lot of the opening moves in the culture war were predicated on the idea that normal people hate Londoners.
The capital was a byword for inauthenticity, a natural habitat for the wealthy and the remote. It couldn’t possibly stick, I thought, because it is so dumb. Plenty of Londoners aren’t wealthy at all. Plenty of people right across the country – yes, even in the north of England – put milk in their coffee.
And yet it did stick. It turned out that many people did hate elites and experts, and politics, and that to live in a metropolis at all, particularly Britain’s main one, with your fancy shops and your silly ideas, was enough to make your compadres sick to their stomachs, and I guess I should live and learn. But I am still surprised to see that vote-pulling strategy – “Londoners: don’t you just hate them?” – deployed in the city’s mayoral race.