The New Snobbery

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David Skelton was talking about levelling up and the potential for a Conservative breakthrough with the abandoned working class long before either was a glint in Boris Johnson’s eye. In this timely, insightful and impassioned book, he explains how a new snobbery is alienating the progressive left from the working people of Britain. If you want to know why the Red Wall is turning Tory, and how the post-Brexit political realignment might become permanent, read this book. I suspect Boris Johnson will have half a dozen copies on his bedside table before too long.

Tim Shipman, political editor, Sunday Times

David Skelton is, once again, excellent. For those baffled by the new snobbery – the disdain directed towards working-class people for daring to think for themselves or for wanting a better future for their families and local communities – this brilliant book is essential reading.

Nick Timothy, former Downing Street chief of staff, Daily Telegraph columnist and author of Remaking One Nation: The Future of Conservatism

If you want to understand why Labour’s Red Wall crumbled and why the Conservatives are not only winning but changing, read this thoughtful book by one of our most prescient and empathetic social and political writers. Highly recommended.

Jason Cowley, editor-in-chief, New Statesman

Skelton gets it. Levelling up is about practical change, but it is also about how we value others, release potential and restore respect and appreciation for one another. A timely must-read which speaks to head and heart.

Penny Mordaunt MP ii

Insightful and informative, The New Snobbery is a must-read for anyone aiming to understand the politics of the 2020s.

Nadhim Zahawi MP

For many years David Skelton has been a political pioneer in his attempts to develop a distinct ‘blue-collar’ conservatism. In recent times, with talk of ‘levelling up’, his party has moved decisively in his direction. In this vital book Skelton urges them to complete the journey by embracing a new pro-worker settlement: one built around dignified and fulfilling work, which renews our vocations, empowers and rewards workers and strengthens their voices and communities. He makes a compelling case, not just in terms of political calculation but in the name of justice. I don’t know if the Tories will listen to and embrace Skelton’s ideas, but if they do, my party should really start to worry.

Jon Cruddas, Labour MP and author of The Dignity of Labour

David Skelton writes with passion and perception about the fear and loathing that progressives feel for the working class.

Maurice Glasman, Labour life peer and director of the Common Good Foundation

Skelton has again nailed the political and cultural divide of our time: the prejudiced, narrow and increasingly hysterical elite versus the mass of decent, moderate people who just want to see themselves, their families and their long-ignored communities stand tall again. If the Conservatives want to hold on to not only the ‘Blue Wall’ but also No. 10, they should listen to Skelton.

Richard Holden MP

"The New Snobbery is an energising book that will be read and digested by ministers and policymakers."

Iain Martin, The Times

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‘Some ideas are so stupid that only the uneducated can believe them.’

The Observer, November 2019

‘It’s time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses.’

Foreign Policy, June 2016 vi

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

Preface:Why Have I Written This Book?

Introduction:The Birth of the New Snobbery

Chapter One: The Political Marginalisation of the Working Class

Chapter Two: Excluded: The Cultural and Educational Roots of the New Snobbery

Chapter Three: The Rise of ‘Woke’ and the Marginalisation of Working-Class Concerns

Chapter Four: A Culture of Snobbery?

Chapter Five: What About the Workers? The Two-Tier Economy that Underpins the New Snobbery

Chapter Six: Beyond the Secession of the Successful

Conclusion:Restoring Dignity, Esteem and Power: Ten Steps to Building a Pro-Worker Settlement

Afterword: Realignment Postponed?

Acknowledgements

Index

About the Author

Copyright

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PREFACE

WHY HAVE I WRITTEN THIS BOOK?

Why did I decide to write this book? And why now?

The first reason is very personal. I might not live in Consett any more, but my friends and family do, and I have spent the past few years listening to them being routinely insulted by people who regard themselves as ‘progressive’ and ‘enlightened’. Wrapping up the writing of this book was difficult, because every day brought a new example of (generally, but not always) left-wing people finding new ways to describe the working-class as bigoted or stupid. I saw prejudice against people I care about and places I love become acceptable in so-called ‘polite society’, in progressive Britain and in parts of the media. The people I know and love who voted for Brexit and (after much soul-searching) voted Tory for the first time in 2019 aren’t stupid, bigoted or racist – in every way they’re exactly the opposite. The real prejudice is coming from the elitists who use political disagreement as an xexcuse to throw around snobbish abuse. I’m not prepared to stand back and let my friends and family be insulted in this way; I think it’s important that this snobbery is called out for what it is – hence my decision to write this book.

The second reason is political. The years since the Brexit referendum have seen the Tory Party move in the direction I’ve long been advocating: towards a genuinely One Nation politics that embraces an active state in order to bring about economic renewal to places that badly need it. I don’t need to be persuaded of the importance of ‘levelling up’. I saw my hometown devastated by the loss of the steelworks that gave it pride and identity, and then be forgotten about by generations of politicians who had simply moved on. I’ve seen proud work replaced with insecure jobs that provide neither meaning nor dignity. I want this book to be a reminder that working people should not be forgotten any more and that the call they made for change in the referendum of 2016 and the election of 2019 must be responded to with the kind of decisive economic reform that dramatically improves people’s quality of life.

