TRIGGERnometry - Matt Goodwin: We're in the Post Populist Era

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Matt Goodwin is a British academic who is Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. He is the author of many books including his latest 'Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics.' Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 they're held by millions of people out there. I polled them and said, look, what do you think about this? You know, the SMP are trying to pass it. Everyone looked at it and said, this is insane. 80% of people said, I oppose this. when you actually explain what it is. I mean, the level of disillusionment out there is palpable. You see it, right? 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. We're talking about a level of demographic change in churn that the Brits have not seen before. And it's going to be very, very visible. very, very quick. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishen.

And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations, with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today returns to the show for the 700th time. He's a political scientist and one of our favorites. He's got a new book out,

which is this book here, values, voice and virtue. Matthew Goodman, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. Welcome back. We have had you on the show a lot. This is my third time. Is it?

Yeah. Yeah. It feels like more. because we really, you always provide fantastic commentary on British and other politics. Yeah. And we always bump into each other at various events. That we do. It's actually your fourth time, Matt.

Sorry. Maybe the one in the aftermath of the 2019 election was like a bit of a blur, so maybe I forgot that one. Yeah, so we've done a few. But my point is we're always really interested to hear your take on things in addition to your books. You have a fantastic substack that I read religiously, actually. I read yours too. Thank you.

Do you have one? No. But Matt, it's good to have you on because, I mean, actually, this will go out a few weeks after we recorded. But today, your substack was about post-populism. And this is also something you touch on in the book, of course. And this is something I'm very interested in talking about. Because, first of all, define for us what you mean by post-populism and where is it happening and why is it happening?

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. We had, in my mind at least, we had these three big revolts. We had the rise of Nigel Farage and populism. I know you had Nigel on the show recently. We then had the big vote for Brexit, and then we had the Boris Johnson 2019 election

in that sort of post-Brexit realignment of politics. So in my mind, actually what we've gone through is a sort of trilogy of acts. And in the book, what I've tried to do is say, look, where did these come from? What on earth made all of that possible? 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. 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. So, you know, all of the leaders on a 2019 election, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Nicholas Sturgeon, Nigel Farage, have either been pushed out or they're lying low. We've got the technocrats, the grown-ups, the managers back in charge. We've got Keir Stama, we've got Rishi Sunat. We've got a new consensus in politics. I'm sure many of your viewers will have their own opinion about it, but big state, big spending, high immigration, embracing globalisation. There's no really longer any difference between left and right anymore. They're basically indistinguishable. And voters, I mean, they're not basically being pushed apart by big divisive issues in the way that they once were.

If I ask voters in my polls, what do you care about the most? They say cost of living, the NHS and the economy. I mean, these are more sort of unifying issues. We all care about those issues. So in my mind, you know, raises this question, are we actually leaving the era of populism in the 2010s, are we moving into this new era of post-populism and what's that going to look like? And I know you've talked about post-woke. What does the post-woke era look like? In the same way, I think we are entering into potentially a new chapter.

It's an interesting point, though, because simultaneously with the shift in the politics, as you alluded to in your answer there, the fact is people haven't changed how they feel about it. And so the fissures that were expressed through Brexit and, by the way, Donald Trump in America and the raging culture wars, that is still going on in a very powerful way. 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 where every time, and Francis is the perpetual pessimist and I'm the perpetual. And every time finally all this crap is over, something new happens and things just get crazier and crazy, whether it's the sum of it. BLM, whether it's COVID and our reaction to, where suddenly a war breaks out in the middle of Europe and people have got all sorts of ways of looking at that. And I'm sort of thinking if the underlying disagreements within the body politic are still there, aren't we just waiting for

another thing to go wrong and then there's going to be another big explosion? Yeah, I mean, in my mind, the big challenge we have in our society, like all Western democracies, is what I call in the book the new elite, that we are basically in a situation now where, 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. And one of the things I try and argue in the book, at least, is that, you know, it's not just over the last 10 years, this new elite have sort of drifted away from everybody else.

and they've taken the institutions with them. It's also that they openly exclude the voice of other groups in society, workers, people who haven't passed through the elite universities, people who hold, let's say, contrarian beliefs, maybe people who question the woke orthodoxy or the radical progressive outlook that dominates the institutions. And that is why people have been turning to these revolts, because they've been saying, look, hang on a minute,

I want to reassert my values. I want to reassert my belief system. I want to reassert my voice in the national conversation because I don't really feel that people like me are in this conversation. And I think that's basically what's been happening over the last decade. I think the evidence shows that quite clearly. And whether it's Nigel Farage, whether it's Boris Johnson, whether it's the Brexiteers, whoever, you know, for many voters, these were imperfect leaders for those moments. But out there, you know, we've got, you know, large majorities of people who are saying, look, left and right don't really speak to me anymore on these issues that you mention around culture and identity, what we're

teaching kids in school, borders, security, community. A lot of voters are still saying they don't speak for me anymore. And I think, you know, we're maybe not over populism, but I think we're sort of in a, we're in a brief phase, perhaps between moments. And we can, at least maybe take stock of the last decade. And, you know, I'm sure we'll be back there maybe sometime soon. Isn't it quite dangerous, so, if you think about it? Because what you're essentially talking about, Matt, is this large swave of the population who are not represented by politicians?

