To prevent the UK from being dismantled by our own government, the middle class needs to find the courage to speak plainly about these issues and vote for parties that confront reality, rather than opting for comfortable virtue-signalling, Geoffrey Taylor writes.
There is a particular species of Englishman and Englishwoman, spotted in the market towns of the Home Counties, the stucco-fronted terraces of Notting Hill and the smarter quarters of provincial cities. He drives an Audi estate; she wears yoga leggings and clutches a reusable water bottle emblazoned with self-improvement slogans. Their children attend schools where the greatest concern is why Inigo lost the lead in Oliver! to Bertie. Weekends revolve around sourdough, Pilates, and the odd ski trip to Val d’Isère. They are comfortable. And comfort, the middle classes have discovered, is more potent a narcotic than any opium once imported from the East.
Call me a snob, but I belong to this class – one that has attained just enough comfort to fear losing it and therefore refuses to think beyond the next bonus or Ofsted report. The very rich can afford ideology; their portfolios are diversified; their walls are gated. The aristocracy still plants oaks in their Capability Brown parks that will take centuries to mature. The working class, for whom comfort is a rumour, has nothing to lose and therefore everything to gain from taking the long view. Only the bourgeois mass is trapped in the present tense. They’re not ideological; they’re terrified....<<<Read More>>>...
