The metropolitan elite: Britain’s new pariah class

‘What is a metropolitan? Who is in the metropolitan elite? While plainly you can be a member of an elite without being metropolitan, is it possible to be a “metropolitan” without being in the “elite”? (Not really; the metropole doesn’t really want you unless you have money.) What marks you out as a metropolitan, and is there any chance that you could slough it off?

The Labour party has now lost two of its potential leaders to the curse of the metropolitan – Chuka Umunna stood down as a result of press intrusion, the greatest extent of which so far to emerge is a piece in the Daily Mail about the fact that he’s a member of a club with eel-skin walls (this is about as metropolitan elite as you get). Tristram Hunt didn’t have to stand down, having failed to find enough support in the first place, owing to his perceived membership of this clique.’

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