Yeah, well, so one of the things that I show is that most of our politicians lean much further to the cultural left and much further to the economic right than most voters out there. So conservatives, why have conservatives responded so terribly to the realignment of politics? And we talked about this after 2019. I remember the conversation vividly. We said there is a unique historic opportunity here for Boris Johnson and the conservatives to reshape the country. And they squandered that opportunity. They lost that opportunity. Why did they? I would suggest, as I argue in the book, is that because conservative elites basically are too culturally liberal and too economically liberal to connect with the voters

who are looking for somebody to reassert their values in the system. And so all we've really had since Brexit is a continuation of what you might call the liberal consensus, which has basically dominated British politics for much of the last 30, 40 years. Margaret Thatcher, was needed. I'm open to, I accept the idea that, you know, Thatcher's reforms in my mind at the time they were needed. But what she did is she injected this radical economic liberalism, deregulated the economy, liberalized finance, embrace globalization, or what Danny Roderick has called hyper-globalization, the routine prioritization of big business, of big corporates over the national community. And that was followed by Blair. And Blair then came along,

and he injected radical cultural liberalism. He said, hey, we're going to strip away the borders of the national community. We're going to have mass immigration. We're going to have European integration. We're going to take meaningful choice out of politics. Left and right are essentially going to become the same thing. Brexit, populism, the realignment were really an attempt by voters to break that consensus, to challenge that consensus.

And what we can now see is that actually, those revolts have failed to do that and that the elite, the new graduate elite, socially liberal, if not radically progressive, has reasserted its political and cultural power and push back that rebellion. Do you think that part of the reason why things aren't as heated anymore

is because of the Brexit referendum, yet we look at countries like Italy, like Spain, and they are very much still in the world, the throes of populism? Yeah, I think it's remarkable that Britain now is one of the only Western democracies to not have a successful populist movement. And when I wrote my last book, National Populism, a lot of people were critical. They said, well, these movements are going to be a flash in the pan.

They're going to rapidly disappear. Look at the elections last year. France, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, record levels of support for national populist parties. Meanwhile, the Republicans fell short in the US, but they took back the House, Ronda Santis now, or Trump probably have a realistic chance of winning the presidency next year. So populism is still here, but in Britain, bizarrely, it's absent. And the reason for that is because the Conservatives basically hoovered up Nigel Farage's vote. They hoovered up a lot of these voses, who took a punt on Boris Johnson, 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, 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. And what happened? Johnson basically let them down. Johnson did the reverse on a lot of that stuff.

I mean, one of the untold stories about British politics today, which I don't think many people out there have yet realized, is the extent to which Boris Johnson and the conservatives liberalized the immigration system in Britain to the point that we now have 504,000 as a net migration level, the highest we've ever had. Just to make the point, they promised that it would go down. David Cameron promised to the tens of thousands. It's now half a million.

So what's happened is British Conservatives, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and others, have been gaslighting the British people. Because what they've been saying is we're going to control immigration, we're going to lower immigration, and then when they ended up in power, they said, well, actually, we didn't mean lower. We just meant we're going to give you control. But what is clear, I'm running polls every week. Most people out there want immigration lowered.

End of story. Ideally around 100,000, certainly not 500,000. And the worst bit of all of it is Johnson not only liberalizes migration to this unprecedented extent, but he even does stuff like removes the requirement for British companies to advertised jobs in Britain. So what you see, contrary to the desire through the Brexit vote to put the national community first, is you basically see conservatives, perhaps best symbolized by Liz Truss, kind of doubling down on this hyper-globalization, mass immigration, London-centric model, built around financial services, and basically putting their fingers up at many of the

voters who turned to them in 2019 and thought, well, gee, maybe these are the people that are going to break up the consensus. So I suspect that the real winner at the next election won't actually be the Labour Party in Kirstama. It would be apathy. It would be a lot of people saying, you know what, I tried to change a system. I tried to regain my voice. I tried to reassert my values. Nobody's interested. Matt, we had Nigel Farage sitting in that very seat a few weeks back, and he actually said the reason that populism, not that it failed, but it didn't achieve what it could have achieved, and in particular UKIP, was because of the two-party system, which is impossible to break. Do you think part of the reason that populism founded is because

of that? And if you look at our European friends, they all tend to have proportional representation. That's part of the story, and I've spent a long time following Farage's movement. And I'm I've written about it. One of the first books that I did was about it. And, you know, the European Parliament elections under a proportional system were the springboard that he shrewdly used in 1999 to get visibility. And then one of the ironies of Brexit is that a moment that was supposed to lead to the reform of our politics made our politics more elitist because it took away the European Parliament elections. So the only way you can change a system now is through first past the post-general elections, which is an impossible thing to do, or build up through local

elections, which has been the Liberal Democrat strategy for 50 years, and they'll tell you how difficult that is. And that's why, I mean, only last week, in early 23, I was in a meeting with conservatives who are now beginning to realize the only way they can actually bring about meaningful change within the British system is to change the dominant faction within the conservative party, which is to basically spark an internal battle with liberal conservatives or self-starred progressive conservatives and to try and reassert the power of what we might call national conservatives and to reshape the conservative party from within. They are saying now that is the only way they will be able to assert power and change the direction of the party.