Now is a once-in-a-century opportunity to achieve a permanent realignment in British politics, based on a multi-racial, working-class Conservatism, with Conservatism always acting in the interest of workers. Just as my last book, Little Platoons, saw the real potential for towns in England’s north and the Midlands to set the path xitowards a Tory majority, this book seeks to suggest the kind of lasting change that would make the realignment of December 2019 into a permanent one. The May 2021 elections, with the Conservatives taking the Hartlepool by-election with a dramatic swing and Labour losing councils as symbolically important as Durham, showed that December 2019 was not a one-off. Now is the time to be bold and deliver the kind of change that voters in Hartlepool and County Durham voted for.

The third reason is about timing. Now that Brexit is done, we have the autonomy and the tools to remake our economy. The grimness of the Covid crisis has shown how significant so-called ‘elementary’ workers are to the economy and has also illustrated the importance of having a strong manufacturing sector. Post-Brexit and post-Covid presents the opportunity for a remaking of the economy along the lines I set out in this book, where dignity of work is central, working people are respected and represented throughout society and a revived manufacturing base restores pride to towns across the country, as well as creating millions of skilled jobs.

The fourth reason is about what I have learned over the past few years since I wrote Little Platoons. I have had the good fortune to be able to see in person what the ‘Asian Tigers’ – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – were able to do with intelligent industrial policies to create a strong manufacturing base, just as other countries xiiwere giving up on industry. This has reaffirmed my view that British policy-makers have had much too narrow horizons for too long. Rather than endlessly trying to relitigate the British political arguments of the 1970s and 1980s, or having pointless arguments about street signs, it is surely about time we looked to those countries who have developed strong manufacturing bases, skilled work and strong communities and see what we can learn from them.

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INTRODUCTION

THE BIRTH OF THE NEW SNOBBERY

The 2016 referendum on EU membership marked the first time in generations that the once industrial working class flexed its political muscles and helped to change the direction of the country – against the almost universal advice of the ruling political, business and cultural class. Three years later, the same voters proved pivotal to the result of the 2019 general election, with the so-called Red Wall crumbling and 120 years of class-based partisan loyalties melting away as dyed-in-the-wool Labour voters abandoned the party, handing the Conservatives their biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher’s heyday. After decades of being ignored and left behind, working-class voters seemed to be central to politics again. And this resurgence came not a moment too soon; working-class voters have continued to face the prospect of being economically marginalised, minimised in cultural life and abandoned educationally. 2

Sadly, for too many this new-found working-class voice is a source of regret rather than celebration. A new and insidious snobbery, aimed squarely at these voters, has taken root in part of elite society. For too many people, these election results didn’t just mark a political disagreement, they also represented an unacceptable displacement of the natural order of things.

All of a sudden the ‘wrong people’, apparently uninformed and driven by bigotry, had proven decisive in electoral events. As a particularly angry editorial in Foreign Policy magazine put it, the divide was seen as ‘between the sane and the mindlessly angry’.¹ To disagree with the status quo was to display a level of ignorance that shouldn’t just be disagreed with but blatantly disregarded as ‘insane’ or based on mindless stupidity. This effortless superiority, writing off much of the country as barely worthy of being taken seriously, has become the calling card for much of contemporary progressive Britain.

Large parts of the often liberal, professional elite seem to believe that working-class views are not of the same worth as professional views; working-class jobs are not as valuable as middle-class jobs; and working-class places are less desirable to live in than middle-class places. This has created a new snobbery, through which it has become socially acceptable for the economically successful to look down on working people.

What actually constitutes working class is obviously a 3discussion that has raged for centuries. For the purposes of this book, we’ll largely define working class based on education (not in receipt of a degree) and occupation, although it is also worth noting that the majority of people still define themselves as working class, despite decades of commentary suggesting the opposite. The British Social Attitudes Survey indicates that 60 per cent of people regard themselves as working class, and notes that ‘the proportion who consider themselves working class has not changed since 1983’.² Only around 35 per cent of the country had a degree when that was measured in 2012, but because of the expansion of higher education this figure could well be higher now.

TWO TIERS

For too much of elite Britain, a tone of disdain against the traditional working class represents the only socially acceptable form of prejudice. This is particularly, but not exclusively, on the liberal left, where the disdain is based sometimes on pity, sometimes on rage.

Words like ignorant and racist are thrown around freely and unfairly. Despite polling evidence that levels of racism in the UK are declining and are lower than in most of Europe, critics are keen to stereotype Brexit Britain as a dystopia of bigotry. The response to political changes driven by working-class voters isn’t to accept that such 4alterations were based on considered choices and legitimate grievances but instead to insist that views that the managerial elite personally disagree with must be based on poor education, parochialism or a lack of sufficient enlightenment. For many politicians of the left, which is now a largely middle-class, city-based movement, the working-class vote now represents a reactionary obstacle to their progressive worldview.

