Champagne Socialists and Brown Ale Tories

When Dominic Raab – standing in for Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions – winked at his opposite number, Angela Rayner, and said, “She was at the Glyndebourne music festival sipping champagne, listening to opera. Champagne socialism is back in the Labour Party,” two thoughts hit me.

First, I was reminded of the Harry Enfield sketch, Women: Know Your Limits! and secondly, I recalled how, back in May 2020, then Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Shadow health minister Dr Rosena Allin-Khan to watch her “tone” after she asked a question about covid testing.

Matt Hancock and Shadow health minister Dr Rosena Allin-Khan

It is depressing (if predictable) that women MPs are condescended to and patronised in Parliament, especially if they are competent, but the “Champagne socialism” jibe is interesting. There’s much cognitive dissonance at work when it is thought that people from working class backgrounds should not enjoy the arts while simultaneously holding that if they do, they cannot be proper socialists.

I lived in a council flat when I was young, I went to a comprehensive school, I enjoy opera and ballet and I enjoy rock concerts. This doesn’t make me anything other than ordinary and having a taste for different things, but perhaps Dominic Raab would question my going to the Royal Opera House because of my working class roots. As for my politics, I used to vote Conservative, but no more; while I have drifted left, the Tories have lurched disconcertingly further and further to the right.

It’s absurd that people are only expected to enjoy things that are appropriate for the class they are perceived to belong to. Perhaps Raab would be more comfortable if the poor and the socialists stuck to brown ale and whippet racing.

Heaven forbid that someone should be quite well off, or even wealthy, have an interest in the arts and espouse socialist views; obviously they should immediately impoverish themselves. Then, and only then, can they have an opinion on social inequality, one allowed only for victims of it. Bonus points if they then have to claim benefits, for their critics can then label them scroungers.

Overuse of phrases like ‘Champagne socialist’ as insults ends with them losing their meaning. The phrase was originally used by socialists themselves to describe those of a more centrist persuasion (the first Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was labelled a ‘champagne socialist’,’ and his lavish lifestyle and mingling with high society was believed to be the corrupting influence that ended the Labour administration in 1931) but is now simply used by the right-wing to have a pop at Labour politicians for not being true to the working class archetype.

Ramsay MacDonald, the original 'champagne socialist'

In a similar manner, ‘woke’ is a word which has had its meaning corrupted. Originally used in the sense of being well-informed and up-to-date, it is now more usually taken to mean alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice. It has been hijacked - mostly by right-wing pundits and media – and used as a pejorative term when they see or hear something that doesn’t chime with their world view. So, when a supermarket runs an advertising campaign that doesn’t exclusively feature white people, ‘woke’ is thrown at them as an insult and Twitter is suddenly awash with #Boycott (insert name of store).

It’s tiresome and it’s lazy, but it’s pernicious and nasty too, because using it as an insult says, in effect, that discrimination should be tolerated, that being indifferent to - or positively in favour of - racism, discrimination, and injustice are acceptable.

There’s a commonly used phrase, “Go woke, go broke,” that suggests that companies that are woke will go out of business as non-woke folk boycott them. To the best of my knowledge, this has not happened yet.

In or around the same ball park is ‘snowflake’. This one crosses the political divide and is used by left and right as an insult to anyone who is offended by a particular point of view, usually on the basis that it is unreasonable that they are offended. Those using the term judgementally frequently have limited arguments to back up their position. In fact, using their own definition, they are often themselves snowflakes.

‘Gammon’ is similar, and like woke and snowflake, is just thrown out as an insult to people who have a different point of view. The view may be objectionable, but debate it rather than throw insults. All of these are simplistic, formulaic responses used for want of cogent arguments.

While George Orwell’s 1984 is the place to go to see language corrupted, how the meaning of words can be twisted so that virtue becomes vice, and vice becomes virtue, there are plenty of real life examples today. As with ‘woke,’ so with ‘elite.’ Defined as “the richest, most powerful, best educated, or best trained group in a society,” its meaning has been turned on its head, so when you hear a politician sneering about the “elite” you can bet your bottom dollar that they don’t mean the richest or the most powerful members of society: They especially don’t mean themselves. The irony of Donald Trump, or Boris Johnson, or Nigel Farage accusing others of being the elite is off the scale.

To return to Angela Rayner and the accusation of her being a champagne socialist; the former head of English National Opera John Berry was quoted in the Observer as saying, “It’s incredibly sad and embarrassing. Coming under attack for going to an opera is ridiculous.”

In photos that appeared online, Angela Rayner looked perfectly at ease at Glyndebourne, unlike many politicians taken out of their normal milieu and pictured in places alien to them, doing things that are not normal for them. Nigel Farage’s natural home may be the pub with a pint in hand, but for many other right-wing politicians, attempting to connect with ‘ordinary folk’ is fraught. Who can forget David Cameron eating a hot-dog with a knife and fork? America’s NBC was among news networks at home and abroad that could not resist poking fun at what they called Cameron’s “cutlery awkwardness.”

So, if a champagne socialist is a Labour politician who enjoys a wealthy and luxurious lifestyle, what is a right-winger who wants to make out that they are one of the boys, a working class hero: A brown ale Tory, perhaps?