And for Farage and others who are who are who on the outside, I mean, the reality now is they are probably consigned to taking 5 to 10% of the vote at the next election, making life much more difficult for Ritchie Sunak if they want to do that. But the games become a lot harder. The barriers to entry have become a lot higher for the likes of Farage. So you don't see reform coming in and then taking a chunk and holding the, the Conservatives' feet to the fire to actually. get them to be more conservative? It's going to be very, very difficult for them because I think it's going to be difficult

for them for a couple of reasons. But one is that I personally don't think that the populace in Britain ever truly understood the constituency that was wanting to vote for them. Culturally, they were in the right space. They were saying, look, our approach on crime is a joke. Immigration is too lax. the institutions are disproportionately dominated by elite graduates who basically hold values that nobody else in the country really holds. So on the culture stuff, they were basically

where they needed to be. On the economic axis, however, a lot of them were basically Thatcherites, were basically focused on lowering tax, deregulating financial services, being fairly comfortable with big business. Now, if you look at the Republicans in the US, if you look at Maloney in Italy, if you look at what's happening in France or Sweden, actually the nature of conservative politics is changing. Some conservatives today have grasped the fact that they cannot simply offer an anti-state low-tax pro-business message that the world has moved on. And so national conservatives are saying the time is now here to make the case for an active state that can intervene in the world. the economy to make things fairer, that is skeptical of business, especially when business becomes

political, especially when business starts to promote values of the scene to be anti-conservative, and which is much more realistic about globalization and free trade. I mean, this is one of the things I talk about in the book is how basically Thatcherites became so obsessed with free trade and globalization that they lost sight of the damage it was doing in communities. I mean, globalization wasn't just negative for economic reasons. I mean, the evidence is pretty clear. It's smashed communities in areas in Northern England that were subjected to higher imports from China or Eastern Europe. The result was not just lower wages, was not just a lower share of the national income going to those areas. It was also weaker relationships, higher rates of family

breakdown, higher rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, people being pushed on. onto welfare benefits. Now, conservatives, I thought, you know, care about community, care about family. But too often I meet conservatives who routinely prioritize the market and globalization and free trade over these issues around community and family. And I think if you look at just how much territory conservatives have ceded over the last 10 years, you can see that quite clearly. I mean, essentially, conservatives have allowed issues such as family, children's welfare, women's rights, history and national identity to be reframed as culture wars. I mean, it is one of the biggest retreats in recent political history. They've completely lost all of that territory.

And they're now on the defensive and are having to make the case for why we should be. be allowed to talk about what we teach kids or whether we should be allowed to feel uncomfortable with kids being exposed to drag creams or whatever it is. So they're completely, you know, lost that, lost that space, which again goes to show how I think they've been far too focused on these issues like globalization and free trade. Matt, can we come back to the economics of this? Because, I mean, as you know, I'm not conservative, but on the economic side of it, I'm always very, very persuaded by small state as an idea. Because my concern is, and we've seen it with,

you know, we're seeing these lockdown files coming out. Yeah. The bigger the government, the more the, you know, the government can, you know, they'll give you money, but they're also going to tell you what to do a lot. And I really don't want that as much as it can be avoided. But am I right in thinking that I'm basically in the wrong country for that worldview to ever get a fair hearing in terms of the national,

political conversation. Is there any constituency of people in this country who'd quite like to, you know, make the best of life for themselves? There is a constituency for that. I mean, let's take, for example, the Liz Truss worldview. Let's have a small state, low tax, and let's roll back the frontiers of government. When Liz Truss was in power, I looked at the data on her position and concluded it was kind of like a six to 10% of the population position, roughly about six to 10% were holding that kind of trussite view. In Britain, most people today are actually pretty comfortable with the state, with spending on, as we are, with big spending on the NHS, with public services. You know, the libertarian instincts, if you want to call it that, are actually

very fringe. You know, this is not a mainstream position. But I just wanted to be clear about something. So when I say national conservatives need to revise their relationship with the state, what I'm not saying is that national conservatives should be suddenly pro-government and have a big state. What I mean is, I think there's an acceptance on the right of global politics now that they are going to have to use the state in order to intervene in institutions and the marketplace to protect and preserve their values. So an example might be a Rondasantis in Florida. using the organs of the state to intervene to try and rectify how we teach kids certain issues. Or it might be the UK government intervening using the state to create a mechanism whereby

academics and those people who hold non-conformist views who may be a gender critical or don't want to go along with the woke orthodoxy that they don't get sacked. They don't get discriminated against. So I think that debate now about conservatives using the state in order to try and intervene has become much more prominent. You won't meet many mainstream US Republicans today who are advocating a Reagan-type view of the world. Conservativism is changing in big ways, in important ways. I know you had Yeram Hazzoni on the show, and he's often made that very argument. Matt, are we really just talking about the political system no longer being fit?

for purpose. If it doesn't represent the people that it should, then quite frankly, what's the point? Well, I think the issue, and I talk a lot in this about the book, the issue is that the institutions have basically been taken over by new middle class graduates who tend to come from privileged families and share the same values. This isn't a conspiracy. What we are seeing is what academics call education polarization. So graduates have gradually, graduates have moved sharply leftwards and non-graduates are basically moving rightwards or staying where they are on cultural issues. But Matt, is that fair, though, saying moving gradually leftwards?

