Show Notes
Matthew Elliott joins Elizabeth Oldfield in his first interview since Brexit to talk about how he became the man behind the Brexit campaign and now a champion of social mobility through business. Elliott shares insights into his family's influence, his political awakening, and the principles that have guided his controversial yet impactful career. He offers a candid look inside the Brexit referendum, explaining the complex motivations that drove the Leave campaign and reflecting on the societal divisions it created. 🎟️ Book your ticket for the SACRED LIVE: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast 🎙️ Follow The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast 📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/ 💡 Produced by the @thinktanktheos www.theosthinktank.co.uk/ ✍️ Follow Matthew Elliott: https://x.com/matthew_elliott
CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:30 What is Sacred to you? Matthew Elliott Answers 00:02:54 Core Values and Life Mission 00:06:09 Political Perspectives and Pragmatism 00:08:54 Childhood Influences and Political Awakening 00:12:01 The Role of Education in Shaping Beliefs 00:14:54 The Intersection of Personality and Politics 00:18:09 Classical Liberalism and Social Responsibility 00:21:06 Government vs. Corporate Surveillance 00:24:01 The Role of Business in Society 00:26:06 Business and Social Responsibility 00:29:38 Brexit: A Journey of Skepticism and Change 00:36:14 The Role of Business in Society 00:43:43 Navigating Public Life and Backlash
Keywords: Brexit, politics, personal values, data privacy, classical liberalism, social responsibility, corporate ethics, government surveillance, community, public policy, business, social responsibility, Brexit, polarization, Jobs Foundation, employment, community, public life, skepticism, social good
More from The Sacred
What happens when the AI tools we used to make life easier started to change the way we think? Journalist and author Jamie Bartlett joins Elizabeth Oldfield for a live recording to explore what AI reveals about human nature, why we keep using tools we’re worried about, and what we risk losing when we let machines do our thinking for us. We talk about: • How using AI has affected Jamie’s own writing and thinking • Why language models can be so good at flattering us and exploiting our own biases • What it means to remain thoughtful and human in an age of increasingly capable machines • How we can learn to ask better questions - not just of AI, but of ourselves Jamie Bartlett is a journalist and author whose work explores the social and political consequences of technology. His books include How to Talk to AI, The People vs. Tech and Radicals. Thank you to everyone who joined us in the room and to those who sent us their thoughts on AI ahead of the evening. 🎙️ Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast 📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/ 💡 The Sacred is produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations 👉 Read Jamie's latest book, How to Talk to AI: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/475950/how-to-talk-to-ai-by-bartlett-jamie/9780753561980 👇 Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all. Copyright: "Make You Mine - Instrumental" by Brooke Annibale Licensed by The Musicbed LLC"Beyond the Veil (feat. Khamir Music)" by Simon Wester Licensed by The Musicbed LLC
What Does It Take to Create a Shared Home in a Divided City? In Jerusalem, two women from opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, Riman Barakat and Karen Brunwasser, have spent more than a decade building FeelBeit, a shared arts and cultural space where Israeli and Palestinian artists and communities are invited to ‘feel at home’ together. In this moving conversation, recorded live at Aspen Ideas Festival, we explore what it takes to build trust across a profound divide—and what happens when that trust is tested by violence, grief and fear. We also cover: Friendship and why relationships can be a form of peacebuilding What happened at FeelBeit after October 7 and in the years since The power of art to hold grief, anger, joy and hope at the same time Why “compassion over righteous indignation” and “self-love and self-critique” might be some of the hardest—and most necessary—practices for our societies
Can you really vote your way to a good society - or does it have to be built house by house, street by street?
What does it mean to prepare to die—and then discover that you need to prepare to live again? In this conversation, poet Christian Wiman reflects on faith, poetry, love, mortality, and his experience of living for more than 20 years with cancer. He talks about his turbulent childhood, how poetry transformed his anger into something creative, and why he believes poems can open us to something beyond ourselves. The conversation also explores: Wiman’s journey from economics to poetry What a poem actually is—and why sound can matter more than meaning Attention and his idea of “productive inattention” Faith, suffering, and writers including Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum
What are we losing by spending so much of our lives behind screens? COVID-19 brought the whole world online, and as a podcast we kind of stayed there. This season, we made a commitment to only recording in person, mostly at Elizabeth’s community house in south London. As a result, we sensed a big shift in our connection with guests and we thought we’d take an opportunity to reflect on a few things that we’d forgotten along the way: Being in-person is key to meeting people as real humans and creating non-transactional relationships Something shifts when we eat snacks together and see each other’s homes Screens and the ease of our digital lives mean we spend less time in our bodies. It’s much more convenient — but what’s the hidden cost? We shrink when were alone, and we trust others less