ARC Forum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Matthew James Goodwin is a political commentator and former academic, most recently Professor of Politics at the University of Kent which he left in the summer of 2024. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he reached these dizzy heights despite having had a white, working class upbringing, which may account for what some snobs would no doubt regard as his ‘controversial’ views. Sadly for them, his work is – as you might expect – impeccably researched and extremely well-written, includes copious endnotes and has found a ready audience. He is the author of several books including National Populism which, along with this one, reached Sunday Times bestseller status.
This particular book is already two years old – doesn’t time fly! – and took the position that a whole new schism had opened up in British politics, which the establishment didn’t know how to deal with. The split itself he attributed to a new elite comprised of professionals, graduates and others who had now aligned themselves with the political class and against the ordinary members of society who once had the temerity to expect representation in parliament, or politeness from their supposed ‘betters’. It won’t come as a surprise to anyone on here, but several reviews of it seemed to find the idea risible (one from the LSE springs to mind) and did their best to debunk it, mainly by wittering on about how one defined an elite and whether you could have an ‘elite’ which was growing and including so many others. Some queried how, if people like Boris were obviously part of the elite, yet were leading a populist revolt like Brexit, the premise could be accurate. These commenters were, in my opinion, more likely to be embarrassed at being found out – exposed as the kind of people who like to sneer at what Blair called the ‘left-behinds’- and finding themselves with no defensible excuse, they tried to wave it aside. (Think Emily Thornberry and white van man). As David Willetts said, ‘Goodwin is angry on behalf of the white working class. He wants a political programme that offers them more protection from the gales of international economic competition and from the erosion of their socially conservative values’. He wants, in fact, what they would want for themselves.
The book takes its name from the observation that ‘an increasingly liberalised, globalised ruling class has lost touch with millions, who found their values ignored, their voices unheard and their virtue denied. Now, this new alliance of voters is set to determine Britain’s fate’. The work is organised in five sections: 1. The rise of the new elite, 2. Revolution, 3. Values, 4. Voice and 5. Virtue, with a conclusion entitled ‘Counter revolution’. It starts with the overview that ‘British politics is coming apart. The symptoms of this crisis are all around’, citing a sense of despair, a lack of trust in institutions, a sense of a fragmenting United Kingdom and the emergence of a far more polarised politics than Britain has been used to seeing before. He follows this up with ‘Remarkably, we now live in a country where more than half of the people feel that “none of the main parties represent my priorities or my values”.’ This sets the scene for Goodwin to develop his thesis that the rise of national populism, the Brexit vote, and the swing of the Red Wall to Conservative in order to make sure we left the EU all combined to deliver a sucker-punch which was not just a fit of pique but a deep and meaningful movement (albeit led by a bit of a rag tag army) which aimed to lead a complete reshaping of the political landscape that wasn’t going away any time soon. The contempt with which the ruling classes viewed the underlings was now being repaid in spades, and was creating waves all over Europe – and, as it turned out, America too – which were turbulent and troublesome in all sorts of unpredictable ways for the status quo. The only question was who would win.
The interesting thing, looking back on it, is how right Matt Goodwin was (and is). We still see the remnants of the ‘nobody wants Brexit now’, ‘this was just a protest vote’ crowd, faintly crying in the distance to try and put their broken egg back together, but nobody is listening. Times have already moved on, even in this relatively short span, and we all now know how comprehensively the elites (and yes, I do feel the word is still useful) have betrayed their voters. Things have got worse, not better, as we wrestle with what seems to be a full-on ‘punishment beating’ from a vindictive, anti-democratic Marxist establishment which still tries to deny that it is Marxist (or perhaps genuinely does not know that it is) and simultaneously tries to pretend it actually is democratic, while clearly not understanding what democratic means and not liking what little they have managed to grasp of it.
Goodwin reminds us that Boris Johnson, so the joke goes, was the third prime minister brought down by Boris Johnson. Yet still the message hasn’t sunk in: indeed, they are still trying to hoodwink us with fake conservatives like Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch.
This is a smallish book – around 188 pages – but it definitely packs a punch. It is not a polemic – it is definitely a scholarly work with an opinion but is intended for everybody, whatever their political stance. Although the central tenets will be familiar to everybody on here, it is still nice to see them expressed in such a pungent and effective (yet balanced) way. With its dry wit and political insight, it’s a joy to read. And while that is recommendation enough in itself, it would also be a great present for those slow, msm-consuming others who think themselves well-informed but haven’t quite caught up yet with the way British politics is changing, how we got here, and why.
Ordinary people know something has gone badly wrong, and want it put right, as Douglas Carswell has said. ‘Now, this new alliance of voters is set to determine Britain’s fate’, predicts Goodwin. Let’s hope he’s right. With Reform currently surging in the polls – the first time in a hundred years an insurgent party has overtaken the established ones – he might just be.
© foxoles 2025
