The classless society was a lie. The class system isn't dead, it's been reimagined
Evening Standard|September 17, 2024
READING the dripping with snobbery and class-prejudice articles and social media attacks on Charlie Mullins, the Pimlico Plumbers boss who has declared he is taking all of his money out of the UK because of Labour’s attitude to the wealthy, I suddenly realised that there has been a seismic shift in British culture.
Anna van Praagh
The classless society was a lie. The class system isn't dead, it's been reimagined

Snobbery, the national sport we Brits are most famous for, never went away, it has shape-shifted, metamorphosed and re-emerged in a different form. The British class system isn’t dead, it has been reimagined.

But it is no longer your physical characteristics that can be mocked for being naff, or your car or your kitchen or your accent; it is your beliefs. Thoughts and political opinions are the new class signifiers in Starmer’s Britain.

Think immigration is too high? You might as well be driving a white Range Rover with teeth sparkling from a trip to Turkey. Voted for Brexit? You may as well have concreted over your front garden in order to use it to park your car. Not enthusiastic about the gender diversity agenda? Unbelievably common.

Being on the wrong side of the culture wars is the new Non-U.

The American historian Christopher Lasch argued that modern global elites have more in common with each other than the poorer people from their own countries and this is true too of our new class overlords.

This story is from the September 17, 2024 edition of Evening Standard.

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This story is from the September 17, 2024 edition of Evening Standard.

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