Well, in some cases over the last 10 years, they've moved very quickly to the left, the so-called Great Awakening, where white liberals, noticeably in the US, have doubled down on their liberalism. They basically become super-woke. So they have become much more convinced racism is a major problem, that African-Americans and other minority groups are being discriminated against, and they've become more concerned about those issues than minority groups. So this great awakening is really important, because if those same groups disproportionately dominate institutions, they've taken the institutions with them too,

which is where we can see the debates about the New York Times, the BBC and others, because these institutions have now really become such an echo chamber, they've become so narrow in the range of voices that are included within them, that if you're working class, if you haven't gone to university, if you come from the small towns, medium towns, well outside of London, if you hold culturally conservative,

small sea values on issues like crime, immigration, sex and gender, Britishness, who we are, you are probably looking at our advertisements, at our museums, at our political debates, at the bestseller list, in the bookshops and our writers and our celebrities,

and you're probably thinking, what the hell's going on? Because they are reflecting the values of this new elite. They're not reflecting the values of the rest of the country. And Matt, is there a, you know, because it's very hard to judge these things because those of us who are quote-unquote very online people, we see, I think, perhaps a slightly different side of it.

Do you see in your polling and in your research a sort of backlash forming against all of this, or is that a uniquely online phenomenon? Well, I'm interested. I mean, what do you see differently? I'm just curious as to what's the side that you see that's... Well, what I see is in increasing, and it's interesting because a lot of people wouldn't have expected this, but we just had Lawrence Fox on the show. And when we asked them our final question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about, he said the wokeification of the right. And I do see a lot of that online where people who oppose wokeness and are starting to feel that the only way to deal with the problem is to become the thing that they're fighting, to cancel people, to get offended by words, to try and prevent certain conversation from even being had to, etc. Now, this could be a completely online thing that we're not seeing, but that is the sort of thing that I'm talking about. Yeah, I haven't seen too much of that, but I think there's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that conservatives and centre-right parties have not really known what to do with this moment. And you can see that very clearly with the British Conservatives. I mean, they have floundered. They have completely failed to understand where voters are on many of these issues. Take Scotland as an example, right? We are talking against the backdrop of the fall of Nicola Sturgeon. And what a remarkable week that was.

in British politics. And, you know, what was interesting is before that, everybody said to me, you know, this culture war stuff doesn't matter. It doesn't make a difference. Nobody cares about it. It's all generated by right-wing culture warriors and nobody's interested. Then you look at the gender recognition reform bill that was brought by the SMP. And it's true. That was not a highly salient issue. A lot of voters said, you know, this isn't a top five issue for me. But then when I polled them and said, look, you know, what do you think about this? You know, the SMP are trying to pass it. Everyone looked at it and said, this is insane. 80% of people say, I oppose this instantly. When you actually explain what it is, let's let 16-year-olds legally change their gender without any medical

supervision. Let's let kids change their gender after living in that new gender for only a couple of weeks. You know, moms and dads were like looking at this thinking, this is insane. And the moment you actually put these woke issues in front of people and they really think about it, you begin to see the scale of the opposition to it. Another example is let's rename pregnant women pregnant persons. That's a 5% issue, meaning only 5% of the country think that's a good idea. So I've been just polling all of these policies that we associate with wokeism. And the key point is, if you look at the US, the lesson is for politicians who want to step into

those debates and want to politicise those debates and want to turn up the volume on those debates, as we've seen in Virginia, California, Florida, there is an ample market, big market for that, for the space that exists for that. It's not a culture war. Talking about the rights of kids, talking about women's rights, it's not cultural, matters, really matters. People want to have a discussion about it. So I think that's where our debate has gone a little bit wrong and why conservatives, you know, have just shot themselves in the foot because they've not really acknowledged where people are on a lot of these issues. And we talk a lot about Kemi Badnock,

and we talk about these individuals who perhaps we think do have a sense. But in reality, the whole Conservative Party should understand this. It shouldn't be this hard to convince a Conservative Party to get involved in these debates. We're talking about the Conservative Party,

but as it stands now, Labour stands a very good chance of winning the election, particularly when you see what's coming out with the telegraphs and the lockdown files, etc. It's only going to weaken the Conservatives' chance of winning. So that being the case, things are only going to get worse, aren't they? Well, the Labour Party is having a really good time,

averaging just close to 50% in the polls, doing really well. You ask voters, who do you want to be Prime Minister? Kirsteim is ahead of Rishi Sunak. Who do you want to manage the economy? Labor's ahead of conservatives. Who do want to manage immigration? Labor's ahead of conservatives. Who do want to manage Brexit?

Labor's ahead of conservatives. But here's the thing. Who's ahead of all of them? None of them. None of the above. I mean, the level of disillusionment out there is palpable. You see it, right? You see it like 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. I was running focus groups in the Red Wall a couple of weeks ago. And I sort of said, you know, Okay, so how do you feel about how the country's going? First 20 minutes, everybody screaming at the conservatives,

can't stand the conservatives, want the conservatives out of power. So you're going to be voting labor. Well, not sure. What about Kirstama? Who? Not sure. Who is that guy? Don't really know him.

There's still a disconnect, I think, between labor and the country. And I think there are two areas where people are suspicious of labor. One is, can labor manage the economy? And the other is can labor manage immigration? And those two issues obviously really matter for people. Sunac is sort of cultivating an image. If you talk to people around Sunat, they'll say he's cultivating an image as the quiet prime minister who's getting things done. He's delivering in Scotland.

He's standing up to Nicholas Sturgeon. He's delivering in Northern Ireland. He's got the Brexit deal. He's bringing legislation for the small boats. He's gambling that inflation will fall from 10% to below 5% by the end of the year. And then interest rates will begin to fall. the cost of living will ease. He'll go into 24 and he'll say to people, you know, we're turning the corner, don't let the Labour Party ruin it. That will be the sort of, you know, the narrative.

