 of elitism shows there must be some knocking about. Bringing up the topic is par for the course now; Boris Johnson having last year also used Prime Minister's Questions, his conference party speech, and a number of occasions in between to lambast the kinds of people who live in Islington – where he owned a £3.75 million townhouse for a decade until 2019. (Was it his trips from there to the Have I Got News For You studios that drew Truss's ire?) There's something about pots and kettles afoot here, though perhaps they got lost en route to Sunak's multimillion pound home in the incredibly relatable west side of the city. Whichever way you slice it, N1 is, to use a favoured millennial phrase, living in our leaders' minds rent-free – which is not to be sniffed at, given current property prices. They presumably think this endless postcode-bashing is stirring up a Thames-based culture war among the faithful, but local mud-slinging is hardly likely to pull the voters they're polling at record lows with onside. Aside from being boring, it shows they've forgotten the most important thing){kind=link}
Whichever way you slice it, N1 is living in our leaders’ minds rent-free
Has a location ever sparked more fear and mystique within a party than north London and the Tories? In her nanoscopic premiership, Liz Truss found time to berate people who take “taxis from north London townhouses to the BBC studios”, as well as using her final leadership hustings to criticise Labour for having “yet another” leader from the area. Which is fair-ish, though at three, by my estimate – compared to, say, the five most recent prime ministers who attended Oxford, or the seven who went to Eton – it seems less of a sucker punch than Truss appeared to think.
Still, what lies north of the river clearly had her rattled. And ditto her successor who, within 24 hours of being in post, had dismissed Keir Starmer for “rarely leav[ing] north London”. The words “Rishi Sunak” and “gumption” do not often co-habit, but a man reportedly twice as rich as the King accusing someone (or indeed anyone) of elitism shows there must be some knocking about.
Bringing up the topic is par for the course now; Boris Johnson having last year also used Prime Minister’s Questions, his conference party speech, and a number of occasions in between to lambast the kinds of people who live in Islington – where he owned a £3.75 million townhouse for a decade until 2019. (Was it his trips from there to the Have I Got News For You studios that drew Truss’s ire?) There’s something about pots and kettles afoot here, though perhaps they got lost en route to Sunak’s multimillion pound home in the incredibly relatable west side of the city. Whichever way you slice it, N1 is, to use a favoured millennial phrase, living in our leaders’ minds rent-free – which is not to be sniffed at, given current property prices.
They presumably think this endless postcode-bashing is stirring up a Thames-based culture war among the faithful, but local mud-slinging is hardly likely to pull the voters they’re polling at record lows with onside. Aside from being boring, it shows they’ve forgotten the most important thing of all: outside London, nobody cares.