Truss Tory Conference speech: people “taxi from North London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo.”
Liz Truss attacked people who live in North London Townhouses in her speech to the Tory Conference on Wednesday. In 2022 a Townhouse is probably a terraced property in a quieter residential street worth at least £1 million.
Truss may have had in mind Keir Starmer who lives in the environs of Kentish Town or Boris Johnson who lived for many years with his former partner, lawyer Marina Wheeler in an Islington Townhouse.
The term is often used to refer to Islington but as often when the Tories demonise North London there is a failure to grasp that the area contains a lot of poverty as well as wealth. For example the Packington Housing Estate off Essex Rd N1 (near Islington Angel) does not contain Townhouses, although adjacent areas do.
Truss’s jibe at taxis is also meant to suggest that wealthy inhabitants of Townhouses in North London don’t use the tube, bus or bike. I suspect they do, since all are more convenient for moving around in the area.
In British usage, the term townhouse originally referred to the town or city residence, in practice normally in London, of a member of the nobility or gentry, as opposed to their country seat, generally known as a country house or, colloquially, for the larger ones, stately home.
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