But I still, every time I talk about Sunak and the Conservatives and you can see it in the data, there's a great degree of skepticism and there's a great degree of apathy. You know, I think people are just frustrated, utterly frustrated with the political class. And it goes back to what I talk about in the book. I mean, we've never really had a political class that has been this dominated by people from particular groups. I mean, university graduates and political careerists, people who have only ever worked in politics. We've always had an elite in Britain, but, you know, in the old days, the elite also typically went into politics having done other things, you know, different jobs, different things, you know, running companies, being out there.

Today, I think that's less the case. And so this, the political class in my book has become much more homogenous, much more uniform, very narrow. The range of voices in Parliament, the range of voices in the media in our culture has become much narrower. And maybe, as you say, maybe you're right, maybe the conversation really is happening online, rather than in the, in the public square in the main arena. And Matt, this dominance by a particular world view, if we assume that Labor are going to win the next election, which is not guaranteed, when we interviewed David Davis the other day, he said, I'm very optimistic.

I think we've gone from 1 in 10 to 1 and 5. And I went, well, it's still 20% may. So even conservatives don't necessarily feel very confident about their party's chances. But let's assume that Labor do win. Isn't this actually a much bigger problem for Kirstama? 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. And I don't think he's going to be able to do that

without sparking a major rebellion with the country at large. I think you saw that in the reaction to Scotland. I mean, to his credit, Stama said, look, I think allowing 16-year-olds to legally change their gender is not the way to go. Lisa Nandi followed up shortly afterwards saying, we should allow 13-year-olds that's legally. This is exactly what I'm saying.

But that's a serious point. So, I mean, that we have entered a politics where the activist base has become dominated by the sort of Brahmin left, the high-income, highly educated, not just socially liberal, but radically progressive activists. And that is severely constraining where left-wing parties can go. And they're also constrained by geography. I mean, one of the problems facing labor is most of their by. votes are still concentrated in the cities and the university towns, which is why Stama'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. And to do that, he needs to talk to voters still about the cultural dimension. 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. So you've got these big five pledges on both sides. Stama 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. But I do think Labor still have left a big open goal for the conservatives. If the conservatives were smart enough to kick a football into it, they probably would have a chance.

Because I think this issue is only going to become more important, especially as the cost of living crisis fades from view. It will do. I mean, fast forward to mid-2020s, late-2020s. We get through, let's hope, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, we begin to get back to some sense of normality. And then I think people are going to realize 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. We're talking about a level of demographic change and churn that the British, have not seen before. And it's going to be very, very visible, very, very quick.

And that's going to raise all kinds of political effects. Before we go any further, I just want to say that. I think it's quite unfair. Lisa Nandi was only reflecting her constituency of Wiggin and their opinions on the agenda. Yeah. But isn't part of the problem as well is that you look at these major political parties,

conservative labor, and essentially they are a union of people who in many ways believe completely different things. If you look at the old school left of Labor, typified by, let's say, you know, Tony Ben, Barbara Castle, and then you look at Ashaka, that is a union which doesn't really work because they believe completely different things. And the same with the Conservative Party,

where you've got the woke progressive conservatives and then you've got the old school conservatives, the One Nation Tory. Sure. So, I mean, Does it work anymore? Well, I mean, politics has moved into a very different era, a different chapter. I mean, the first century of politics was primarily economic.

It was mainly left and right. Now politics has become two-dimensional. Culture and identity have really come into this and crossed over that economic axis. So parties have been, you know, facing these cross-cutting device. it's not been easy because we're also in a majoritarian first-past-upost system. We don't have proportional representation where the Conservatives would be two parties, the Labor Party would be two parties, maybe three parties. So they're all forced to coexist uneasily. And that's not an easy thing to do. I mean, Labor and the Conservatives basically were born against the backdrop of

the Industrial Revolution. I mean, they have been shaped by a history that is very different from where we are now, and they've been struggling to adapt to this new climate. If you look across Europe, many of the parties that have been really successful recently have been entirely new parties that have been much more flexible, much more able to speak to the constituencies today without those constraints. You know, you look at whether it's Macron, whether it's Maloney, you know, these parties are, you know, pretty new, flexible and can take on, you know, the monopoly. We don't really have that, and our system makes it much harder. So the challenge is going to be whether the people who are within those parties can change the dominant factions within them,

and can they actually try and reposition them in an important way. It does happen. I mean, the US Republicans would be an example of that. I'm not saying the British Conservatives should become a Trumpian party, but the US Republicans have fundamentally changed their access, right? They've moved into a very different space. It is. possible for parties to do that. Maybe we're at a point now where both Labour and the Conservatives need to adapt and readjust to this new reality of where we are. Do you think as well we're going to see a rise of sort of the hard right as typified by Marie Le Pen, who did very well in the French general election? I don't think people were aware of how well she actually did and what a threat

she posed to Macron. Do you think we're going to see that in the UK? I don't think we are. I don't think we No, I think one of the things I've talked about in the book is the restoration of our civic culture. And it's worth remembering what is it that makes Britain different from the French and the Germans and the Italians? And one of the arguments from the 50s is that we have a very different political culture. And we do. I mean, we need to remember this. I mean, you know, we have historically prioritised consensus over conflict. We've prioritised moderation over messianic figures.

