David Cameron: Class Warrior?

Johann Hari reckons that it isn't Gordon Brown who's after fighting a class war; but, rather, one David Cameron. Yep, with the sort of rhetoric and political insight that would be more befitting of someone like Wolfie Smith, Hari seems to think that Cameron is an evil rich man, determined to steal from the poor and give to the rich.

The article is, of course, packed full of crass gems. I'd just like to take apart a couple of examples that seem to highlight the stupidity of Hari's assertions. Let's start with this one:

The problem isn't Cameron's extreme privilege – it is that he has never tried to see beyond it. He keeps accidentally revealing how warped his view of Britain is, and how little of it he understands. For example, Cameron said in an interview: "The papers keep writing that [my wife, Samantha] comes from a very blue-blooded background", but "she is actually very unconventional. She went to a day school."

Read that sentence again. Now imagine how Britain looks from inside David Cameron's head, where the 97 per cent of us who went to day schools are "very unconventional". (In the Bullingdon Club, he called George Osborne "oik", because he had gone to the £20,000-a-year St Pauls, not the £30,000-a-year Eton.) This points to a wider mindset. The group he considers "conventional" and "normal" are the only people he has ever really mixed with, and they are the people he chooses to staff his office with today – very rich people. Is it any surprise he makes policies that serve them, not us?

I'm not entirely sure how Cameron's perceptions of his wife's schooling - which ended years ago - is relevant in any way, shape or form to his potential success or otherwise as a Prime Minister. It certainly isn't proof positive that he has never tried to look beyond his admittedly privileged upbringing. And as a head's up, for someone truly "blue-blooded", it would be odd if they did go to a day school.

I'm also pretty sure that we shouldn't make a judgment about whether Cameron is able to empathise with the way in which the rest of the people in the UK live (who are themselves not a homogenous group of people with identical experiences that are diametrically opposed to those of Cameron, contrary to what Hari seems to think) based on a quip he made at university as part of a club that gleefully and childishly relishes elitism. It would be like dismissing a Labour politician for having a teenage flirtation with Marxism.

As for Cameron making policies to benefit the rich people with whom he has such a connection, well, I'd have to disagree on that as well. Cameron - whenever he decides to actually commit to anything - tends to focus on populist politics. Or, to put it another way, politics that bows to popular opinion. His background is clearly and consistently dominated and overpowered by his desire to win an election and become a Prime Minister. Cameron is trying to create neutral policies that either appeal to, or at least don't offend, the majority of people in this country. Not to kowtow to those who share a similar background to him.

This whole idea that a rich man like Cameron cannot empathise with those beyond their own social background is blatant nonsense. You only have to look at, say, Franklin Roosevelt to see that "rich" people can act on the interests of the "poor" and/or the "middle classes". Hari's crude idea that the rich lack any sort of empathy is as crass as it ignorant. Someone's background - be it ethnic, regional or financial - does not mean that they cannot understand those who don't share similar backgrounds. To believe so is to be almost the definition of bigoted. It also is to misinterpret representation - the truth is that in order for someone to represent you, they don't have to be exactly like you. In a world made up of individuals, such a misinterpretation utterly destroys the concept of representative democracy.

The truth is plain, and it is provable. David Cameron's policies will take money from the hard-working majority of Brits, and hand it to his friends and relatives on landed estates and in tax havens. He is not on your side; he is on the side of a tiny clique who have every luxury in life and now bray for even more. Cameron bragged to his supporters last month: "Nothing and no one can stop us." It's up to the majority who will lose out if he become PM to say – oh yeah?

And here we have the essence of the problem that I have with Hari's argument - that Cameron will be taking money away from hard-working Brits (as an aside, when did the left-wing get so populist and nationalist?) and giving it to the rich. Because if Cameron does get round to giving tax breaks to the rich, it won't come from the normal people. No, he will be taking from the state and giving to the rich. By all means criticise Cameron for only giving money back from the state to the rich; but don't pretend that he is taking it from the poor or from normal hard-working Brits. There is a big difference between the people and the state; to assert otherwise is utterly deceitful. Hari makes a point that he has been better off since Labour came to power. Well, he'd have been even more better off if the Labour government had not tried to redistribute income and had instead enabled itself to make tax cuts by rolling back the parameters of the state. The problem with Cameron isn't so much that he is willing to cut taxes for the wealthy, but rather that he isn't willing to commit to tax cuts for all. That doesn't make him so much of a class warrior as a tentative politician afraid of committing to something that isn't in mainstream political discourse.

The ironic fact is that the only true class warrior who emerges from Hari's article is Hari himself, as he is the one who is prepared to dismiss people based purely on their social background.