David Goodhart on Why the Educated Elite Lost Touch with Democracy

I do think one of the problems and one of the reasons why kind of politics is sort of so difficult in some ways these days than it used to be is that the, you know, when politics was primarily socioeconomic, it was easier to come to compromises. It's easier to split the difference on, you know, on issues to do with levels of public spending or levels of redistribution. When it comes to these issues that are more to do with uh with identities and you know immigration and national sovereignty, it's much harder to to to to come to compromises. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. Who do we value and respect in society and

why. One dimension of this that we don't think about enough is the respect that we give to people who are college educated, who are white-collar workers, and the lack of respect we sometimes accord to those who have quote unquote only graduated high school, who work in blue-collar jobs, who often have very skilled trades and professions might make decent money, but may not feel as though they gain the same kind of respect at the local bloc party when they tell people what their job is. Well, one of the people who has thought most carefully about the transformation of our society into a knowledge economy which prizes certain kinds of workers over others and encourages a certain set of values in them, the values of the anywhere who is comfortable in any kind of locality over those of the somwares, is David Goodhardt.

David was the longtime editor of Prospect magazine in the United Kingdom, and he is the author of what he sometimes called the Anywhere trilogy, including The Road to Somewhere, had hand and heart, and most recently, just out in paperback, the care dilemma. Caring enough in the age of sex equality. David and I talked about all of these issues. Is it helpful to think about the distinction between somewheres and anywheres?

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