One big theme has dominated Tory party conference at Manchester this week: levelling up. Boris Johnson, we are being told, is on a mission to rescue British working people who have been forgotten and left behind in today’s UK.
According to this powerful narrative Keir Starmer’s Labour party is a manifestation of a “woke” metropolitan elite utterly alien to the “red wall” voters who flocked to the Tories at the last election.
The Pandora papers revelations undermine that Tory story. Yes, there are struggling people who have been forgotten by the system. Yes it’s a worthy cause to give them a much bigger say in public life. But no, the Tories don’t generally represent such people.
Johnson’s Conservative party essentially belongs to the super-rich. The billionaires. Those with privileged access to the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer. To the large and in many cases insalubrious cast of men and women with walk-on appearances in the Pandora papers scandal.
This class of Conservatives does not seem to see the British state – as Tories have historically claimed to do – as something to which you dedicate a life of service. They seem to see it rather differently: as something to be plundered and used for self-enrichment. » | Peter Oborne | Tuesday, October 5, 2021
