The Metropolitan Elite

The phrase metropolitan elite, which has its origins between 2010 and 2015, gets thrown around so casually these days you would think it refers to an actual organised caste instead of a fictional bogeyman cooked up by columnists who need a cartoon villain. It is one of those empty political labels that survives only because it is never defined. The moment you try to pin it down, it disintegrates like a cheap biscuit in hot tea.

Who exactly are these people. Apparently anyone who lives within twenty miles of a Pret, has read a book that is not about World War Two tanks, or once expressed a view that did not come from a tabloid front page. The supposed elite includes broadcasters, teachers, nurses, civil servants, academics, actors, lawyers, charity workers, scientists, students and almost anyone who has ever taken the train into London for work. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the national workforce.

It is not an elite. It is just people.

The irony, of course, is that the politicians and pundits who shout metropolitan elite the loudest are the only ones who actually fit the bill. Multi millionaires. Hedge fund cheerleaders. Think tank creatures funded by offshore donors. Media hosts on six figure salaries. Party leaders who have never taken a night bus in their lives. People whose entire careers are built on telling ordinary voters that the real enemy is the bloke who presents the weather on Radio 4.

It is political misdirection of the purest kind. You take a handful of professions that require education and responsibility, and you pretend they form a secret club running the country. Then you use that invented enemy to divert attention from the actual elites. The ones who bankroll political parties. The ones who sit on boards. The ones who attended Eton or Harrow. The ones who write Brexit betting strategies while telling the rest of the country it is about sovereignty.

When Robbie Gibb uses the term, it means anyone in the BBC who does not match his ideological spreadsheet. When Reform UK uses it, it means anyone who knows how to spell. When the right wing press uses it, it means anyone who is not paid by the right wing press.

It is a catch all insult aimed at anyone who thinks for themselves. And it succeeds because it allows people to imagine a shadowy cabal instead of admitting that their problems are caused by decisions taken in Westminster, not by a junior producer in Broadcasting House.

If you really want to see the genuine elite, look at who owns the newspapers. Look at who funds political parties. Look at who gets peerages. Look at who pays lobbyists. Look at who cashed in on the Truss budget while mortgages exploded. That is your elite. Not the woman on the Victoria line reading a novel.

The metropolitan elite is not a description. It is a coping mechanism. A way of avoiding responsibility by pretending that the country is run by a cabal of vegans with tote bags, rather than by the same billionaire interests who always have their hand on the tiller.

It is a vacuous term because it was designed to be. If it ever meant anything coherent, it could be disproved. So its power lies entirely in its vagueness. It is political fog. Thick enough to hide the real puppeteers. Thin enough for the tabloids to shine a torch through.

The elite are not in the metropolis. They are in the boardrooms, the trust funds, the donor lists, and the discreet corners of the Carlton Club.

The rest is theatre.