The government is hoping that the electorate will reject the Conservative party on the basis that they are a bunch of toffs. But it is not at all obvious that the British hold their traditional elites in all that much disdain. The question, I suspect, is how we interpret the cultural politics of the 1990s.
In terms of cultural sociology, John Major’s period in office was arguably the most interesting in Britain since the 1970s. It was circa 1990-97 that working class identity went from being a source of political and economic antagonism, to becoming a form of cultural capital that could be exported and plundered for profit. Britpop, Lad culture, football and a re-remembering of Britain’s 1960s as a mod decade (working class) rather than a hippy one (middle class) enabled Britain to reinvent class as a cultural division—and therefore a more fluid one—rather than an economic one.
There was a sunny six-year period (between the launch of Loaded magazine and the emergence of the word ‘chav’ ) in which men with shaved heads and trainers suddenly appeared appealing to the liberal middle class, comfortingly local yet foreign at the same time. When Jarvis Cocker muttered in 1995 “take your Year in Provence and shove it up your ass” he no doubt inadvertently spoke for many middle class men as well. To this day, the number of people bracketed as ‘working class’ by sociologists is falling, while the number identifying as such is rising.
While this was going on, John Major’s government looked like an old guard who’d had their day. The disappearance of an antagonistic working class surely reduced many voters’ psychological attachment to elderly men in pin-striped suits, just as the end of the cold war meant that Americans were less inclined to have a protective father (i.e. Republican) in the White House.
But we have to be wary of granting these cultural phenomena too much political weight or historical permanence. Would things really have been any different if the Tories had removed their ties or talked football? Moreover, once class becomes understood in cultural terms as opposed to economic ones, no class is ever doomed to the historical dustbin, but can wax and wane over the years. Some variant of toff culture can quite easily make a comeback, if only due to the vagaries of fashion.
Staffed by wonks, New Labour retains a more economic notion of class than most of the British electorate, and is acutely conscious of the contrasting backgrounds of the Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet. The former believe in meritocracy because they see themselves as examples of it, while painting the Camerons as examples of aristocracy. But how much does that distinction resonate with the British public? Aristocrats are no richer than meritocrats in 2008, in fact the reverse is often the case (as John Hutton has crudely celebrated). There is nothing intrinsically more ‘normal’ about Ed Balls spending his youth poring over economics books than Cameron quaffing expensive wine. To claim otherwise is the narcissism of small differences. If Britain has anything like Australia’s ‘tall poppy syndrome’, it may even be more hostile to social climbers (that is, meritocrats) than to lucky hedonists (aristocrats). If the latter confess to being a bit lazy but up for a bit of fun, then they may already be speaking the same language as many voters. Just ask George W Bush.
What is most galling about New Labour’s attack on toffs is that it trivialises and pastiches the sense of economic injustice that many on the Left have expressed, but which the government has steadfastly refused to acknowledge. Fierce inequalities in capital ownership (underpinned by the housing boom), in educational attainment, and even in health are suddenly being obscured by the suggestion that Eton College is the biggest threat to social justice today. The strategy is unlikely to succeed, and doesn’t deserve to.
Paxman has pointed out that in fact the Tory candidate for Crewe is not what the Labour candidate calls a ‘ toff ‘ ; because he is not in the book ( Burke’s / Debrette’s ) , while she , apparently, is
Anyway, it was Kevin Costner who told us ( as Robin Hood ) :
” Nobility is not defined by ones birth , but by ones actions ”
Any half-sentient Exchange & Mart reader can spot a bargain when they see one. An intelligent candidate who has grasped the privilege of a first-rate education ( cobblers son who got the Lobbs ) is easily the better man to represent his constituents than an anachronistic, clueless, class warrior
( Would it be prudent to ask why , if the previous MP for Crewe was as brilliant as advertised, that after 10 years of unprecedented levels of public spending by Labour, large areas of Crewe remain so unattractively dingy ? )
Thanks to Labour’s class warfare, the current entrance exams for Eton ( let alone fees ) would be off the scale for almost every elementary school pupil. That these men are prepared to enter public service ( what gems they could mint instead from a career in the city )is testimony to their integrity and credibility for the job.
Recipients of a world-class education are obviously better trained to think, and therefore less likely to accept the left wing’s relentless dumbing down of Britain, in order that the nanny State has and retains total control.
In stark contrast, many Labour MPs ( obviously, Frank Field apart ) seem incapable of thinking anything through - as demonstrated by the results of the human embryo bill. Despite steadily sinking in the quicksand of their lowest ever polls , but desperate to appease their Guardian readership , yesterday Labour sent another telegram out to the electorate re-iterating how woefully little they care about families ; and the very weakest,vulnerable members of society
24 week old babies still to be chopped up and dragged from the womb ( what excuse for not simply providing cost-beneficial free contraception for all ? ). Deliberately ” removing the father from the family unit, and all that a father can bring to the family unit ” by offering mind-bogglingly selfish single women fertility treatment ( on the state ) without any mention of a father’s role
Not even a print-out of stats listing the low-achievement, self-destructive, delinquent behaviour rates among the under-valued children of single-parent households ; and their unfortunate friends, relatives, and teachers and the rest of society tearing out their hair while having to pick up the slack
Britain has suffered enough of Labour - the world has had enough of Labour. Perhaps the classless Mrs Blair been signed up as the Tories secret weapon ? She says her book was not written for the money ; when then can we know which charity will get the proceeds ? Who can forget the news camera footage of her singing the Beatles song ” will you still need me when I’m sixty-four ? ” on the very night she heard of WMD expert Dr Kelly’s suicide , leaving a 64 yr old widow ?
London had enough of labour - albeit, Boris Johnson was a scholar at Eton - a double whammy in the bargain of the century stakes . Let’s hope the good folk of Crewe have the savvy to oust Labour and their BNP-friendly campaign literature while they can
Dear Sir -
Toff bashing like bear baiting in medieval Europe is a popular sport and one that always wins plenty of public support. It is a little like professor-bashing or bishop-bashing as per the public revulsion toward the Archbishop of Canterbury after his sharia law lecture this last year.
Still one cannot help feel that more of this will occur not because there is something enjoyable about such bashing, but because the common sense of the public sensibility demands it. Sharia law is a monist system of law that brooks no pluralism or even a classical gelasian dualism between temporal and spiritual, and the goodly archbishop Rowan Atkinson did not see this point. Only his system of old-fashioned secular achristian liberalism permits the pluralism he espouses, though, despite the inherent logical failure of his system, it is a pluralism that is open to everything, even its own demise. Sharia law does not tolerate ethnicity or dualism - it is always a technical theocracy run by fighting imams.
So it seems to be a suicidal count-down for the Mr Bean of recent archbishops - is this another reason for the popular enjoyment of toff-bashing?
R
An enjoyable Bank Holiday comment from Andrew Gimson :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/2017851/David-Cameron-fails-to-hail-Prime-Minister-Gordon-Brown%2C-the-architect-of-his-triumph.html