Britain's liberal establishment

THE opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) by Mozart composed in 1782, was superbly produced at Glyndebourne this summer. One reviewer noted that, since the opera embodies the late 18th-century fascination with 'all things Oriental', the director sets it in the period of its composition, 'largely discounting historical anachronisms and showing less interest in cultural value judgements'. This remark is revealing of how British conservative — with a small 'c' — intellectuals view what they describe as the hegemony of liberals across public spheres and institutions, labelling them the 'liberal British establishment'. For them, political correctness has gone too far; conformity with liberal values is 'woke'. Pakistani intellectuals tend to socialise largely with their liberal-left British peers. The terms 'liberal elite' and 'cosmopolitan eli­te' increasingly serve as metaphors for groups that have prospered from globalisation, the Euro­pean Union project, and the post-Second World War global liberal order. Brexit and the rise of the far-right Reform Party have epitomised resentment towards this established 'liberal' political class. Institutions such as the BBC, elite universities including Oxford and Cambridge, and even the British civil service are often perceived as standard-bearers of the domestic liberal establishment. One also encounters claims that PhD humanities funding for work on straight, white men has become harder to secure; that young academics researching conservative themes face limited prospects because of liberal-left dominance in academia. Criticising liberal cultural values as 'woke' whilst divorcing them from the economic consequences of neoliberalism offers no answers. Conservative critics see 'woke' culture as a pendulum that has swung too far. There is also an argument that Britain has failed the white working class. This was reflected in the fall of the so-called Labour Party 'Red Wall' in the formerly industrial British Midlands, as sections of the white working class deserted Labour for Reform in recent local elections. The Conservatives have also lost heavily to Reform. Far-right parties such as Reform, however, offer few solutions to the real economic causes of this political rupture. Instead, they capitalise on working-class grievances, galvanising support around issues such as migration. The white working class lagging behind is perhaps the only valid strand of the far-right argument. This is because the proverbial trickle-down effect of the neoliberal economic model did not reach the working classes, regardless of race, resulting in the unevenly distributed proceeds of economic growth. Margaret Thatcher, portrayed as an apostle of neoliberalism, was convinced that Milton Fried­man's monetarism was a 'scientific doctrine'. Yet in 2003, Friedman himself admitted to the Financial Times that 'the use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success'. Neoliberals failed to fulfil their promise that working classes would catch up after the initial inequalities, a claim that is central to the idea of economic progress under capitalism. Yet neoliberalism survived the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. Conservative prime minister Liz Truss was punished by financial markets for her unfunded tax cuts in 2022. Andy Burnham became prime minister promising to address regional inequalities, but he had to calm the bond markets even before entering parliament after his previous statement that 'this country should not be in hock to the bond markets' sent jitters through the markets. In the US, the rise of Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor, and President Donald Trump reflects a similar disconnect between cosmopolitans and the country. While Mamdani's victory is celebrated by liberals and progressives, they need to reckon with the fact that it is also a symptom of the widening gulf. Academics and public intellectuals are trying to grapple with the rise of right-wing populism, particularly in the West. Some draw analogies with Europe's mid-14th-century social and political crises, in the aftermath of Black Death, the Hundred Years' War between England and France, and peasant revolts in both countries. Other writers draw on Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1959 essay, The General Crisis of the 17th Century. As Alan Wooldridge argues, Brexit Britain resembles Oliver Cromwell's Roundhead Britain: small towns and the countryside resenting elite institutions. Contemporary populists rail against elites much as Cromwell and his supporters opposed the court, believing that elites embrace global rather than national values. Anglo-Catholicism was once a marker of sophistication, while university degrees serve a similar function today to court connections in the 17th century. Some draw parallels with 1930s populism, which contributed to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and was fomented by the economic crisis that ensued from the Great Depression of 1929. But the problem with neoliberalism is deeper. Criticising liberal cultural values as 'woke' whilst divorcing them from the economic consequences of neoliberalism offers no answers; it merely reinforces the far-right narrative against 'woke' culture. The attack on liberalism and the Enlighten­ment project has been mounted by postmodernists, structuralists and poststructuralists, conser­vatives, socialists, nationalists, multiculturalists, communitarians and even libertarians, who share ancestry with classical liberalism. While historical populism analogies and critiques of liberalism may have merit, revisiting liberalism's evolution over the past two centuries may better explain today's political rupture. As I previously wrote in these pages, the rise of a mass working class during the late 19th and early 20th centuries — a product of the Industrial Revolution — brought profound socioeconomic shifts and heightened inequality. Modern liberals recognised that classical principles of mere physical freedom were no longer sufficient. They began advocating state-provided social welfare to enable individuals to realise their potential — a modern understanding of 'freedom'. Figures such as John Stuart Mill can be seen as transitional figures bridging classical liberalism and modern social liberalism. Neoliberals would do well to revisit how earlier liberals embraced social welfare in response to rising inequality. The English upper classes who gather at the opera may have a point: centuries-old traditions deserve to be preserved and experienced within the cultural worlds that gave them meaning. Yet they must also confront an uncomfortable irony — that they have prospered from economic liberalism, and that liberalism, taken as a whole, carries cultural values that may strike its conservative critics as distinctly 'woke'. The writer teaches economics at SOAS, University of London, and is associated with Bloomsbury Pakistan. nadir.cheema@economics.oxon.org X: @NadirCheema Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2026