that goes down the wires is that Labour is not the party of their values or economic interests. This is important because The New Snobbery is also a plea for a politics that treats the working-class vote as something to be fought for. Skelton may be a Conservative, but he realises that unless Labour takes on board policies that appeal to its old, core voters, his party is not likely to do it entirely on their own. The Tories need always to be moderated, and pushed, by a Labour Party that has regained its sanity.
Skelton’s analysis is shrewd and worthy of attention. The only problem is that having put his finger on the problem, he does not come up with any solutions. On the other hand, perhaps there isn’t one.
An edited version of my review first appeared in The Brazen Head, an online political and literary quarterly journal. https://brazen-head.org/
May 31, 2023
I found this to be an interesting book. I think that we have to take it on two levels - the analysis and the prescriptions. I don't think that the analysis is too far from the mark. The prescriptions, on the other hand, could possibly do with a little more development. Together, they make the book an interesting read.
The analysis is fairly straightforward. It holds that the post-war settlement of social harmony ended some time ago. In this settlement, the monied classes were allowed to govern the country as they saw fit and the working classes accepted that, as long as it maintained full employment, prosperity, and a social safety net. This changed at the end of the last century. With a reduction in the social safety net and the off-shoring of prosperity, many in the working classes felt that the bargain had been broken. Until recently, they have been unable to do anything about it. The monied classes, who turned into the educated classes, still dominated the norms of society, with working class concerns marginalised.
However, the working classes still have the vote. The main issue that acts as a fault line between the two factions is immigration. For the monied classes, immigration means cultural diversity - which is seen as a good thing - and cheap, available, labour. For the working classes, immigration means competition for housing, education, access to the NHS, just about all of the services covered by the former social safety net. It is unsurprising that when the working classes were offered a single issue vote on immigration, through the Brexit vote, they decided to vote to leave the EU.
This shocked the monied classes. Their expertise counted for nothing. Their prospective impoverishment counted for nothing. By abandoning the working classes without depriving them of the vote, they created the conditions where a backlash could occur. It left us with a deeply divided society with the 'progressive' elements attempting to overturn a democratic decision they found unpalatable.
I found this analysis compelling, mainly because it is supported by so much evidence. The author drills into it further by looking at the cultural and educational exclusion of the working classes, the imposition of a woke agenda upon the working classes, and the cultural roots of the new snobbery. There is much in this that resonates. For example, it has not been made clear why British culture and society should embrace the insanity of American student politics. The author then goes on to establish how this educational and cultural exclusion results in a two tier economy that reinforces the new snobbery.
This is a powerful argument. It's hard to argue against a two tier economy, but to see this as the result of a new snobbery is a bit of a stretch. The economy is the product of many different factors. Class is one of a number. We could have equally have talked about attitudes and aspirations, beliefs, cultural norms, and so on. All equally as valid as Class. However, the author didn't discuss these, other than as a separate dimension of class.
In his prescriptions from this partial view, the author makes a case for a form of regional policy that we had decades ago, and which, in its current form, comes in the 'Levelling Up' wrapper. I have to say that I agree with the author on the destination to be reached. I'm a little hesitant about the means to achieve it. For example, he advocates local banks that can back regional champions. It sounds laudable, but will the Treasury and Bank of England allow this level of decentralisation?
The story of the Bank of Dave highlights some of the opposition that is likely to be encountered. A more simple, yet effective, solution might be to simply state that an hour in London cannot be valued, for the purposes of public policy, more than an hour elsewhere in the country. I now that it's inefficient, but we would sacrifice efficiency for equity. A simple change like that would revolutionise the weighting of public investment, particularly in infrastructure as the cost-benefit equations change away from London. That would enrich the regions.
I found the book the type of read where a bit of effort has to be expended. The argument is clear, but the language isn't always easy to follow. It's hard to see what the impact of the book might be. My guess is that the author is preaching to those already converted to his cause, which would be a shame. His opponents could use the book to learn from where the Brexit shock originated.
The analysis is fairly straightforward. It holds that the post-war settlement of social harmony ended some time ago. In this settlement, the monied classes were allowed to govern the country as they saw fit and the working classes accepted that, as long as it maintained full employment, prosperity, and a social safety net. This changed at the end of the last century. With a reduction in the social safety net and the off-shoring of prosperity, many in the working classes felt that the bargain had been broken. Until recently, they have been unable to do anything about it. The monied classes, who turned into the educated classes, still dominated the norms of society, with working class concerns marginalised.
However, the working classes still have the vote. The main issue that acts as a fault line between the two factions is immigration. For the monied classes, immigration means cultural diversity - which is seen as a good thing - and cheap, available, labour. For the working classes, immigration means competition for housing, education, access to the NHS, just about all of the services covered by the former social safety net. It is unsurprising that when the working classes were offered a single issue vote on immigration, through the Brexit vote, they decided to vote to leave the EU.
This shocked the monied classes. Their expertise counted for nothing. Their prospective impoverishment counted for nothing. By abandoning the working classes without depriving them of the vote, they created the conditions where a backlash could occur. It left us with a deeply divided society with the 'progressive' elements attempting to overturn a democratic decision they found unpalatable.
