The fatuous idea that politicians must be ‘in touch’

I was in Hyde Park on Friday watching an open-air Pixies show with very great delight when somewhere between ‘Vamos’ and ‘Debaser’ one of my companions bid fair to harsh my buzz by asking what I reckoned to the Tory leadership contest. Well, goodness. I mumbled something about not really having a dog in the fight but thinking that, whatever his other shortcomings (the visible self-love, mostly, and maybe that thing with his wife’s tax status), Rishi Sunak seems to more or less have his head screwed on.

‘But he’s a multi-millionaire,’ my friend said. ‘Isn’t he just going to be hopelessly out of touch?’ And there it was, the worst, most fatuous and most unanswerable charge that can be levelled at a politician: that they are out of touch. The charge proceeds from the idea that unless you live them yourself, you can’t understand the day-to-day troubles of the ordinary working stiff.