JJ Savages the Conservative Rag.

I see the Daily Mail this morning carried the headline:

Theresa May Savages the Liberal Elite

It followed up with a short extract from her speech to the Tory Party Conference, a speech that was very expertly written I must say, but which contained, as you would expect, much that was childishly over-simplistic and carried a distinct whiff of carefully understated prejudice.

And don’t the right wingers just love the word ‘elite.’ They turn it into a pejorative description which only applies to the opposition. Donald Trump does the same thing with the same word. It's almost like a twisted form of passive aggression, and is certainly a transparently contrived displacement device.

But let’s remind ourselves that the vast majority of liberals are not part of any elite at all. They’re rank and file people who are generally more intelligent than conservatives (hence why the universities have a reputation for being liberal institutions), who are more inclined to understand the broader view (which naturally goes some way to obviating bigotry), and are almost universally the more compassionate. In short, they’re nicer, more broadminded people. And isn’t it the final irony that if there’s one party in Britain which has always had a reputation for elitism, it’s the Conservative Party?

I didn’t see any Daily Mail newspapers during the Labour Party Conference, but I’d lay odds on that none of the headlines yelled:

Jeremy Corbyn Savages the Tory Faithful

That would have been a bit too balanced, wouldn’t it?