My Last Word: The Status Anxiety of Post-Liberalism
Some weeks ago I wrote a thread outlining why, in my opinion, far too much focus has been given to (admittedly self-described) amateur sociologists’ theories (in particular the work of Chris Arnade and David Goodhart) to explain the emergence of a disaffected electoral block responsible for the rise of Trump and the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. I promised to write up these thoughts into a blog post - so here it is. This is intended to be my very last word on the subject and my apologies to everyone already exhausted by the debate to date. The full thread can be found here , but below is a short summary of the main points: 1) There is a genuine problem of inequality of access to the public sphere and consequent marginalisation of people and groups whose problems are therefore de-prioritised in policy circles. This, however, does not mean that all barriers to the public sphere are illegitimate (e.g. those that protect others from harm). 2) The authors in question t...