The rage against Boris

This morning, a petition demanding ‘Do not prorogue Parliament’ is doing the rounds. At the time of writing, more than 1.4 million people have signed it. Remainers are very excited. They’re holding the petition up as proof of a mass outpouring of democratic disdain for Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament for a few more days than is normal. It is no such thing. It looks more like yet another middle-class hissy fit against Brexit and the people who voted for it. 

As the petition map demonstrates, the signatories are strikingly concentrated in certain parts of the country, especially the leafy, super-middle-class bits of southern England. There are very high numbers of signatures from Brighton, Hove, Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire; and in London from Islington, Dulwich, Wood Green, Hackney, Richmond and Twickenham.

All of these areas have large numbers of working-class and poor inhabitants, of course. But they are also known, correctly, as the heartlands of the metropolitan middle classes.