Champagne Socialism & Other Animals

I'm middle-class. I earn over the national average income.

This apparently is supposed to disqualify me from being a socialist. There seems to be a belief amongst Tories that once you earn over a certain amount of money (or if you've been bought up in a style somewhat similar to the average Tory MP) that you automatically should divest yourself of all left-wing beliefs and sign up to support them.

That a high income or 'posh' upbringing automatically makes you some kind of hypocrite if you suggest a fairer distribution of incomes. That wealth somehow makes you incapable of empathy fit only to sit there selfishly demanding 'What's in it for me' rather than asking 'What can contribute to help others.'

Tax is - I have come to realise - the price we pay for living in a reasonably civilised society. No one enjoys paying it & a lot of it is spent on things I don't agree with and may never even benefit from but other people do. People who need that support more than I do.

Because I'm aware that I've been lucky. Even when things have looked bad and I've thought dark, dark thoughts I've always been aware that I have the support of a loving family and good friend and I've usually been working in reasonably well paid jobs that don't require overtime (paid or unpaid). I should remind myself of that fact every single day.

Apparently though I am supposed to put aside my left-wing beliefs or be a hypocrite. I'm not sure where the actual income cut off is according to the Tories but I know that once I've crossed that line voting Tory is what I should be doing as they're best placed to look after me.

But I'm quite happy being a champagne socialist. In the 21st century we seem to have become a much more selfish species - or at least because the rules have been loosened we've reverted to type. So instead of looking at the poor, the disabled, the unemployed and asking what can we do to help, we seem to be asking what can they do to help me get a tax cut. We hear words like 'feckless' chucked about and the rhetoric on disability recently has become poisonous as if disability in and of itself is an insult to the British people regardless of whether it is genuine or not.

No one seems to want to ask how in the 21st century in a wealthy country we can still have genuine poverty, sink estates, under-educated children attending flaking schools...etc and then be lectured by governments about 'responsibilities' and 'entitlement'.

In the end I have always felt that my life is better when other people's are better. And if government is for anything it should be for everyone. Not just the few. It should be about bringing us together, not driving us apart. It should be about pulling people up, not dragging them down.

Yes we have our own role to play as citizens in that but that doesn't mean we should blindly obey or live as if we are part of The Prisoner's Village. Paraphrasing something that Ed Murrow once said surely the right to disagree, the right to be wrong is fundamental to a free society.

And I disagree with much of what the current set of suits full of bugger all are doing, even if I stand to come out of it quite nicely thank you. If that makes me a 'Champagne Socialist' then so be it.