Whose Values? Whose Voices? Are we being silenced by a 'new elite'?

Professor Matthew Goodwin’s latest book has stirred up lively discussion about whether a ‘new elite’, with values alien to the majority, has become a dominant cultural and political force in Britain. Stepping into the middle of the culture wars and offering an analysis that is critical of both left and right, the book has succeeded in opening up debate about the causes and impact of populism, the nature of power and class identity, whether society can cohere around shared values and how democracy can be revived.

• Professor Geoffrey Evans
• Baroness Claire Fox
• Sherelle Jacobs

In the chair will be FSU General Secretary Toby Young.

There will be an audience Q and A and plenty of time to socialise afterwards. A welcome drink is included in the ticket price. The book will be on sale on the night.

DATE: Wednesday 7th June

TIME: 7.15pm, doors open 6.30pm. Complimentary drink on arrival. After-event social with cash bar until 10pm .

VENUE: Upper Hall, The Emmanuel Centre, 9-23 Marsham St, London SW1P 3DW

TICKETS: FSU Members £10 / Non-members £20 / Age 25s and under £12. Join the FSU today for discounted tickets to all events, membership from as little as £2.49 per month.

About our speakers:

Matthew Goodwin is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent. The author of four books, including the Sunday Times bestseller , he appears regularly in print and broadcast media including the Sunday Times and the BBC. Goodwin has advised more than 200 organisations on political issues and is a member of the Free Speech Union’s Advisory Council.

Geoffrey Evans is Official Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford; University of Oxford Professor of the Sociology of Politics and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has been co-director of the British Election Study since 2013 and is the author of numerous books and articles on the sources and consequences of social, psychological and political divisions in the UK and cross-nationally. Among his recent books are , Oxford University Press, 2017 (with James Tilley) and Brexit and British Politics, Polity, 2017 (with Anand Menon).

Claire Fox is the director of the Academy of Ideas, she convenes the yearly Battle of Ideas festival and initiated the Debating Matters Competition for sixth-formers. In May 2019, she was elected as an MEP for the North West England constituency of the UK in the European Parliament elections. In September 2020, Claire became a member of the House of Lords as Baroness Fox of Buckley. She is the author of I Find That Offensive and .

Sherelle Jacobs is a Daily Telegraph columnist and commissioning editor on the newspaper’s comment desk. She also writes about politics, geopolitics, technology, futurism and bureaucracy. Sherelle previously worked on the Telegraph‘s travel desk, a job that took her across the world, from Colombia to Mozambique. She has also worked as a freelance journalist in Tunisia, where she reported on the failures of the Arab Spring and the rise of extremism in the Maghreb. Her Substack is https://sherellejacobs.substack.com/

CHAIR:

Toby Young is the founder and general secretary of the Free Speech Union. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years and is an associate editor of the Spectator, where he’s written a weekly column since 1998. He is editor in chief of a blog called DailySceptic.org that has received over 40 million page views. He is the author of several books, including How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, and co-founded the Knowledge Schools Trust.

The Free Speech Union is a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members. Find out more.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Emmanuel Centre, 9-23 Marsham Street, London, United Kingdom