PM aide Dominic Cummings blames 'rich Remainers' in Brexit snap at TV reporter

[Denzil_DC]

Privately-schooled Dominic Cummings, whose baronet father-in-law owns a haunted castle, had a characteristically blunt response while leaving his £1.6m townhouse
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The senior No10 advisor told a TV reporter: "You guys should get outside London and go to talk to people who are not rich remainers."
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The son of an oil rig manager and teacher, who has repeatedly portrayed himself as the scourge of the civil service establishment, was educated at the fee-paying Durham School and Oxford University.

He and his wife Mary Wakefield - whose father, Sir Humphrey, owns 'Britain's most haunted castle' Chillingham Castle in Northumberland - bought their Islington townhouse for £1.65m in 2013 and later applied to extend it.

The luxurious home features a separate 'Tapestry Room', 'Reading Room' and 'Formal Living Room' spread across two floors.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/pm-aide-dominic-cummings-blames-19928675

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm heartily sick of Cummings and other patronizing shady overprivileged wealthy useless conniving wannabe class warriors co-opting "the working class" and "northerners" as a stick to beat anyone who's not as barkingly bonkers in favour of plummeting out of the EU with no safety net or parachute as they are, as if either of those blocs is monolithic.

From 2017, by LSE researchers:

Brexit was not the voice of the working class nor of the uneducated – it was of the squeezed middle

Over the past year or so, Brexit has been interpreted as the symbol of a historical shift to anti-establishment politics, kicking off a surge in the ‘outsider’ vote across Europe and the United States. In line with this narrative, initial interpretations of the vote depicted Leave voters as marginalised segments of the population – both educationally and economically – who had channelled their discontent through the referendum.

Another popular view that emerged is that Brexit was the unified response of the working class which finally found its long-lost voice. Yet subsequent, rigorous analysis showed that the profile of Brexit voters is more heterogeneous than initially thought, and that it includes voters with high education and ‘middle class’ jobs. If Brexit is really connected to socio-economic factors, how do we make sense of this apparent contradiction?
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The left-out argument has been constructed around voters whose low levels of education render them unable to compete with those with a university degree in the globalised economy. Academic research has already argued against this. For example, Goodwin and Heath show that voters with A-level education from low skilled communities had similar pro-Leave voting profiles to those with no education.

...

Our findings confirm a negative relationship between education and voting Leave: the higher the level of one’s education, the lower the likelihood of them voting Leave. Our findings, however, reject the dichotomous view of the low-educated Brexiter vs the high-educated Remainer, by showing that two groups with intermediate levels of education (voters with good GSCEs and A-levels) were more pro-Leave than the low-educated (those with no formal education and with low GSCE grades).

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-and-the-squeezed-middle/

From last May:

It has become commonplace to ascribe the leave victory in 2016 to the votes of working-class Labour supporters. This is misleading. Most leave voters live in Conservative constituencies. The Tory shires mattered more than Labour’s industrial heartlands.

A YouGov analysis of more than 25,000 voters suggests the following division of leave voters in the referendum, linked to the 2017 election result.

• Middle-class leave voters: Conservative 5.6 million; Labour 1.6 million.

• Working-class leave voters: Conservative 4.4 million; Labour 2.2 million. (A few of the remaining 3.6 million leave voters supported smaller parties; most did not vote in 2017.)

So the largest block of leave voters were middle-class Conservatives, followed by working-class Conservatives. Just one in eight leave voters was a working-class Labour supporter. To be sure, had even half of these 2.2 million voters backed remain, the result of the referendum would be different. But to suggest that the referendum’s 17.4 million leave voters were dominated by working-class Labour supporters is simply wrong.

