Are you an
THE ROAD TO SOMEWHERE: THE POPULIST REVOLT AND THE FUTURE OF POLITICS by David Goodhart (Hurst, £20)
THERE was a funny episode in the Standard’s office after Theresa May’s “citizens of nowhere” speech — you know, when she said: “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.” One bright young woman observed wonderingly that she’d asked her boyfriend who were the liberal elite everyone was talking about and he’d told her: “It’s us!”
Indeed, London is pretty well the capital of what David Goodhart calls the “Anywheres”. You know them: they’re the ones who voted Remain and regard the 52 per cent who didn’t as what Hillary Clinton rashly called “the deplorables”. They went on the women’s march against Trump and after Hillary lost went around asking each other how they were. They have signs on their desks saying “Refugees Welcome” and not only don’t go to church, they don’t know anyone who does. The word immigration is, for them, bound to the adjectives “vibrant” and “diverse”.
They have, says Goodhart, “achieved identies” rather than inherited ones; they belong to what King’s College London professor Vernon Bogdanor calls “the exampassing classes”; they place a greater premium on individualism and autonomy than “loyalty, authority and the sacred”. Why, you may be one of these people yourself.
In that case Goodhart’s book The Road to Somewhere won’t be easy reading. In fact, you’re unlikely to read it unless you’re an Anywhere reviewing it for The Guardian, the Anywheres’ house journal, along with the FT and The Economist.
He has divided the world into Anywheres, that is, citizens of the world, and “Somewheres”, people less beautiful (actually, he doesn’t say that) and less clever (well, less likely to go to university) than the elite and more likely to live no more than 15 minutes away from their mother. They are more socially conservative, more likely to feel that women should bring up their own children
London is pretty well the capital of what David Goodhart calls the ‘Anywheres’