Can the Conservatives really understand ordinary people?

2011. január 26. 14:04

Class is a problem for the Conservative Party and always has been.

2011. január 26. 14:04

„Class is a problem for the Conservative Party and always has been. It suffered electoral disadvantage in the 19th century for being seen to be a class-based party. Disraeli tried to rectify this by urging Earl Russell to have a Reform Act in 1867 that enfranchised many working-class men: the old charlatan told Russell, and other nervous Tories, that these men would show their gratitude by voting Conservative at the next election. They promptly elected Mr Gladstone, and not least because they did not trust the Conservative Party to be anything but class-based. It was only by promising to emulate the social reforming ethos of the Liberals that Disraeli took his party back to power in 1874.


In the 20th century, the desire to connect with the working class motivated many Conservative leaders. Harold Macmillan routinely caved in to strikers' demands because of his fear that the barbarians would hang people like him from lamp-posts; Ted Heath took a similar view. Perhaps the great advantage such men had was that they had spent several years in the Army, where they had acquired first-hand knowledge of the proletariat. No such opportunity was extended to those who now control our destinies.

Too much can be made of this. Almost the only thing I do not hold against Mr Cameron is that he is an Old Etonian, since at least I know he had one of the best educations money can buy; he may yet use it to the good of our country. But he and his Chancellor, Mr Osborne, have never needed to work for a living. It is not that they are cut off so much by experience from the rest of the people that they purport to govern; it is that they are cut off by culture. Good luck to them for having their nice houses in fashionable parts of London, their designer wives, their holidays with rich friends in Klosters or on yachts in the Med – but there is a world outside all that to which they cannot relate. In a politician, that is lamentable.” 
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