We all know the truth about the wealth and privilege of the future Tory front bench, says Rod Liddle, but it’s better to brazen it out like Boris than try to seem apologetic
The Labour party’s cynical attempt to target the opposition as a party of champagne-guzzling toffs, preening and loaded Hooray-Henrys and chinless, mewing, high-born upper-crust monkeys may well work. There are still quite a lot of people in this country who are sufficiently bitter and petty to hold the Tories’ background and upbringing against them and, as it happens, I’m one of them. I suspect there are another couple of million or so of us at large, mostly north of the Watford Gap services. Another reason the Labour accusations may well stick is that of all the claims and counter-claims we will have to suffer in the run-up to the next election, not least the frankly surreal spats over spending plans, this one is palpably and tangibly true, provably so. Like it or not, the Conservative party is the party of inherited wealth, private education and conspicuous affluence. Some 64 per cent of the shadow Cabinet attended fee-paying schools; 90 per cent of them are men; all of them are white and a large proportion are absolutely rolling in it.
How do I know this? Because late one night I went through the names and compiled a list, that’s how: that’s what bitter and petty people do of an evening, when Match of the Day has finished. By comparison, three quarters of the Labour front bench were state-educated and even after the sudden defenestrations of Smith and Flint and Blears there are still a few women around (although not enough) and even the occasional black face.
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