We have prioritized politeness over polarization. And that was one of the big arguments in the 50s. Why is it that Germany descended into Nazism, Italy descended into fascism, Spain and Portugal would descend into authoritarianism? Why is it that the Brits have never really done that? You know, the British Union of fascists went nowhere. I mean, Mosley never won a seat. The National Front in the 70s never won a seat in the first past the post-election.

the BMP never came close to winning a seat. So we have had a very different politics. And the argument is not just about the system. It is about our culture that we have historically put an emphasis on this civic culture. And I do think maybe that is beginning to return in some way that after the last decade, the polarisation, the division, I think maybe the Brits are returning to that culture and maybe saying, you know what, okay, there are there are there. these loony wokesters on Twitter and these nutters over here, but actually the moderate middle,

you know, is perhaps beginning to say, I'm just tired of this division. I want to return to some sense of normality. Well, that is why I talk, as you mentioned, about the post-woke and how that comes about, and that will take new institutions and ecosystems. And I'm very hopeful, and I hope that what you're saying is correct. The one challenge to what you and I are both saying, I suppose, is the extent to which our culture is now dominated by American culture. And all it takes is the big orange menace to run, which he will. Of course, he will. He's about to.

The primaries are starting soon. And I mean, God only knows what happens then, right? And then before you know it, we've got all the same crap here in the UK. I don't think we, well, I don't think we could ever have a Trumpian. No, I don't mean that, but culturally, Will and poor, like, Sadiq Khan spends more, during the Trump era, spend more time talking about Trump than he did about London, right? The mayor of London. So you get into this place where we did download a lot of the...

I moved out of London. Couldn't deal with it anymore. So did I. I don't blame you. Couldn't deal with it. But you know what I'm saying, right? We download a lot of our cultural conversation from America. Of course.

And they are going to get even more polarized than they already are. Especially the elite class. Yes. And the reality, I think, is white graduate liberals in Britain have sort of co-opted the same belief system as their counterparts in the US. And it's important to try and think, why is that the case? Why have they done that? Well, the main reason, I think, is because wokeism has become a new status system for this new graduate elite. It has become a new source of status, of moral righteousness. And it's become a system that the elite can use to send a signal. to other elites that they are virtuous, they are righteous, they've got the vocabulary to show off the new knowledge, to show people they went to the right schools and the right universities, it's cisgender, heteronormative, white guilt, white privilege. I mean, it comes with its

whole vocabulary. It is, as John McWhorter and others have noted, it is essentially a new religion for the new elite. And along the way, I don't think voters are idiots. I think they can see that, And I think they can sense that there's a new moral hierarchy in society. And guess what? They're not at the top of it. And the way in which the elite project this now, you know, in the old days it was money, it was leisure, it was going on holiday, it was showing off fashion. Now it is very much about showing off their sense of virtue.

And it's a deeply narcissistic belief system. I mean, it is a very inward-looking kind of self-righteous belief system. that inevitably entails looking down on those other groups that you now perceive to be morally inferior. And the evidence on this, which I talk about in the book, is now clear that a reason Labor lost a lot of white working class voters over the last decade is because those voters came to the conclusion that Labor was prioritizing minority groups over the majority. You look at the U.S. similar studies have found Trump did very well. among white non-graduate Americans who felt had a keen sense that they had been pushed to the bottom of the social ladder, or that, to quote one study, minorities were basically cutting in line for the American dream. You know, and there was this sense that they were now sort of being pushed

down this ladder simply because of their fixed group identity. And I think that's what Michael Sandel has called the politics of humiliation. And I think a lot of people out there can feel that, and it's very visceral. You know, the recent study, a recent report from Cambridge found that now we have universities that are offering courses only to children from minority ethic families and not offering them to white working class kids. You know, people read this, they pick up on this,

and they have a, I think they conclude that, you know, they're no longer seen by the elite as being virtuous and morally righteous. So coming back to my question, Are you not concerned that... Sorry, did I not answer your question? You did not, but that's fine. It was a great answer to a different question, which we love. But my question to you is this.

If the culture war and the actual political discussion gets re-inflamed, as it will do in the United States imminently, are we not going to take that and download it over here? And the example I always use, because it just, I found it mind-boggling, but also illustrates the point very well is the summer of 2020, when in central London you have protesters saying hands up, don't shoot, the police officers who don't have guns. And to me, that is the encapsulation of just how much we are infected

with everything that comes out of the United States. I agree. I mean, I think there is a lot of that. And I think Trump too would again put that on steroids. I mean, the great awokening, you know, the kind of sharp leftward turn among white graduate liberals basically tracked the Trump presidency. It kind of began it began in 2012, 2013. accelerated through the Trump presidency. And I think we had something similar here with Brexit.

I think if you look at the folks who dominate the national conversation, the BBC, presenters, the columnists, the editors and so forth, the kind of new middle class graduate elite became much more supportive, much more positive about immigration, diversity, all of those things in the aftermath of Brexit. So it's what academics have sometimes called the populist paradox. On the one hand, Britain becomes more populist. On the other, hand, we become way more socially liberal. Why is that? Well, one big reason is because the graduate elite basically doubled down. They doubled down on their own values and they kind of went off a cliff with a lot of this stuff. And so I think there is a very real risk that culturally they'll

continue to embrace what we see in America, absolutely. But I think that's also partly inflamed by social media and the fact that a lot of people don't read anymore. We're all just out there with no attention span and we're just reading international media. We're in the shared online space. And we're very ignorant of historical context. So a lot of people in the debate in the UK around race and slavery and discrimination, you know, you often hear we'll sort of lapse into this belief that we are somehow comparable to US history, which is crazy. I mean, it's insane. And Nigel Bigger's book and I know you've got Nigel coming on the show. You know, He does a very good job of explaining just the difference between two.

