Matt Goodwin
British Culture.
Thank you, well good afternoon conference. I was lucky enough or unfortunate enough to be in Manchester a few days ago and the energy in this room is 10 times what it was in Manchester so congratulations.
I’ve never had this many people in any of my university lectures by the way, but in all seriousness, you should not be here, you should not be here, why do I say that? I say that because had the ruling class in this country understood what Brexit was really all about. Lowering immigration, levelling up the country. Controlling the borders. Pushing back on tax and regulation. Reforming the institutions. Giving people a voice, then there wouldn’t be need of a party like Reform UK.
That’s the reality of the situation, and why did all of those things not happen? They didn’t happen because Britain now is in the grip of a new political and cultural class. That doesn’t really have much of an interest in the rest of the country. If any of you have engaged with any of my research and work, you will know that most of the institutions today are disproportionately dominated by people from the same backgrounds.
Who hold the same values, who look at other people in the country with confusion. Are the most politically intolerant of all, as we saw with the banking scandal. The most likely to say they would feel uncomfortable if their son or daughter married somebody who held different political views to their own.
I think this new Elite that is dominating the institutions has lost touch with the rest of the country and we can see that in a whole array of issues from immigration to the borders to what we’re teaching our kids in school.
Education is Failing our Children
What worries me more than anything is what I see working in the universities. What I see when I’m looking at the public sector institutions and what I see when I’m looking at the governing Conservative party. Saying a woman is a woman and a man is a man is fine, but if you’re not rooting out radical gender identity theory from the schools and the institutions it’s meaningless, absolutely. Saying that Britain is not a cultural revolution racist country and as a multicultural success story is fine, but if you’re not rooting out a divisive ‘Critical Race Theory’ from our school’s, universities and public sector institutions it’s meaningless.
What the conservative party today has failed to understand is we are no longer living in the 1980s. People today are not just asking for economic freedom from a big state and regulation they’re asking for cultural freedom from an oppressive stifling orthodoxy from a political correctness which has gone way too far. From a radical woke progressivism which is politicizing sexualizing and racializing our children.
We need to stand up, we need to stand up, and take it on because this cultural revolution is not going to stop, it’s going to accelerate because it’s embedded in the institutions. 60% of all voters in this country now say that people like me cannot say what we really think because we’re scared of the consequences.
Legacy Parties Out of Touch
We’re scared of what will happen if we really speak our minds. More than half the country say the left and right, the old parties don’t represent people like me anymore and 90% say it’s time for a change in Westminster. The appetite for something different is enormous, the space for something different is enormous, the question is; are you going to be the people to fill it?
Immigration, yes I recently did a bit of work, I’m a pollster for my sins and I asked the 2019 conservatives all those people who took a punt on Boris Johnson what were the issues that they felt most strongly concerned about and felt that they weren’t represented on and there were three.
I want you to think about these issues when you go into the next general election campaign.
Immigration & Culture
Number one immigration. The vast majority of people out there think immigration has been too high, needs to be reduced, is damaging the country and is no longer helping the national economy.
They are sick of an alliance between big business and political Elites that like a drug addict has become completely addicted to importing cheap migrant workers in to keep consumption high, keep costs low and to keep feeding this broken political economy.
This is not a fringe view, 75% of Brits want immigration reduced, 85% think it’s been badly managed, 66% agree with Suella Braverman last week that immigration represents an existential challenge to western societies.
Minority in Charge of the Majority
The new Elite that dominates institutions would have you believe that these are Fringe views. These are views of a 10% minority, they’re not. Everybody in this room on immigration represents the majority end of Political correctness story.
The second big issue which people feel really concerned about but not represented on; political correctness or woke ideology. We’re not like the Americans only half of Brits know what woke means, but 90% know what political correctness means.
So, if you’re going to talk about it use political correctness. But we all know what we’re talking about, it’s a stifling overwhelming ideology which is trickling out of the universities and the elite class and which is hardwired to push us apart, not pull us together.
Those of you who read my Substack know that a quarter of Britain’s schools are now teaching Critical Race Theory which says the only interesting thing about our children is not their character but the colour of their skin.
Critical Race Theory
Schools in London now offering lessons to black children that are not offered to their white counterparts. Private schools that are teaching white British children that they should apologize for their white privilege, their culture and they should reflect on their white guilt.
This is the opposite of what civil rights campaigners in the 1950s and the 1960s wanted. What they advocated civil rights. What they advocated was colourblind, anti-racism.
They said we have absolutely no toleration for racism. But we also think there are so many more interesting things about human beings than the colour of their skin and that’s not what’s happening in the schools and universities today. Quite the opposite. So, it’s not enough as one of the speakers said today to do a simply announce a review of what’s happening in schools.
Culture Wars
What we need to do is get the third-party providers who are teaching children these divisive and ridiculous ideas of a British cultural war in schools in all of the educational institutions. There is a cultural War underway to revise and reframe our national history. Our identity and our culture, the elite class today derides its status, esteem and honour by denigrating the things that have always held us together.
This has been a long time coming from the 1970s, but it’s now going mainstream which brings me to the third key issue. That people feel deeply concerned about but they feel they’re not represented on they want to protect preserve and promote Britain’s distinctive identity, history and culture which they feel are being swept away by globalization. By the push for a universal liberalism and by an elite class which is no longer interested in the things that make Britain and England distinct.
What we need to do is push back against a view among the elite class which is called asymmetrical multiculturalism which says it’s fine to celebrate the identities and the culture and the history of minorities but you cannot do the same for the culture of the majority and what the majority group must do is reframe its identity.
British History is being Rewritten
Reframe its Britishness, reframe its Englishness around the celebration of diversity, around the celebration of multiculturalism, around the celebration of globalization. But here’s the thing to say that the only interesting or unique thing about your identity is a celebration of diversity is like saying you have no identity, no culture of your own.
Many Brits out there can sense this, they watch the adverts on television, they watch the Netflix history revisions, they look at the books on the bestseller list excluding my own of course.
They look at what their kids are being taught in history, in English, the books that are being taken off the list. They look at how we talk about who we are and they can all now sense that they are being exposed to a political and cultural project which is repackaging and redefining their identity around Global themes.
The vast majority of people in this country do not want this to happen. Like the vast majority of people in this country do not agree with radical gender identity theory or critical race theory. The vast majority of people in this country do not agree with mass migration. Like the vast majority of people in this country do not want to live in a politically correct stifling culture.
So the public demand is on your side, the space that exists in politics is there for you to take it. The only question is whether you’re going to do that? I hope for the rest of us in this country watching on that you’re able to shake things up and challenge some of these ideas in the years ahead because God knows we need it.
Good luck