The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

Equality of opportunity is the liberal touchstone. Well and good. But the chance for the bright,
energetic – or lucky – few to get ahead has done nothing to stop the corrosive growth of inequality.
What we need now is a commitment to a much greater – and universal – equality of outcomes. Is that
a liberal value?
Rod Wood
Nottingham
Don’t fall for these dishonest attacks on the
‘metropolitan liberal elite’ | Jonathan
Freedland
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• Jonathan Freedland casts much-needed light in the gloom of Brexit, Farage and Trump; most of all
on Theresa May’s ridiculous reduction of “remainers” to a small metropolitan elite of “citizens of the
world and of nowhere”. And yet, there is a danger of a different kind of reductionism. Having trudged
the streets of one post-industrial city, Stoke, over recent years, and gathered stories from many people
about decline, racism and radicalisation, we have, still, much work to do in understanding why
Farage, and Brexit, have played so well. If this is largely to do with the economy, it is because people
often feel dismissively stereotyped by metropolitans as passé, “northern”, “failures” and “basket
cases”.
Note might also be made of how elements of the cultural elite are responsible for a huge and mainly
negative representational shift of working-class life over many decades: from Alan Sillitoe’s cussed,
rugged but respected characters in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to the pornography of Benefit
Cheats. Alongside all of this, we should also remember the political abandonment of whole estates by
an elite called New Labour.
Stockbroker Farage appals me too, but his appeal, like that of the BNP or EDL, is partly explained by
processes of abandonment and stereotyping by elites in the City, in politics and in parts of the media.
And I guess some of those might think of themselves as “liberal”.
Professor Linden West
Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University
The left needs to use sensible language again
• Jonathan Freedland is right to recognise that all sorts believe in that better, more egalitarian and
compassionate society where rights and responsibilities set out in a balanced way resonate. The
trouble is that many of our ilk (yes, Guardian readers and in particular liberal-minded lefties)
wouldn’t last five minutes when talking to so many who voted leave. The left needs to use sensible
language again, as Steve Richards implies (Take back control – the slogan the left should make its
own, 20 December). We need literate, lateral thinkers who encompass the equivalent of the politics of