Keir Starmer, golf & class war
The Telegraph (& tbh where else?) has reported that Keir Starmer has turned down free membership of the golf course associated with Chequers the Prime Minister’s official country residence.
Ellesborough Golf Club has offered free membership to every PM since 1921 after Chequers became an official residence in 1917 and Starmer is the first to turn it down. Attlee, Wilson and Blair all played on the golf course.
Starmer of course is an Arsenal season ticket holder and may not be interested in golf. Whether he is aware of the class war that perpetually goes on around the golf course is not clear.
The late miners leader Mick McGahey described golf as a waste of time. At his election victory party last week Trump had as the guest of honour Bryson DeChambeau. He is a championship winning golfer, aside from being extremely annoying, which no doubt endears him to Trump.
The class divide is clear from a historical perspective too. Eric Hobsbawm notes in Labouring Men that in the late nineteenth century as the male working class was identifying itself by wearing a cap, the middle class turned to golf courses. Twenty-nine golf courses were laid out in Yorkshire between 1890-95. Before 1890 there had been just two.
Clearly membership of the Chequers golf club is one freebie the Telegraph thinks Starmer should take
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