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Starting to worry about the use of “elites” almost as much as “traitor” “betrayal” & “surrender”. There’s no concurrency of meaning in terms of which group is the “elite”. Generally it means “rich people who are on the other side of the argument”; it allows the person using 1/
the word to self identify as the plucky little underdog, however false a narrative that may be. But not all the wealthy wield the same amount of influence and it is not only the wealthy who wield influence in any event. 2/
It is lazy & superficial to say “the elites” are to blame without going into any finer analysis. At the moment the toxicity, it seems to me, is leeching into society from 3 distinct sources, first is the press owning elite, we don’t know them as well as we should because 3/
they own the press. They are rich yet they pay little in tax; how dare the Mail, for example, brand judges “Enemies of the People”, how dare it talk of “the people” at all when the country is littered with the opportunities stolen - schools & hospitals unbuilt or underequipped 4/
- through the taxes its proprietors have not paid. Pick another tabloid (whether in dimension or ethos) and another proprietor and similar examples can be given. Then there are the wealthy chancers who have backed Brexit; 5/
they don’t look like an elite at all, they are not polite, they are not refined but they will earn even bigger fortunes if the country crashes out on no deal and the pound tumbles. More stolen opportunities, more schools & hospitals not built, not equipped. Thirdly 6/
is the “New Political Elite”, the rest of us have allowed them to grow while we consoled ourselves with the thought that we were doing something more worthwhile than politics. The New Political Elite gravitated towards politics even as it got nastier and made it nastier still, 7/
and in that hothouse of nastiness they have become more inward-looking, more obsessed, self-obsessed and grandiosely delusional. Dip into the murky areas they inhabit, the chat rooms, Facebook & WhatsApp groups and you will see the language of treachery & betray provoked 8/
by sometimes the least of doctrinal disagreements was common currency long before it polluted wider political discourse. This is a powerful elite notwithstanding that it is the least cohesive 9/
because it is not confined to one side politically. It encompasses Momentum & the Corbynite left every bit as much as the ERG & they united by a callous disregard for damage to the country or to any individuals they will cause and 10/
the grim determination to rule whatever is left after the chaos.
That is my analysis of the problem and I don’t think the solution is going to be easy, because it may require those of us who are not madly obsessed or driven to be so for a while. 11/11
That is my analysis of the problem and I don’t think the solution is going to be easy, because it may require those of us who are not madly obsessed or driven to be so for a while. 11/11
