Are You an Anywhere or a Somewhere? What David Goodhart’s “The Road to Somewhere” Tells Us About Belonging | Book Review

10 MINUTE READ

Author Across Cultures, Yang-May Ooi, is prompted to expand her worldview after reading David Goodhart’s “The Road to Somewhere”. From her habitual globalist, cross-cultural perspective, she finds herself reflecting on her shallow contact and connection with people who are more single-place and traditionally focused. In this book review, she discusses the fresh point of view that Goodhart’s book has opened up for her.

Understanding the Divide: Anywheres and Somewheres in Britain

I’m writing this while on holiday in France. Most of my friends are like me. They love travelling and learning about different cultures, trying different foods and are curious about different peoples all over the world. Many of them have lived and worked in a range of countries beyond the UK, speak a number of languages and have an international outlook. 

You are probably one of those people, too.

We are the Anywheres, according to David Goodhart’s book The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. 

Published in 2017, in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, the book sets out to explain one of the great divisions in contemporary Britain. Goodhart argues that the old political divisions of Left and Right, working class and middle class, no longer adequately explain our society. 

In his view, the new fault line places us Anywheres on one side. On the other are the Somewheres.

The People Who Can Belong Anywhere

Anywheres, according to Goodhart, are generally well-educated, geographically mobile, and professionally successful. Our identities come largely from what he calls our “achieved” identities: our education, careers, beliefs, accomplishments, and networks. We leave home to go to university. They move to Manchester, New York, or Singapore for work. Our qualifications and professional networks travel and grow with us.

Anywheres are often comfortable with change, immigration, and cultural diversity. We tend to be socially liberal and internationalist. We thrive in the modern world – and perhaps in many ways, we made the modern world as it looks now. Globalisation has opened borders. Education has created opportunities. Cities bring together people from different countries and cultures. As an Anywhere, we can go almost anywhere!

The People Who Belong Somewhere

Somewheres, in contrast, are more rooted in place, says Goodhart. Their identities are shaped by family, community, neighbourhood, tradition, and nation. They are more likely to live near where they grew up – many of them apparently not more than 15 miles from their mum. Their relationships in their local area may stretch back decades or even generations. 

The local pub, football club, church, factory, high street, or community centre are more than amenities as we might see them in our big cities. These places are part of the social fabric that connect people in these communities and where they can know who they are.

For the Somewhere, Belonging is deeply connected to continuity. 

The Destructive Power of Change

But Britain has been changing – fast – over the past half-century. Industries have disappeared, along with jobs. Communities have been diminished as people move away to find work. Mass immigration – with its influx of large numbers of people with different values, lifestyles, language and culture – has changed towns and neighbourhoods by placing stress on public services and imposing different behaviours and ways of being too fast. Meanwhile, familiar and traditional institutions have weakened.

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For us Anywheres, who are not phased by change, who have options and who believe in globalisation and diversity, we might see this as progress. However, for others, living on the ground with such changes that might feel foisted on them without any say on their part, with few options themselves, and whose communities are being broken apart by economic and political forces they feel they cannot control, all they see is what they value being given no respect or value by those in power – and ultimately, destroyed. 

Goodhart argues that Britain’s political and cultural institutions have become increasingly dominated by Anywheres who failed to understand this sense of powerlessness, disrespect and painful sense of loss.

When One Kind of Difference Becomes More Valuable Than Another

Diversity is one of the values that we Anywheres cherish. We usually mean diversity in the context of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or religion. Goodhart flags another kind of difference, that is – between people with different relationships to place, community, education, tradition, and change.

His book draws a picture of a Britain that has become increasingly divided between graduates and non-graduates, prosperous cities and struggling towns, people who move and people who stay. The people running our universities, media, charities, corporations, political parties, and public institutions are disproportionately drawn from the graduate professional class. They may be diverse in many respects. Yet they can also share remarkably similar assumptions about how society should work because they tend to be Anywheres.

But what about the Somewheres? How is their perspective represented in such places and especially in policies that impact in real terms on their lived experience?

