This attack on Andy Burnham as a 'metropolitan elitist' is a recycling of the campaign against Ed Miliband
This morning the Telegraph’s website has exposed Andy Burnham for what he is: a man who sometimes dresses smart.
The story’s click-hungry headline (the Telegraph has spent £8million on its digital operations) about the Labour party leadership hopeful runs:
“Andy Burnham says he’s not part of the ‘metropolitan elite’. So what about this picture then?”
What follows is a picture of Burnham in a black suit, with a white shirt and bow tie, posing for a photo with fellow members of a Labour-affiliated amateur football team.
As you can see from the photo, (and do click on the link – it makes them happy), he looks like an ordinary bloke at a wedding.
It may come as a surprise to the Telegraph, but dinner suits are also available in ‘the north’.
But the Telegraph believes this photograph is proof of Burnham’s secret membership of something called ‘the metropolitan elite’. More ‘proof’ is laid out in a summary of his career in politics and the jobs held by people he knows.
And this from a newspaper owned by two billionaires who live in tax havens in Monaco and the Channel Islands!
This ‘metropolitan elite’ line is a recycling of the Tory press attacks on Ed Miliband.
Simply put, the trick goes like this: Labour politicians have more money and a better education than you, dear reader. This makes them hypocrites when they talk about helping disadvantaged people.
Tories, by contrast, make no such pretence, are proud of their privilege, and supposedly want everyone to have the same opportunities as they did, (even though this is impossible by definition).
Thus attacks on the gob-smacking elitism of the Tories are ‘anti-wealth’, ‘anti-business’ and ‘class war’, but attacks of the same nature on Leftists and Labour are a righteous puncturing of hypocrisy.
As the debate about Labour’s election defeat continues, it’s worth noting that if Labour decides to talk less about class, that won’t stop Tories talking about it.
***
The football team Burnham is pictured with in the Telegraph take-down was called Demon Eyes, after a Tory scare campaign against the ‘danger’ of… Blairism. How times change.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
Read more:
Daily Mail uses Prince Charles’s black spider memos to attack Labour’s Andy Burnham
Never mind the unions. What about the Sun’s influence on the Labour leadership contest?
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9 Responses to “Memo to the Telegraph: dinner suits are also available in The North”
Patrick Nelson
The Tory press seem frightened of Andy Burnham like they were frightened of Ed Miliband, at this early stage they are already pulling out all the stops in their campaign against him, only the flat business and the Staffordshire NHS thing remain to be fully exploited. Right now the Sun are probably expending all sorts of energy to pull up any story at all that would allow them (with the vaguest connection) to call him “Randy Andy” to their utter delight.
MariaJTorres
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Arthur ASCII
Personally, I HAVE never and WILL never wear a “dinner suit”. Why on earth do people want to wear a uniform to a social event outside of a fancy dress ball?
Mark
Dinner suits are indeed available up north….I managed to get a wonderful dinner suit from http://www.paulcostelloeman.co.uk who I believe are based in Leeds, part of the northern powerhouse ;o)!