From last March:

8 reasons we should stop assuming “northern” means “pro-Brexit”

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1) Many regions within the North were majority Remain – and many down South were majority Leave
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2) Everywhere has large numbers of Leave and Remain voters
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3) The North has an awful lot of people – but not necessarily enough to stop Brexit alone
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4) Differences aren’t as big as percentages make it look
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5) Non-voters narrow the margins further
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6) Opinion polls show Remain gaining ground in the North
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7) Referendums don’t work like elections anyway
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8) In general, stereotyping is just a bad idea
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https://www.citymetric.com/politics/8-reasons-we-should-stop-assuming-northern-means-pro-brexit-4513

Cummings isn't a subtle person. The battle lines he wants to draw up for an upcoming election are obvious: people versus parliament; rich Remainers versus - well, who the hell knows, hard done by? - Leavers; his nihilistic world view, dubious motives and ultra-wealthy backers versus what passes for reality nowadays, the national good and those of us who aren't rich by any means, just collateral damage in his machinations.

[T_i_B]

1. I'm pretty fed up with millionaire Brexshitters

.....trying to label anyone who disagrees with them as "elitist", in spite of the fact that very few of us have anything like as much wealth as the likes of Cummings or Rees Mogg. Here and now in 2019 the Brexshitters are the elite.

To be honest though, there are plenty of people on both left and right with some pretty warped ideas about class in the UK, and this does create opportunities for charlatans like Johnson and Cummings.

[Denzil_DC]

2. It should be open goal for some party or other, or for we Remainer plebs

if we can make our voices heard.

Labour does have some wealthy individuals in its ranks and Shadow Cabinet, of course, so may be less inclined to do so. But nothing defines "elite" to me like an ex-public schoolboy ex-financial trader long-time European Parliament member with ultra-wealthy cronies and backers who seems not to have done an honest day's work in his life (yes, I'm talking about you, Mr Farage) or an ex-public school ex-Oxbridge spad married into wealth who's made a hobby of being an unelected disruptive arsehole all his adult life (yes, I'm talking about you, Mr Cummings). And that's before starting on the likes of Rees-Mogg, FFS?!?!

Cummings has been roundly ridiculed by many for the glib outburst above, but how the hell don't they get called out on this more on a daily basis? I guess it has parallels with Trump, another shiftless shady arch-silverspooner who somehow managed to persuade enough unwealthy people he was on their side to swing an election (or at least bring it close enough that it was swingable by shenanigans).

[T_i_B]

3. It doesn't help

When it is mirrored in outbursts from left leaning Brexshitters / Corbyn loyalists towards remainers so often.

I'm afraid I came to the conclusion during the 2016 referendum that most opinions on the matter of social class in this country are a load of old rubbish.

[Ghost Dog]

4. Check out these people and all similar for offshore accounts, shell companies etc.

and unpaid taxes.

Then apply a confiscatory wealth tax to all, once the real numbers are available.

[LeftishBrit]

5. What about rich Brexiters?

Ranging from the likes of Banks -what a suitable name for him! - to wealthy largely-rural areas in the south that voted for Brexit.

Although the cities in the South East went largely for Remain (as did Newcastle in the North!), the South East as a whole went for Brexit, and currently sends 4 Brexit MEPs, including His Nigelness himself, and Daniel Hannan, to the Europaean Parliament. The South East is not known as an area of particular deprivation: there are some deprived areas, but these are mostly in the Remain-voting cities.

[Denzil_DC]

6. Johnson did venture beyond the M25 today, visiting Doncaster:

He didn't get a universally warm welcome, and this particularly articulate woman doesn't look particularly rich:

Link to tweet

Channel 4 News ✔
@Channel4News

"People have died because of austerity, and you’ve got the cheek to come here and tell us austerity's over and it's all good now."

That's what one woman told Boris Johnson during a visit to Doncaster, but he said his government was putting more money into public services.

[Twitter video]

[T_i_B]

7. He also visited Rotherham

I was working in Rotherham myself today. Although I stayed well clear of Magna where he was.

He also went to Fox Valley Retail Park in Stocksbridge, which as luck would have it is in a top Tory target seat and where the latest Lib Dem MP Angela Smith has her constituency office. Clearly at attempt to "park tanks on their lawn", although the Conservatives would be better advised to make more effort in local elections rather then send their head idiot for a publicity stunt.

Rather annoying that the idiot has been in my neck of the woods. I think I need a shower!