Some Labour politicians in working-class areas have long regarded many of their constituents as some kind of embarrassing elderly relative, to be humoured come election time but otherwise largely ignored. As part of an explosive post-election argument, the former MP for Doncaster claimed that a Labour frontbencher and Islington MP told an MP from a Leave-voting constituency that she was ‘glad my constituents aren’t as stupid as yours’. Although Emily Thornberry has strongly denied making the comment, the fact that such stories are believable says much about the resurgence of snobbery. As former Home Secretary Alan Johnson reminded a leading Corbynista on election night: ‘The working classes have always been a disappointment’ for the left.³ Another Labour MP, Dawn Butler, said, ‘If anyone doesn’t hate Brexit … then there is something wrong with you.’⁴ The political decisions that have been galvanised by working-class towns have led commentators and politicians to lament a crisis of democracy, otherwise defined as democracy producing the wrong results. 5

Comedians, who are first to loudly claim to be offended in most circumstances, are the first to savage so-called ‘crap towns’ within the UK and ridicule narrow-minded, proletarian values. The likes of the BBC’s The Mash Report and Radio 4’s The News Quiz had a regular habit of punching down. Now popular theories allege that white working-class voters are the arch representatives of the newly popular concept of ‘white privilege’ or ‘white fragility’. Working-class men are either caricatured as football hooligans or ‘gammons’. Working-class patriotism is condemned and belittled, with book titles such as 52 Times Britain Was a Bellend causing a stir amongst the anti-patriotic new snobs. Parts of the professional middle class have shown themselves unwilling or unable to treat many working-class views, attitudes and cultures with anything other than contempt. A left-wing radio DJ commented on a poll giving the Conservatives a lead in the Hartlepool by-election with the musing that the town’s voters backing Tories was down to ‘forelock-tugging stupidity’, adding that the voters were ‘thick as pigshit or pig ignorant’.⁵

Once the scale of the Hartlepool defeat for Labour had become clear, elements of the left indulged in another round of electorate blaming. One claimed that the problem for the left was that ‘a huge number of the general public are racists and bigots’ and asked, ‘How do you begin to tackle entrenched idiocy like that?’ Another claimed, ‘We don’t have an opposition problem. We have 6an electorate problem.’ Hartlepool was yet more proof that the electorate don’t take particularly kindly to being sneered at and being told repeatedly that they are wrong, stupid or both. Results like the Hartlepool by-election and Labour losing control of Durham Council, the first it had gained as a party in 2019, was further evidence that a realignment, accelerated by left-wing snobbery towards working people, was continuing apace.⁶

THE PERMANENT CITADELS

OF THE NEW SNOBBERY

Whilst working-class voters have been making their voices heard at the ballot box for the first time in decades, the new snobbery has strengthened its hold over other important institutions in British life, including the judiciary, upper echelons of the media and government agencies. Despite an obsession with diversity, decision-making bodies in culture, business and broadcasting have little or no real representation of working-class life nor provincial towns. This results in decisions that often seem made in defiance of the majority of UK citizens. Activist judges and power-sucking quangos have gradually increased their power over the years. These bodies have become permanent institutions of minoritarian dominance, the embodiment of the managerial elite, very much separate from the democratic sphere and using their power to 7entrench norms and values anathema to many working-class voters.

Universities, despite conscious efforts to broaden their social bases, have remained resolutely middle class (only 13 per cent of white working-class boys on free school meals attend). Indeed, attending university has almost become an inherited right amongst the professional middle class, building up borders and boundaries between them and the so-called uneducated majority. Vocational education is routinely mentioned as ‘a good idea’ by politicians and commentators, but for the professional middle class it is only a good idea for other people’s children.

Underpinning this new snobbery has been an all-embracing cult of meritocracy: the belief that success is always and everywhere down to hard work and talent, whilst lack of success is based on individual failure. Hence the snobbery of the successful towards the views of the less successful is seen as being justified by merit and talent. This has coincided with a two-tier economy created by the decline of skilled manufacturing and the growth of graduate jobs. Deindustrialisation created a social and economic blight that impacted several generations and is still being felt today. ‘Wealth creators’ have become lionised; professional careers have been defined as the only reasonable option; and superstar CEOs have grown used to seeing their views venerated in a cult-like way. At the other end of the social scale, many jobs have been robbed 8of dignity and respect and workers have found their voices ignored.

TILTED POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

For over three decades, politics, economics and culture became tilted in favour of the metropolitan middle class and the south-east and London. Politicians were predominantly from this professional background, and economic policies were predominantly designed to benefit these voters. This approach to economics saw a focus on delivering ‘value’ for shareholders and executives rather than investing in and respecting workers. Prosperity, success and growth tended