North London is being cancelled again – so don’t you dare cross the Thames.
The proportionally tiny part of the UK is back in the news after PM Liz Truss used her conference speech to show she has the whole country in mind when making policy, by ranting against the portion of the capital city.
It is not the first time they have desperately tried to conjure up a metropolitan villain, who usually lives in Islington, to unite the party. And most of the time they have done it, it is revealed to be hypocritical claptrap – just look at where some of the people who spout this rhetoric live…
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Here are a few occasions when Tories have shown they’d much rather live in Battersea than Barnet.
Liz Truss’s conference speech
As mentioned, Truss used her conference speech to rage against the nebulous “anti-growth coalition” which includes (you guessed it) people from North London.
“We will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back,” she said, going on to list the group as “Labour, Lib Dems & SNP, militant unions, vested interests dressed up as think tanks, the talking heads, the Brexit deniers and Extinction Rebellion”.
She claimed people “taxi from North London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo.”
Downing Street did not rule out that Jamie Oliver and independent think tanks were also part of the list of enemies.
How ridiculous.
u201cWe are recruiting at “The Anti Growth Coalition”. Our axis of evil 2.0, is full of vegan podcast makers plotting away in a North London townhouse over soy flat whites. If you’re interested in joining RT thisu201d
— Jolyon Rubinstein (@Jolyon Rubinstein)
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Liz Truss’s Tory hustings
She was just continuing an earlier idea. At the final Tory leadership hustings this year, Truss, used her time on stage to slag off London mayor Sadiq Khan who is from Tooting, South London before saying Labour have too many North London leaders.
Classic.
Boris Johnson’s conference speech
And maybe Truss is borrowing from her predecessor’s trope. Johnson has also used conference speeches to rail against a geographic region he has lived in.
Las year, the then PM said: “What I found most incredible of all was the decision by Labour, now led by lefty Islington lawyers, to vote against tougher sentences for serious sexual and violent offenders.”
He didn’t reference leader of the Labour party Keir Starmer by name but it is pretty clear he was talking about the politician who, incidentally, is believed to live in Camden, and is the MP for Holborn and St Pancras, not Islington.
And Johnson lived in an Islington townhouse between 2009 and 2018, and sold it for £3.75 million when he moved out when divorcing his second wife, a former lawyer Marina Wheeler.
u201cBoris Johnson says Labour is run by lawyers who live in Islington.nnHe is, of course, somebody who lived with a lawyer in a u00a33.75m townhouse in Islington for 10 years.u201d
— Pippa Crerar (@Pippa Crerar)
1633517751
Boris Johnson’s speech to MPs
It really was one of Johnson’s favourite jokes. Earlier that year, speaking during a meeting of Conservative backbenchers, he reportedly criticised Starmer for living in Islington. He said: “You can take the lawyer out of Islington but you can’t take Islington out of the lawyer.”
What taking Islington out of a lawyer would look like, we don’t know.
Boris Johnson’s PMQs jibes
We could go on and we will. Earlier this year, when Johnson’s fall from power was just an apple in our eyes, the lazy orator got flustered during PMQs and called his counterpart a “Corbynista in an Islington suit”.
The pair had been arguing about Partygate, one in a series of scandals that ultimately made the Tories sick of their leader.
Boris Johnson’s private views
If that wasn’t enough drivel, the former leader also thinks Starmer is part of “a privileged, metropolitan, narrow-minded elite”,
According to reports in the Sunday Times in May 2022, Johnson “despises” the leader of the opposition and hit out at a man he “genuinely does not like”.
u201cSunday Times claims Boris Johnson personally “despises” his opposite number. An ally says: “He genuinely does not like Keir. He sees this man as part of a privileged, metropolitan, narrow-minded elite uncomfortable with the raw instincts of the vast majority of British people.”u201d
— James Heale (@James Heale)
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It is all ridiculous and disingenuous rhetoric and no-one should pay any attention to it at all – much like most of what the Tories talk about really.
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https://www.indy100.com/politics/north-london-liz-truss-tories
