This passage from a Kenan Malik article published earlier this year in the Guardian sums up the weaknesses of Matthew Goodwin's concept of 'the new elite' economically:
For Goodwin, though, the new Elite are the "people who really run Britain", having largely displaced the old ruling class of "upper-class aristocrats, landowners and industrialists".
The idea that Gary Lineker or the US-based British journalist Mehdi Hasan or Sam Freedman, a fellow at the Institute for Government thinktank (all of whom Goodwin has namechecked as key members of the new elite) shape our lives more than Rishi Sunak or Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England is, to put it politely, stretching credulity.
Similarly, the suggestion that those who have been responsible for austerity, anti-trade union laws and the imposition of real-terms wage cuts on nurses and railway workers are not the ones who really have power over our lives is bafflingly myopic.
It exposes the postliberal concern for the working class as being as performative as the antiracism of the 'new elite'.
Or as Calder's Fifth Law of Politics holds:
No argument that involves expressing indignation on behalf of a third party is to be trusted.
There is some explanation of an earlier formulation of this rule on this blog.