But we are now at a point in our cultural debate, but we have to explain this to people. We have to say, actually, we have completely different histories. We have completely different institutions. We have a very different history when it comes to race, integration, when it comes to prejudice. We are actually one of the least prejudice societies in the world. The evidence, I think, is quite clear on that. I talk about it in the book. but for the kind of white graduate liberals, that is, you know, blasphemous.

That's heretic. I mean, I'm a heretic for saying that because it challenges the new creed. It challenges the new belief system. But isn't that a failure of education as well, Matt? Because you can, you know, blame the kids, blame the young people all you want. But if that's what you've been taught since year dot, is it really their fault? I think the education system has a lot to answer for you. I think the way we're teaching kids, primary, secondary,

and university, I think we've got a real problem. And you're a university professor yourself? We are not exposing students to a diverse range of views, beliefs and perspectives. We are not developing critical thinking as much as we should. I think COVID exacerbated this. I think the lockdown also exacerbated this. I think we have, in universities, we've been far too quick to embrace online learning, remote learning, whereby the interactions with students have become pretty minimal, actually.

Many universities have carried on using the practices they developed during COVID, hybrid learning, blended learning. So the social interaction aspects of university life where you are exposed to those different views and beliefs has become much less visible, much less, regular. I think that's contributed to it too, but also to be blunt, the politicization of institutions. I mean, if you look at the ratio of left to right academics, and from the 1960s, it's gone from three to one to closer to 10 to one. So if you are a student, the likelihood of you meeting a professor who isn't kind of radically progressive or just very socially liberal is minimal, is minimal.

I mean, it is unlikely. So I think that's contributed to it as well. And then we've got all of the evidence of self-censorship on campus, where we know from the surveys about 40% of students now say, I'm not going to share my views because I'm scared of the impact that will have on my social networks, on my reputation, because we're now in this kind of culture whereby, you know, you will lose status and friends and standing. you are seen to endorse particular views. And I do think the institutions have a lot to answer for.

I mean, gender identity theory is a great example of that. I mean, we are being asked to embrace something that is a belief system. It's not fact. It's not science. It's a belief system. And some people will support it and others don't. And if you don't, you should be allowed to say, I don't believe in this. I'm not going to use gender pronouns. I'm not going to use this language. I'm not going to embrace this vocabulary. But many people feel they can't do that. But isn't it also their duty to push back? Because if no one pushes back, then the ideology just runs rampant.

Yeah, but what do you do if you don't have financial security or you don't have seniority? I cannot tell you, Francis, how many emails I've had from junior academics who have already spent 10 years making no money, studying for a PhD, doing a postdoc, trying to get one of the very few positions that are available, and have then come into universities, have often been horrified at the extent to which they are openly political. I mean, there's political insignia everywhere. What do you mean by political insignia?

I mean, it is, well, I mean, in the same way that you walk into the National Health Service, and you realize that it's a political project. I mean, there's from lanyards to flags to posters. I mean, it is a sort of, it's an experiment in cultural, in sort of almost revolutionary spirit is in the air. I mean, it is quite remarkable, you know, sort of flags hanging around. And it's, it's kind of interesting. But junior academics, I think, are coming into these institutions and saying, well, if I want to get job security, if I want to make professor, I can't really say what I think. So they're not going to talk.

Administrators aren't going to talk because they want to expand a lot of the diversity. equity, inclusion, bureaucracy because it's good for them, sort of justifies position. So recently, Florida, it was revealed that public universities, state universities in Florida are now spending $35 million every year on diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives. 35 million. Michigan is spending 18 million, which is equivalent to sending about 1,000 kids through college to get degrees. So this has become a massive industry, as you know.

So the administrators don't really have any incentive. The vice chancellors don't really have any incentive to change it because they're deriving status and they've got all of these internal pressures to keep doing it. And so the whole thing kind of continues to carry on. Meanwhile, we are routinely prioritizing ideology above the things that universities were set up to do, which is search for truth to be objective, to study subjects, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a rigorous way because now social justice is a priority. So if you want to apply for a job, you submit a diversity statement, which you have a page of A4 and you have to explain to me

how you are committed to diversity. If you want to apply for a research grant, which you need to win grants to be successful in universities, in order to do that, you have to write a diversity statement. You have to tell me why you believe in the goals of this political project. You have to tell me in what way have you advanced the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is political. This is openly political. But it's happening at every major university. No one has a problem with this. I've surveyed academics. 60% of academics say they support this. It's a good idea. Universities are not supposed to be political projects. Schools are not supposed to be political projects. But that's unfortunately what they've become.

And that explains very much the new elite and how it's becoming. more and more culturally entrenched and more dominant over time, because if you go to university and this is what you are exposed to, then of course, you're more likely to end up being that way in the long run. There might be a flipback to that. Yeah, there will. And you've also made this point that maybe if this becomes the orthodoxy and also culturally, it's very boring. Yes. You know, and kids, Zuma students or Gen Alpha or whoever's coming next, I suspect there will be a generation that comes along and thinks, this is just really naf. It's going to be cool to kind of call some of this stuff out. And also, I think the evidence is going to undermine it.

