[12] He has written of the influence on his thinking of people like Maurice Glasman, who coined the term Blue Labour.

[15] Trevor Phillips, then chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, described such arguments as being those of "liberal Powellites", after the Conservative politician Enoch Powell.

A fault line in Britain existed, he suggested, between "Somewheres", those people firmly connected to a specific community which consists of about half the population, "Inbetweeners", and "Anywheres", those usually living in cities, who are socially liberal and well educated, the latter being only a minority of about 20% to 25% of the total population, but who in fact had "over-ruled" the attitudes of the majority.

[19] Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian believed it could be argued New Labour had actually often had the Somewheres in mind in policies espousing an "Asbo culture" and the "prison works" attitude which they continued from Michael Howard's earlier period as Home Secretary.

[19] Writing for The Daily Telegraph in 2018, Goodhart described the Windrush scandal as "an error of over-zealous control" which "must not lead to a radical watering-down of the so-called 'hostile environment'".