I found this analysis compelling, mainly because it is supported by so much evidence. The author drills into it further by looking at the cultural and educational exclusion of the working classes, the imposition of a woke agenda upon the working classes, and the cultural roots of the new snobbery. There is much in this that resonates. For example, it has not been made clear why British culture and society should embrace the insanity of American student politics. The author then goes on to establish how this educational and cultural exclusion results in a two tier economy that reinforces the new snobbery.
This is a powerful argument. It's hard to argue against a two tier economy, but to see this as the result of a new snobbery is a bit of a stretch. The economy is the product of many different factors. Class is one of a number. We could have equally have talked about attitudes and aspirations, beliefs, cultural norms, and so on. All equally as valid as Class. However, the author didn't discuss these, other than as a separate dimension of class.
In his prescriptions from this partial view, the author makes a case for a form of regional policy that we had decades ago, and which, in its current form, comes in the 'Levelling Up' wrapper. I have to say that I agree with the author on the destination to be reached. I'm a little hesitant about the means to achieve it. For example, he advocates local banks that can back regional champions. It sounds laudable, but will the Treasury and Bank of England allow this level of decentralisation?
The story of the Bank of Dave highlights some of the opposition that is likely to be encountered. A more simple, yet effective, solution might be to simply state that an hour in London cannot be valued, for the purposes of public policy, more than an hour elsewhere in the country. I now that it's inefficient, but we would sacrifice efficiency for equity. A simple change like that would revolutionise the weighting of public investment, particularly in infrastructure as the cost-benefit equations change away from London. That would enrich the regions.
I found the book the type of read where a bit of effort has to be expended. The argument is clear, but the language isn't always easy to follow. It's hard to see what the impact of the book might be. My guess is that the author is preaching to those already converted to his cause, which would be a shame. His opponents could use the book to learn from where the Brexit shock originated.
June 25, 2025
⭐️⭐️ I try to make a point of reading alternate viewpoints to my own, with the aim of building a more holistic worldview. However, as much as I really wanted to get on board with this book, the bias was hard to get past.
The pro’s (there is only 1):
It is well known that the white working class male has pretty poor outcomes… this book did well to highlight that.
My main critiques:
- it was, at times, highly repetitive
- Grouping “the elite” as having opposing views to the working class is quite the stretch. Especially in this current political climate, where the opposite is commonly true
- “‘White privilege’ has emerged out of the woke canon” … an ignorant view (and seemingly wrong understanding of both what WP is and entails)
- Having shared the stats about life outcomes for black people, it then ironically goes on to claim that society is wasting its time debating things like road names or (in)famous statues, and should instead focus on things that matter. The perpetuation of bias acceptance would be a nice place to start.
Worth reading? No. Would I recommend? Only as a very basic point of reference to understand white working class anger.
The pro’s (there is only 1):
It is well known that the white working class male has pretty poor outcomes… this book did well to highlight that.
My main critiques:
- it was, at times, highly repetitive
- Grouping “the elite” as having opposing views to the working class is quite the stretch. Especially in this current political climate, where the opposite is commonly true
- “‘White privilege’ has emerged out of the woke canon” … an ignorant view (and seemingly wrong understanding of both what WP is and entails)
- Having shared the stats about life outcomes for black people, it then ironically goes on to claim that society is wasting its time debating things like road names or (in)famous statues, and should instead focus on things that matter. The perpetuation of bias acceptance would be a nice place to start.
Worth reading? No. Would I recommend? Only as a very basic point of reference to understand white working class anger.
June 26, 2023
Definitely some great ideas here, and a lot of cultural analysis that aligns pretty well with my own observations and those of my peers. Who are ,funnily enough, mostly brought up in the North East also but share those same disparaging views towards their home communities. Sometimes veers a little too far into the 'boogey man woke Left' territory, which was cringey and tiresome, but on the whole Skelton makes a fantastic point about our attitudes and negligence of the working class. Furthermore, he makes some compelling arguments in favour of reindustrialisation. Highly recommend, no matter your politics. You may have to grit your teeth during some of the 'woke Left' bashing. Though, I'd like to concede and say its generally done in response to similar attacks that even moderate Labour supporters make towards Conservatives. This may be because I'm a university student but I definitely find the tendency to bash and dehumanise right-leaning people to be much more acceptable.
March 7, 2023
The publishing date says 2021, and David self-identifies as a red wall Tory. His narrative is that the country is being held back by a liberal metropolitan wokist elite who scupper every attempt by genuine reformers such as Bojo, The Trussmonster and Jacob Rees-Smug to level up the country and give the caged tiger that is the Brexit supporting majority the oomph to rise from their sofas, put down the family pack of monster munch, and go out into the field and pick the sprouts etc that those dastardly remainers used to insist were the preserve of EU migrants. For pure comedy gold, I gave it three but not the "foive" that Mark Steyn, Patrick Christys and Co think it deserves.....
November 8, 2021
Probably come from opposite ends of the political spectrum to the author but there's a lot of good ideas here& am in total agreement with his views on the manufacturing base and communities that were trashed under Thatcher & ignored ever since . . .
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