You know, we are on the cusp of developments with genetic coding and science that are going to be complete game changers in how we understand health, medicine, life expectancy, all of that stuff. So the idea that there are not inherent differences between groups is just going to be completely unsustainable. I mean, it already is if you look at the evidence. But over the next five to ten years, it's just going to look utterly ridiculous as a lot of this research and evidence comes through. Matt, should the government step in? Because if this is going on, and as you say, and look, I fully believe you that this is what is happening, shouldn't the government step in? These are publicly funded institutions. If they're being overtly political,

then someone needs to be done, some type of reform. The government is stepping in. I mean, one good thing that the Boris Johnson Conservative government did was bring the higher education academic freedom bill, which will do two things. It will require universities to protect and promote academic freedom. And secondly, it will create an independent body that academics who are being persecuted, like Kathleen Stock and others, can go to and essentially sue the university for harassing them because of their political views. Now, a lot of liberal conservatives have spent the last two years saying, well, you know, this is unnecessary, we don't need this. Then why are people getting sacked? Why are people getting harassed? Why are people getting discriminated against?

That legislation is about to receive royal assent in 2023. That will become the first significant pushback against wokeism in higher education in the Western world. Sweden is watching us. us. America is watching us. And in that sense, I think actually, you know, I'm an optimist. I do think that will make a big difference. Nothing moves universities, like the fear of being sued, and also league tables. You create a league table for academic freedom and commitment to free speech. Every university will want to be at the top of it. So I do think culturally we can begin to change things. And you might think I'm being naive, but I do genuinely think the fight is not over, which is why I would just say I've always opposed the idea of setting up parallel institutions

because I think it's too early to leave the legacy institutions. You know, this move in America to set up entirely new universities. I think it's too early to be retreating from the old ones. I think, you know, I think the fight is still on. I think it depends on the institution. I mean, obviously not to compare ourselves to a national broadcaster, but you are kind of participating in a small part of a small part of a state. set of new institutions that are an alternative to the mainstream media.

And in terms of mainstream comedy and all of these things, I mean, they're eating themselves out from the inside. And so I think it really depends. But a university is a very big project, I agree. And it would be interesting to see how that fight plays out. I mean, Christopher Rufa, who we've had on the show, there's a lot of debate about what he's doing. And it's just interesting to watch.

how these things are going to play. Chris Rufo is in some ways a mirror image of the people that he is campaigning against. And I don't mean that in an insulting way. But what he has shown is what you can do if you are highly organized, well-resourced, connected, and highly active. And we tend to forget this. But take Britain, and I talk about this in the book, the woke percentage of the population, right, is about 15%. It's a significant number, but they're very much in the minority. But when you look at how they spend their days, always on social media, five times more active on Twitter and Facebook, constantly churning out the belief system, like just there every day.

Racism, racism, discrimination, white privilege, white, you know, the whole thing, just out there all the time, very active. And so moderates often feel sort of, you know, under pressure. if they can't speak, as if, you know, God, look, there's so many of them. They're everywhere. But actually, they're a very small group. But Rufo, I think, is shown in a different way. To the right, I think he's showing them what you can achieve if you are highly organized. And also financially independent, right? I mean, that's a crucial point. I remember having this conversation with Jordan Peterson, who made the argument that you can only really get seriously involved in, quote, unquote, the culture war if you are completely independent

from the legacy institutions. Because otherwise, you know, they'll destroy you. And then you've got nowhere to go. So lots of people who I know who have been doing, you know, outspoken things, who have been contrarian, have only done that after getting themselves into positions, which meant they were essentially uncancelable. And there is a strategy that I think you do. That is a strategy you have to pursue.

Matt, it's been great having you back. I really recommend everybody grab the book. Thank you. Values, voice and virtue. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming back. As you well know, we always have a final question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

Great question. This is going to start weird. What's happening to young women? I think, yeah, I think is really interesting. If you look at all the data on young university-educated women, something weird is happening. They are not only outperforming their male counterparts in every part of the education system,

but they are also moving sharply to the left, politically and culturally. And I think this is going to be one of the really big interesting trends to watch play out over the next 20, 30 years, because it's going to have all kinds of effects. I think men and women are going to move in quite different directions politically and culturally.

But I also think for society we're going to be left with a group of men who have not gone to the university system, who are very culturally conservative, maybe quite populist in their outlook, who will also perhaps struggle to be connected to wider society and may not be seen by women as a particularly enticing prospect. And that also will have lots of effects. There's a recipe for social community. And let me just say, just before I go, it's been a delight to watch the show blowing up, and it's been a delight to watch the reaction to your Oxford Union talk, and the success is deserved. So congratulations. Well, thanks very much.

You were here from the early days, actually. I remember you coming to what would have been our second studio in a very hot sweat box small studio in Westland. Don't tell them about that. Take it. Taking your top off. No, it was great. And you know, you are one of our favorite guests.

Whenever anything big happens in British politics, we're always keen to get you on. But hope everyone gets your book. I really enjoyed reading it. Thank you guys for watching. We're going to obviously, as always, ask a couple of questions from our supporters that they've already submitted

that only they will get to see the answers to. But for now, thank you for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available to podcasts. Take care and see you soon, guys.

Can you ask, Matt, why populism seems to be viewed as a right-wing manifestation by the mainstream media?