This weekend, I was debating whether the liberal metropolitan elite was clueless at the lovely Also festival, an intimate gathering of mainly members of the liberal metropolitan elite. There was a nice whiff of paradox in the proposition: the panel was made up of LMEs (as Eshaan Akbar economically acronymised), so if it were really clueless it wouldn’t be able to know it was. Agreeing we were clueless would actually show that we weren’t.
Fortunately, despite being forced to give an initial yes or no answer by our chair, Catrin Nye, we talked more about the particular ways in which LMEs were or weren’t out of touch with the problems and concerns of the majority of the population. I thought we were doing pretty well until towards the end, Carl Miller from the think tank Demos piped up from the audience asking why so much of our discussion had been focused on the culture of LMEs. Why, he asked, had everyone mentioned avocados?
Miller was completely wrong – at least two of us had said nothing about avocados at all. But he was right about the discussion focusing on the cultural and not the political. “Liberal” values had hardly been mentioned. But if the debate was about culture of out-of-touch educated urbanites, not politics, why talk only of LMEs? Where are the conservative metropolitan elites and why aren’t they getting the same kicking?
Thinking on my feet I came up with a great answer: that it was a great question. The mic had already passed to someone else before my mind had got much further. Two days later, I think I have at least a sketch of the reply I would like to have given.
Every item in the label “liberal metropolitan elite” matters. Political populism is in part a reaction against the political establishment. But it is not as indiscriminately anti-elitist as its rhetoric often suggests. Donald Trump is a platinum card holding member of the economic elites but got in on a populist ticket because he wasn’t part of the Washington elite. Nigel Farage is hardly a man of the people but he was able to lead the populist Ukip (United Kingdom Independence Party) because he wasn’t a member of the Westminster elites.
The elites people all over the Western world are angry with are only a subset of the people with power and privilege. They are people who have not only benefited from globalisation but who advocate for the kind of internationalist order in which people move relatively freely across borders. It has only belatedly been recognised, and still not by everyone, that a lot of people do not benefit from this, at least in the short to medium term. For years, liberals (broadly defined) sneered at people who complained about “foreigners coming over here taking our jobs” but put less crudely, it is true that people who worked in the old industries and in lower-paid jobs have had their wages squeezed by competition from foreign workers, either migrants or in their own countries making cheap exports.
The elites being blamed are therefore essentially liberal-metropolitan. They are liberal in the sense that they favour abstract, universal values over nationalist ones. This links with another source of resentment. LMEs have traditionally campaigned for minority rights. Rightly so, but this has led many in poorer majorities to believe they have been neglected in the process.
LMEs are also essential metropolitan, not in that they live in cities but because metropolitans are typically cosmopolitans: citizens of anywhere rather than of somewhere, as David Goodhart put it. Arguably, liberal cosmopolitan elite would be a more accurate moniker.
If this is right, it’s not so difficult to see why conservatives are being let off the hook. Yes, they are elites. Yes, they have benefited from globalisation. Yes, many live in posh parts of big cities. And yes, they are completely out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. But they are completely in touch with the core values that are currently motivating them: a rejection of universal, internationalist liberalism and a reassertion of nationalist, small-c conservatism.
LMEs have to understand this and react accordingly. It’s no use protesting that much of the opening of global markets was done by the same conservative governments who are now trying to shut the stable door. It’s no use getting angry that the working classes are blaming the part of the elite that genuinely has their interest at heart while excusing those who have traditionally done bugger all for them. People don’t want our bleeding hearts and good intentions. They want to stop feeling left out by the economic and political trends that have benefited almost everyone else more than them.
Cosmopolitan liberals need to show why their program is going to deliver for the majority better than the protectionist, nationalist alternatives. Until now, they have been too easily convinced that it obviously will and it’s simply a matter of getting the message across. The best response to that is the other stock answer I have when put on the spot by difficult questions: I suspect it’s more complicated than that.
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