Status Anxiety | 1 November 2008

I am surprised by how ready my journalistic colleagues have been to accept Nat Rothschild’s public explanation of why he behaved as he did. According to him — and his anonymous ‘friends’ quoted in the press — he was furious that George Osborne broke the time-honoured rule whereby guests at upper-class house parties are obliged to respect the privacy of their fellow guests and not talk about anything that was said or done in the press. What happens in Corfu stays in Corfu.

While such a rule undoubtedly exists, the usual punishment is simply to cross the offender off your Christmas card list, not to write a letter to the Times. To rebuke someone so publicly — and, in the process, disclose a private conversation that person had with another of your guests — is to be guilty of precisely the same infraction yourself. Osborne’s sin was talking to the press, not betraying the confidence of a fellow guest.