Award-winning: Historian Simon Schama took on outspoken columnist Rod Liddle on BBC1's Question Time, which proved to be an eye-opening encounter

Last Thursday, I, along with 2.7 million other viewers, tuned into BBC1’s Question Time, to watch award-winning historian (and BBC presenter) Simon Schama take on Rod Liddle, the outspoken columnist. It was to prove an eye-opening encounter – for reasons that go to the heart of intellectual debate in Britain today.

There was much to look forward to. Schama, the very acme of cosmopolitan sophistication, is an internationally acclaimed university professor. Liddle is a bluntly spoken Millwall FC supporter with controversial views on immigration.

Thus, about 30 minutes in, all hell broke loose when an audience member asked about the international refugee crisis. Liddle said he didn’t think it was a good idea to open our borders to those fleeing from conflict zones.

Schama gave the journalist a withering look. ‘Go back to your journalistic hackery… and turn your suburban face away from the plight of the miserable,’ he sneered. For a second, I couldn’t believe my ears.

Had Schama just dismissed someone’s views, not because they were unreasonable or unsupported by the evidence, but because they were the sort of opinions you’d expect to hear on the 7.42 from Guildford? This was the moment the mask slipped. We were given a glimpse of the snobbery that underpins so much of the metropolitan elite’s world view.

According to this high priest of the liberal intelligentsia, Liddle didn’t deserve to be taken seriously because he was a resident of that lower middle-class hinterland that people like Schama only ever see from the business-class cabin of a Boeing 747 as it soars away from Heathrow.

Liddle was suburban and, as such, he was narrow-minded and mean-spirited – quite unlike the large-hearted citizen of the world at the other end of the panel.

Where Liddle sees ‘immigrants’ with his beady, suspicious eyes, Schama sees ‘refugees’.

For a second, I experienced a pang of self-loathing. I, too, worry about the impact of millions of asylum seekers from North Africa and the Middle East arriving on our shores. Does that make me hopelessly provincial?

About 30 minutes in, all hell broke loose when an audience member asked about the international refugee crisis. Liddle said he didn’t think it was a good idea to open our borders to those fleeing from conflict zones. Pictured, a couple reacts as they arrive with other refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos on Saturday

Had Schama just dismissed someone’s views, not because they were unreasonable or unsupported by the evidence, but because they were the sort of opinions you’d expect to hear on the 7.42 from Guildford? This was the moment the mask slipped

Should I be more urbane, like the author of Rembrandt’s Eyes? (Although it must be easier to overcome any reservations if you don’t actually live here. Schama is the Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University in New York.)

But then I reconsidered sharply. What precisely is so despicable, so morally bereft, about one who lives in the suburbs? More than 80 per cent of the British population now live in areas that can be classified as suburban. That’s approximately 52 million people. Should we all be ashamed of ourselves?

We saw this same contempt for the residents of Middle England from Labour during the General Election campaign.

Columnist Rod Liddle, who was told by Schama to 'turn your suburban face away from the plight of the miserable'

I’m not just thinking of Emily Thornberry, the MP for Islington South, who sneered at the owner of a white van in Rochester for displaying the flag of St George.

I’m also thinking of Ed Miliband’s tone of moral superiority when railing about food banks and zero-hours contracts. It was as if anyone who wasn’t intending to vote Labour was small-minded and lacking in compassion – suburban, as Professor Schama would put it.

Could that disdainful attitude have played a part in why the British people awarded the Conservatives a majority last May for the first time in 23 years?

Labour might have done well in urban areas like London, but in the rest of England, the map turned blue. Perhaps the silent majority who live in the suburbs are getting a little tired of being condescended to by these Left-wing panjandrums.

To be honest, I’m fed up with being dismissed as selfish and materialistic just because I am a member of the bourgeoisie. My wife and I moved to the suburbs from Central London eight years ago. Like so many others, we sought good-quality housing, easy access to the countryside and low rates of crime. This was the environment in which we wanted to raise a family. We are now firmly embedded in the community. My wife is captain of the ladies’ second team at the tennis club. When I go to work in the morning, I take a plastic bag with me so I can pick up any litter I see on my way to the station. Carriage lights illuminate our gravel front drive at night.

I also helped set up the free school that my eldest child now attends. Professor Schama’s snobbish dismissal of Rod Liddle reminded me of the opposition I faced. I was ridiculed on Any Questions by Polly Toynbee for going to such extraordinary lengths to secure a decent education for my children. Why didn’t I just send them to the local state school?

Her criticisms might have carried more weight if she hadn’t sent her own daughter to Westminster, one of the most prestigious private schools in the country.

Award-winning historian Simon Schama stunned BBC viewers by using the word 'Suburbia' as an insult. Pictured here with Venetia, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed, by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1633)

The same sneering contempt is detectable in the attitude of those who wish to remain in the EU towards those of us who want to leave. We are described as ‘anti-European’, rather than ‘anti-EU’, as if it is the very idea of Britain being part of something larger than itself that we’re frightened of, rather than being absorbed by a corrupt, undemocratic superstate.

Those who expressed reservations about joining the euro in 2000 were treated with the same lofty disdain. Conservative Eurosceptics were pilloried as ‘xenophobic’, ‘swivel-eyed’ and ‘mad’ by liberal commentators on the BBC. Yet 15 years later, they have been proved right.

Go further back in history to the triumph of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and the pattern repeats itself.

Desperate: Refugees and migrants crawl ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos, after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey on Saturday in an inflatable dinghy

She was dismissed by the educated elite as an ignorant housewife who tried to apply the lessons of running a home to managing the nation’s economy.

Dr Jonathan Miller, the Simon Schama of his day, described her as ‘repulsive in almost every way’. He objected to her ‘odious suburban gentility’ – there’s that word again – and complained about her ‘sentimental, saccharine patriotism’.

By 1990, when she left office, this ‘odious’ figure had tamed the trade unions, cut taxes, got inflation under control, overseen a revolution in home ownership, restored a sense of national pride and, in partnership with Ronald Reagan, won the Cold War. Not bad for a suburban housewife.

Margaret Thatcher was the authentic voice of the suburbs, the quiet majority who don’t shout about their compassion on programmes like Question Time, but who show they care in little ways, every day.