The social politics of Eton

Every prime minister is a sociologist. Theresa May drew a distinction between citizens of somewhere and ‘citizens of nowhere’, a sort of riff on David Goodhart’s distinction between Somewheres (rooted, provincial, less well off) and Anywheres (snooty, international, at home on planes and in the corridors of power).

Now Boris Johnson segments the country in a fresh way. He talks about the existence of both rural and ‘oppidan’ Britons feeling ‘under-invested, excluded’ and that ‘their lives and their futures weren’t as important’, and he implicitly opposes them to the elites.

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

Why oppidan? Oppidan is essentially a posh word for ‘townie’ (from the Latin oppidum). It has a special meaning to almost nobody except those who, like Boris Johnson himself, are alumni of Eton College. Its chief value as an analytical tool may therefore be in analysing Boris rather than in analysing the country.