Summary
The valedictory tone reflected an important historical shift. The demonisation of the chattering classes began in the Thatcher years, at precisely the time that Simmonds's well-meaning lefties were losing power and influence. In 1985, the journalist Richard North invented a new stereotype, an inverted yuppie called the "Drabbie". Drabbies were "deliberate and voluntary proles" who dressed shabbily and were consumed with indignation about the Thatcherite "cuts".
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Extract
Essay
New Labour doesn't care for them much. Peter Hain calls them the "dinner-party critics" and the MP Liam Byrne, in a recent Fabian Society paper, gives them the label "urban intellectuals", that pesky minority of anti-Iraq war obsessives who are so out of touch with the mood in the heartlands. For the media, they are the " chattering classes", a term that suggests a cadre of metropolitan, left-liberal professionals with nothing bette...
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