The Tories resume offensive on North London
During a speech to the Tory Conference in 2019 the previous Home Secretary Priti Patel criticised the ‘North London Metropolitan Liberal Elite’.
She did not elaborate as to who such people might be, but was told by the Board of Deputies not to use such language so loud was the dog whistle
There is evidence of one such person. They lived in an area that for a period elected a Liberal Democrat MP post the Iraq War and was certainly heavily in favour of remaining in the EU
Crouch End in North London is not the kind of place where you’d expect to find a Tory in 2022. But it was a little different 50 years ago and the area elected Tory MPs until 1992.
While delving into the (unpleasant) undergrowth and background to the previous Premier’s rise to No.10 I noticed a brief sojourn in Crouch End.
In July 1965 Johnson’s father Stanley and mother Charlotte left Oxford for Crouch End. They stayed only to October 1965 deciding to spend the winter with Boris, who was just over a year old at the time, and newly born Rachel (September 1965) in an Exmoor cottage.
I haven’t (yet) been able to locate where they lived in Crouch End (a blue plaque surely beckons) but perhaps even then the Johnsons were able to detect that the area was not really the kind of place for Tories, at least on Priti Patel’s analysis.
Johnson went on to live in Islington, North London for some years when he was marred to Marina Wheeler. The last PM Liz Truss despite claiming to hail from various places around the UK was a confirmed West Londoner. It’s not known if it has an elite. This did not stop her opining on people who live in North London townhouses during her 49 day reign as PM.
Tory references to a ‘metropolitan elite’ and ‘cultural marxism’ continue. The current regenerated Home Secretary Suella Braverman is an enthusiast for identifying such types, although she hails from Brent in North-West London. Brent is the epicentre of Metroland, the north-west London suburbia identified with the Metropolitan Railway from the early twentieth century.
Tory Deputy Chair Lee Anderson whose job is political abuse recently claimed that his Stoneage views were representative of people living north of Camden Town reflecting his general lack of knowledge about everything.
The current Rishi Sunak appears fully on board with the Tories offensive against North London too. At Prime Minister’s Questions on 1st March he noted that Keir Starmer had made a rare appearance outside North London at Davos recently. Starmer is of course a North London MP who lives in Kentish Town so it might be expected that he is to be seen in the area.
North London is divided between support for Arsenal and Spurs but is united in not having Tory MPs
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