My answer is in two parts:
• guilt &
..
• ignorance.
Guilt because at some level the public school toffs & Oxbridge elite know there is nothing that special about them. Ignorance, because their bourgeois world does not afford a wide enough spectrum of knowledge nor a well grounded understanding of history ..
Johnson expects everyone to be impressed that he can recite Homer in ancient Greek. He thinks he already reached the pinnacle of knowledge & lesser things such as building bridges (literal ones) etc are for inferior people.
This is why he said ..
Mogg is exactly the same. He thinks he has a great mind because he can recite the names of battles we won, but when he actually ..
Their tools for comprehending the world are inadequate but they are convinced of the opposite...
Wholly unmerited and yet we voted for it.