Sky Views: You can say what you want in Britain - as long as you're posh

Sky Views: You can say what you want in Britain - as long as you're posh

By Lewis Goodall, political correspondent

Burkagate isn't going away. It isn't going away because it is bigger than the burka - a garment which virtually no one in Britain wears (with only slightly greater numbers wearing its marginally more revealing counterpart, the niqab).

Rather it has taken on an outsized importance in our national debate because it is a cipher for many other issues, bubbling beneath the surface, in Britain's now piping hot political magma: the Tory party civil war, unease about Islam, cultural dislocation, a feeling that freedom of speech is under threat with the rise of populism and identity politics thrown in for good measure too.

Boris Johnson surely knew this when he wrote his words about letter boxes and bank robbers - without the burka's cachet, without its searing power as a new touchstone issue, his column would not have achieved what he intended, which was to keep himself in the headlines.

Boris gives reporters tea (but no answers)

But the episode adverts to something else, something which though not shifting in the mantle of our politics, has long been an irreducible, solid part of its core: all that is important in these matters in Britain, is that you are powerful - that you can say what you like, as long as you're posh.


Consider Mr Johnson's words once again. His comparison of some of his fellow citizens to "bank robbers" and criminals and to inanimate objects.

Although the words were written down, it is easy to imagine them uttered, with his trademark elan and effete toffish bluster. How amusing, his defenders say and how very droll - whilst at the same commendable for bravely airing difficult but important issues.

Image: The comments sparked demonstrations in London

Now imagine the same words said with an Essex or Yorkshire or Brummie accent. Imagine them being said not by Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, but by a labourer, on camera for a clip on the six o'clock news, recorded at a building site, or at a down at heel pub, surrounded by men of Mr Johnson's age but wearing T-shirts and sipping pints and playing darts.

Would those same Johnson allies have thought those men so culturally and politically pioneering? Or rather would they think them prejudiced, ignorant, rude, vulgar and yes, probably racist? Would they look at them and think, yes, I agree with them?

Rees-Mogg: Boris wasn't mocking

No - they would not. But with Mr Johnson, there is no such fear or worry of guilt by association. Rather, because of his verbosity, his humour, his Bertie Wooster cut-glass accent and demeanour, because of his power, he cannot be any of those things.

In this he resembles another would-be populist, indeed, the first: Enoch Powell. When I made a film about the 50th anniversary of Mr Powell's Rivers of Blood speech earlier this year, I was struck by the ubiquity of one impression of Mr Powell, which still lingers with the British public: "He was such a clever man." Again and again, folk told me this, or some version of this. So it is with Mr Johnson.

It is perhaps not mere coincidence that both men were classicists. Their speech and prose littered with Athenian and Roman and Corinthian allusions. They are, more than anything else, case studies in the British class system.

Image: Protests following Mr Johnson's comments

People think and say, that they cannot be prejudiced because they are posh or clever or learned. Mr Powell was not careless with his words, as some have suggested Mr Johnson was with his jokes.

But either way, in a double whammy, it is their place atop of the English hierarchy of culture and class which makes them all the more grievous. Because they are perceived to be learned and cultivated, it lends their words more weight.

It legitimises the prejudices of others, further down the class food chain, it suggests that certain things which probably ought not to be alright, in fact are. That is why I give the suggestion that there has been an increase in the numbers of attacks on women wearing the niqab in recent days absolute credibility.

There is something else invidious about posh prejudice: that the British class system allows those prejudiced against little opportunity for redress, precious few avenues to air their own experiences, unlike those more powerful who attack them.

Boris's dad: 'We should be grateful for Burka remarks'

On Sunday, both Mr Johnson's father and sister took to newspaper columns in defence of their kith and kin. Who can blame them? But that they did so was thought unusual by almost no one.

Few at the centre of British national life seemed to think it rum that three members of one family could so easily write national newspaper columns, have such ready access to the organs of information and power.

One family, one family's view, through talent yes, but privilege too, was able to dominate our national conversation. I do not recall, leafing through those same newspapers, a column, or a word, written by a working-class woman who wears the niqab. Our national conversation does not reach that far. The power in our society is refracted and dispersed through the narrowest of prisms.

Rachel Johnson, in her column in the Mail on Sunday, wrote of her elder brother's words: "I read his piece. It read like a column written on a Sunday morning while on holiday in Italy, with a bottle or two of Asti Spumante chilling in the fridge for lunch."

'The niqab is part of my identity'

Yeah, we've all been there, Rachel. But the situation where the words are written or uttered ought not to make such a big difference on our assessment of their rectitude. Whether penned by a former foreign secretary in the hills of Umbria, with Asti Spumante in the fridge, or by a working class man in Walsall with a six pack of Stella, British elites ought to be more consistent in their mores.

Perhaps though we should not be so surprised, this cultural double standard purveys much of British life. The great Timothy Spall once said that "eccentricity is usually owned by middle-class and upper-class people. If you are working class and eccentric, then you're just mad." So it is with prejudice.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Mark Stone - Amiens is a stark reminder of the cost of war