The duty of the Opposition is to oppose, and within each party is found an awkward squad which scorns the path taken by the leadership and campaigns for a change of direction. More usefully, they provide copious evidence that rightwing populism has been a long time in the making. They organise this evidence into four Ds: distrust in elites, destruction of national culture, deprivation in the economic sphere and dealignment in political identification and voting behaviour. Their review of postwar political and economic history is informative and often compelling, providing clarity around a number of key debates within political science and political theory for the uninitiated. The EU is presented, not unreasonably, as a fundamentally elitist and undemocratic project, while neoliberal globalisation (implausibly described as “the most significant change in terms of its impact” to have afflicted capitalism in more than 400 years) is explored as a basis of rising resentment, not so much due to its material effects as its psychological ones. Rising inequality and immigration produce a feeling of relative deprivation, that one is getting unfairly overtaken by others. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) was the most significant new party in British politics for a generation. Its rise set the stage for the later vote for Brexit. The first serious study of UKIP and its supporters, Revolt on the Rightdrew on an unprecedented amount of survey data and interviews with party insiders to explain its rise and impact. Winner of the2015 Political Book of the Year and long-listed for the Orwell Prize, Revolt has since been selected by academics as one of the most influential twenty books in modern Britain. It would be hard to come up with a better line-up of analysts to dig into both the long- and short-term drivers of Britain's decision to leave the EU. Whether you're a Leaver or a Remainer, the vote for Brexit needs explaining - and this is just the book to do it.' Tim Bale, Queen Mary University of London and author of The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron Revolt on the Rightis a rich and insightful dissection of Britain's first new major political force in a generation. Ford and Goodwin combine rigorous yet accessible statistical analysis of UKIP's supporters with unprecedented access to party activists and leaders. They paint a detailed portrait of the social forces driving UKIP's emergence and how the party itself has developed to mobilise a new mass electorate. This book is essential reading for anyone looking to understand this fascinating, and potentially disruptive, new force in British politics." Anthony Heath, University of Oxford and University of Manchester.

Matthew Goodwin - Wikipedia

No doubt many of them do, but Goodwin is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, and does not think the same as every one of his colleagues. This is a canny and deceptive intellectual move. It would be strange to define socialism in terms of the hopes and fears of trade unionists, or liberalism in terms of the worldview of a free rights-holding individual. And yet national populism is only really distinguished from nationalism and racism by the fact that its supporters do not see themselves in these terms. Inversely, Eatwell and Goodwin’s insistence that Le Pen or Wilders are not racist politicians rests on the PR efforts these figures have made to detoxify their images as racists in the eyes of the public and media. Ultimately, the category of national populism is stretched in so many directions that it obscures more distinctions than it illuminates. It starts with an eminently understandable desire to be listened to and recognised, but then extends to demagoguery, violent threats and wall-building. If the language of racism, nationalism and fascism is really not adequate to distinguish between the desire for stable community and Salvini’s vicious hatred of refugees, between alienation from unelected elites and Orbán’s dismantling of the rule of law, then find a language that will. The book’s timing (completed in summer 2018) rescues them from having to stretch national populism to accommodate Brazil’s new president-elect. one of the most important books on British politics to have appeared for many years." Professor Vernon Bogdanor, Kings College London has taken full control of the political institutions, the think tanks, the civil service, the public bodies, the universities, the creative industries, the cultural institutions and much of the media.”The working class had a stake in the country, not just because by going on strike they could bring it to a grinding halt, but through such brilliant figures as Ernest Bevin, who had started life in rural poverty, left school at the age of 11, created the Transport and General Workers’ Union, became an indispensable member of Churchill’s War Cabinet, and as Foreign Secretary helped create NATO and West Germany. When Eatwell and Goodwin engage in social science, rather than market research, the implications are striking. They identify a nub of the problem as one of major, long-term demographic shifts, in which the population of Africa could be 10 times that of Europe by 2100, with numerous forces driving migration northwards. “The questions that are being asked by national populists about immigration and its associated problems will become even more important,” they assure us. Eatwell and Goodwin like to believe that they and their associates are the only ones facing up to this “uncomfortable” reality, but it is little short of fantasy to claim that, when Salvini demanded a “mass cleansing, street by street, quarter by quarter”, he was just asking a “question”.

National Populism review – compassion for supporters of Trump National Populism review – compassion for supporters of Trump

But if one does so, one sees that the New Elite is nothing like as new as Goodwin supposes it to be. It has existed in various insufferable forms for a long time, and it led Disraeli to develop a form of politics attractive to newly enfranchised members of the skilled working class: Just as Rishi Sunak tries to calm things down, Goodwin wishes to persuade us that “British politics is coming apart”. He says a “New Elite” consisting of university graduates with “radically progressive values” has taken control of our institutions and looks down on “the morally inferior masses”, whom it dismisses as racists and xenophobes.The trade unions founded the Parliamentary Labour Party, and for generations provided political education for working-class organisers and negotiators who went on to become MPs, and in Callaghan’s case Prime Minister. At the time, we almost invariably find something to argue about which seems, and may even be, a matter of life and death. In 1972, the worst year of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 479 people, including 130 British soldiers, were killed. This book presents an insightful and highly informative analysis of the most significant independent challenge to the existing party system in England. It is a must read for anyone interested in the future of British politics."John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University and a research consultant for ScotCen Social Research

National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy

National Populism is a self-styled myth-buster. In particular, it aims to disabuse hardcore liberals of any lingering hope that the last three years have been but a blip, after which transnational, elite-led politics will return to normal. This message is less iconoclastic than the authors appear to believe, as any glance at doom-laden Economist op-eds or the latest non-fiction book releases will attest. Remainers and Brussels technocrats are taking up the fight against Brexiters and “illiberal democrats”, precisely because they now recognise that they have a formidable opponent on their hands. Nevertheless, Eatwell and Goodwin hammer away at their prophecy of a populist future, as if they don’t trust the reader to grasp it at the first 18 attempts. National populism is only distinguished from nationalism and racism in that its supporters do not see themselves in these terms Do not read Brexit - unless you want truth rather than propaganda, objectivity rather than bias and evidence rather than prejudice. Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul F. Whiteley have written a book that will still be standing when the post-truth claims of those on both sides of the referendum have rightly crumbled to dust.' Peter Kellner, former President of YouGov Although one cannot know what disasters are about to occur, the hysteria provoked by Boris Johnson does not seem any greater than the hysteria provoked, in their different ways, by Enoch Powell, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson or Margaret Thatcher. Revolt on the Rightis not just a timely and fascinating book; it is also an important one: the first detailed study of one of the most significant developments in modern British politics – the rise of UKIP, which not only taps into popular discontent with the European Union, but has emerged as Britain’s first major non-toxic party to the right of the Conservatives." Peter Kellner, President of YouGovLee Anderson, recently interviewed on ConHome, is a Tory Democrat, never happier than when teasing the New Elite.