David Goodhart makes Hay

What a pity. It seems that Dave Goodhart, director of Demos and editor-at-large of Prospect, has made peace with the Hay Festival organisers, who decided against showcasing his new book on immigration on the annual luvvie field trip. Hay Director Peter Florence described Goodhart’s The British Dream as ‘sensationalist’, and apparently told Goodhart that Hay stood ‘for pluralism and multiculturalism’ and that he is half-Italian.

Goodhart hit back at these ‘ultra-liberal, slightly lefty multiculturalist’ views, saying:  ‘it’s [the book] probably been more widely reviewed than any non-fiction book so far this year – both favourably and unfavourably, so when my publisher said there was no interest from Hay I was a bit surprised.’ Goodhart has buried the hatchet today with a tweet: ‘Time to draw line under #haygate with a Times leader and piece in Mail,’ Although he could not resist one last dig: ‘with my fave slogan “tough on populism, tough on causes of populism.