Brexit and the Revolt of the Somewheres

Goodhart sees Brexit partly as a revolt against the dominance of Anywhere values by those who have felt overlooked and unrepresented. The referendum revealed a country divided by age, education, geography, and social outlook. Broadly speaking, graduates and residents of large cities were more likely to vote Remain. Older people, non-graduates, and residents of smaller towns and post-industrial communities were generally more likely to vote Leave. 

Many Remain voters woke up after the referendum feeling that they no longer recognised their own country – that’s certainly how I felt. Goodhart writes that perhaps for many Somewheres, they had felt like that for years.

For decades, the Somewheres had felt that their country no longer Belonged to them. In their immediate lives, their industries had disappeared and communities had changed. Their children had moved away to be replaced by strangers. Most painful of all, their concerns about immigration, economic insecurity, and national identity were often treated as ignorance or prejudice. Their feelings, concerns, points of view – their lived experience, that buzzword du jour, that gives legitimacy to those whose diversity the Anywheres respected – were delegitimized and did not count. 

Brexit gave them a voice. 

Whatever we think of the Brexit vote, what Goodhart argues is that we should try to understand what it was telling us – that Somewheres want to be heard, their concerns taken seriously and the problems they are struggling to be addressed. 

The Problem With Meritocracy

We generally think of social mobility as an unquestionable good. A bright child from a small town does well at school, goes to university, builds a successful career, and moves to a prosperous city. We celebrate the individual success story.

But what happens to the small town? What happens when generations of ambitious young people are encouraged to leave and have no reason to return? If they don’t come back, communities lose entrepreneurs, teachers, professionals, organisers, and future leaders. The individual succeeds elsewhere – or Anywhere. The Somewhere place they came from may become poorer.

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Goodhart asks us to reconsider a society that defines success largely by the ability to leave Somewhere behind. This argument has since been developed further by Michael Sandel in The Tyranny of Merit and by Goodhart himself in Head Hand Heart – both on my wishlist for future reading. These two books challenge a society that gives disproportionate status to academic achievement and professional success while undervaluing the people who care for us, build things, repair things, transport things, and keep communities functioning.

The question is not simply who earns the most money. It is whose contribution we value. And who feels that they matter.

Will Burnham be able to Bridge the Gap between Somewheres and Anywheres?

I am writing this on the day that the new Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced cuts to VAT on energy bills – to be funded by the scrapping of the billion pound Digital ID scheme initiated by his predecessor Keir Starmer.

It is early days in his government and I am no political pundit. However, this feels to me to understand the daily concerns of British people – not just the Somewheres but us Anywheres too. It is straightforward, easy to understand and will hopefully have real, visible impact. 

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The Digital ID scheme, in my view, was not going to add a proper fix to the real problem because there are, I understand, already checks in place that ensure legitimate employment practices. The cost was also eye-wateringly disproportionate to the fix and would have made life more difficult for many law-abiding citizens who for whatever reason cannot cope with technology. 

Burnham seems to be an Anywhere who is still connected to Somewhere. He has spoken about bringing the centre of political life to the North and of policies to reinvigorate the economy there as well. Let us hope his premiership will be good for the Somewheres in real economic and social terms rather than quick-fixes that pander to symptomatic far-right emotions. Because I feel that if any such real good can really be effected for the Somewheres it will also be good for all of us as a nation.

A Thought-Provoking Read

The Road to Somewhere is a thought-provoking read. Some critics have commented that the book seems over-simplistic in its division of the complexity that is UK society into two broad groups like Somewheres and Anywheres. It may also feel a little polemical in places. However, by focusing on an angle that most of us never consider, it brings out a new way of thinking and talking about the real divisions and antagonism that are evident in Britain today. 

It has prompted me to try to look at things from the perspective of Somewheres. I am resolving to be more empathetic to try and see what it is events like the Brexit vote, flag-flying, anti-mass-migration protests and more may be trying to express. 

Do share your thoughts – either drop me a line or add something in the comments. I’d love to hear from you, even if we may disagree. Or maybe use the book as a way to start a discussion with your friends or colleagues. 

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Photos:

The Road to Somewhere – https://www.amazon.fr/Road-Somewhere-Populist-Revolt-Politics/dp/1849047995

David Goodhart – https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/David-Goodhart/159898905

Andy Burnham – https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyv9qe6wj7o

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Sources:

Andy Burnham VAT cut – https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwxll8jyz8o

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