Alex Salmond’s brand of populist nationalism involves portraying the Tories as the party of the class enemy. But his latest attack on David Cameron and the TV debates has crossed the line of decency. ‘Like most posh boys, given half a chance, he’ll run away from a fight,’ he said yesterday.
This is bigotry, pure and simple, and Salmond disgraces Scotland with such inverted snobbery. Would he (or anyone else) talk about ‘poor boys’ in such a way? If Salmond intends to use this line in the general election campaign he will find, as Labour found, that Britain does not share the prejudice which animates some of its politicians. Voters don’t really mind if a politician is poor or posh: it’s what they say that counts. That’s why Boris, an alumnus of Bullingdon and Eton, was twice elected mayor of a Labour city.
Most Scots will have no truck with Salmond’s sentiment. Its national tolerance is better summed up by The Proclaimers’s song attacking modern ills, ‘A Land Fit for Zeros,’ which carries this verse:-
If you thought this was your country You can just forget it You’re too old, you’re too poor You’re too posh You’ll never get in here wearing that my dear
Attacking someone for being too posh is just as bad as attacking them for being too poor.
I spent five years in (Scottish) private education myself, at the taxpayer’s expense, and I daresay that qualifies me as a class enemy in Salmond’s book. There are genuine concerns about inequality in Britain – I share them, and I even made a documentary about them. But concerns about equality should never be used to justify bigotry – the kind of bigotry that uses ‘privately-educated’ as a slur or discriminates against anyone, rich or poor, because of their education or accent.
Salmond’s remarks, rather than what Nigel Farage said about equality legislation, should cause outrage today. Kenny Farquerson has said we should be grateful that the SNP is now led by Nicola Sturgeon who would never say something so vulgar. Or inaccurate: as someone else remarked on Twitter, if Salmond thinks that posh boys are cowards he should visit the expansive war memorial at Eton (pictured, above).
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