The elites still don't get it

What a debate in Oxford tells us about the continuing rise of populism

Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 56,000+ subscribers from 167 countries around the world and thousands of paying supporters who support our work. Like our stuff? Then help us expand by becoming a paid supporter and access everything —the full archive, exclusive posts, polling, leave comments, join the debate, get discounts, advance notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are not afraid to push back against the grain. You can join us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.

If you want a reminder for why elites in the West are still completely lost when it comes to making sense of populism then watch Nancy Pelosi’s recent speech at the Oxford Union. Asked to debate the motion ‘This House Believes Populism is a Threat to Democracy’, Pelosi, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and somebody who has spent much of her life at the epicentre of American politics, laid out what since 2016 has become the de facto view of populism among elites.

It's supporters are idiots. They’ve been lied to. They’ve been manipulated. They’ve fallen under the spell of demagogues and would-be dictators. They’re nothing more than “ethno-nationalists”. And if they are able to express their concerns at all then they’re mainly worried about the state of the economy, nothing more.

I don’t know what’s more worrying. The fact that Pelosi, one of the most senior and experienced Democrats, holds this view or the fact so many other elites across the West are still likewise smothering themselves in comfort blankets, refusing to move on from this incredibly reductive and simplistic portrayal of populism.

Either way, it didn’t take my friend Winston Marshall long to completely demolish this worldview. Speaking for the opposing side, Marshall laid out a devastating case for why the elite class has stoked rather than squashed populism.

He pointed, rightly, to how the elite class, like Pelosi, have galvanised populism by continuously deriding tens of millions of their fellow citizens as an assortment of rednecks, hillbillies, deplorables, racists and, in Britain, fruitcakes, closet racists, and gammons (so-called because their faces flush red with rage when discussing immigration).

Instead of obsessing about the populists themselves, he pointed to how the elites have created ample space for the likes of Donald Trump in America, Marine in Le Pen in France, and the farmers protests in Europe by presiding over a long line of policy blunders, failures, and mistakes --from setting the stage for the Global Financial Crash by failing to regulate financial services, to failing to control who is coming in and out of nation-states, from undermining democracy by refusing to accept the vote for Brexit, shutting the bank accounts of protesting truckers in Canada, and smearing farmers in Europe as “the far right”, to imposing Net Zero and ‘ESG’ policies from above onto the masses below, with little if any serious consultation.

And he pointed to some glaring hypocrisies within the elite class. Like the fact they simultaneously berate the populists while taking tens if not hundreds of millions in funding from global corporations, big pharma, and big tech. Like the fact they talk endlessly about the deeply troubling events of January 6^th while simultaneously ignoring the violence of radical left activists and Antifa in places like Portland, Oregon.

Like the fact they warn endlessly about the anti-democratic ethos of populism while simultaneously using overly restrictive ‘hate laws’, their links with big tech and expanded taboos to denounce free speech elites don’t like as ‘hate’, ‘misinformation’, and ‘disinformation’.

Like the fact they routinely criticise Donald Trump for refusing to accept the outcome of the election in 2020 —an outcome he should have respected—while simultaneously ignoring how elite Democrats did the same thing in 2016, describing the election as “hijacked”, how the establishment in Britain refused to accept the legitimacy of the Brexit vote, and how elites in Brussels routinely force voters back to the ballot box to vote again at referendums when they delivered the ‘wrong’ result the first time around.

He has a point. And if you want to get a sense, nearly a decade on from 2016, of just how much Western elites are still failing to get their arms around populism then look, too, at the very latest polling from America and Europe.

Far from curbing populism, if anything the fumbled response from elites is now putting this disruptive force on steroids. Check this out …

Across the European Union, next month, national populist parties look set to enjoy their most impressive gains in the entire history of these elections to the European Parliament, rallying not only the old but, increasingly, the young.

From France to Portugal, Spain to Sweden, Italy to Austria, the latest forecasts point to seismic gains next month for parties that are all, in different ways, tapping into the failure of elites to secure the borders, lower immigration, clamp down on Islamist extremism, and promote the interests of the national majority.

In America, too, there’s almost no evidence at all that elites like Nancy Pelosi and her friends have successfully responded to the grievances held by Donald Trump's voters.

On the contrary, in recent weeks Trump’s polling numbers have looked as strong as ever. While he remains ahead of Biden in national polls, he now also leads Biden in all seven of the crunch battleground states. As I’ve pointed out, on pretty much every measure Trump’s now stronger than he was eight years ago, in 2016.

And this has been furrher underlined in recent days by new polling on the state of the race. If everybody who’s voting for populism is a hardcore “ethno-nationalist” then why has support for Trump among African Americans, compared to 2020, surged by 11-points to reach 22%, putting Trump on course for the best result among African Americans for any Republican nominee since the 1960s?

And if populism is just a refuge for disgruntled, old, white racists then why is Trump, today, much stronger than he was in the past among Latino/Hispanic voters?

According to the very latest polling by YouGov and The Economist, for example, some 35% of Hispanic voters now plan to vote for Trump, which is only a few points behind the 42% who plan to vote for Biden. As pollster Nate Cohn points out, in other polling Trump and Biden "are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-olds and Hispanic voters, even though each group gave Mr. Biden more than 60% of their vote in 2020.”

The key point in all this, nearly a decade on from 2016, is that populism would simply not be this strong were it not for the fumbled, hapless, and dismissive response among the elite class.

As Winston Marshall concluded in his speech at the Oxford Union, the populist age that we still find ourselves in could easily be brought to a close. It could be brought to a close by an elite class that instead of denigrating, deriding, and dismissing their fellow citizens chose instead to listen to, respect, and work on behalf of that forgotten majority.

It could be brought to a close by an elite class that actually delivered on some of the things millions of people want, like strong and secure borders, lower immigration, less crime, lower inequality, institutions that give voice to a wide array of perspectives, and a strong pushback against Islamist extremists who, to be blunt, hate who we are.

And it could be brought to a close by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, who instead of continuously interrupting Winston Marshall during his speech at the Oxford Union while even mouthing “who are you?” (yes, she actually did that) could actually sit, listen, and respect the fact that some people hold different but still entirely legitimate views.

That would be a good start. Though I for one don’t expect to see this among our elite class happen anytime soon. Which is another reason why populism looks set for another vintage year in 2024.

Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 56,000+ subscribers from 167 countries around the world and thousands of paying supporters who support our work. Like our stuff? Then help us expand by becoming a paid supporter and access everything —the full archive, exclusive posts, polling, leave comments, join the debate, get discounts, advance notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are not afraid to push back against the grain. You can join us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.