Politicians now feign working-class authenticity against outdated stereotypes of their own constituents

Evidence

One pitiful example of this disconnection occurred in the United Kingdom, as the parliamentarian Owen Smith was challenging Jeremy Corbyn for leadership of the Labour Party. When Smith was interviewed in an Italian restaurant in the English North, he pretended not to know the word “latte”—instead calling the drink a “frothy coffee.” Smith evidently felt the need to feign authenticity to his constituents. As a Labour MP, he had simply never encountered a real working-class person, who, according to statistics, had in fact been consuming lattes for years. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 154

Categorization

• CANDY: The latte anecdote is an immediately amusing, retellable illustration of political tone-deafness.
• STORYSTEM: The image of a politician performing class solidarity through outdated codes invites a satirical scene where an MP’s researched ‘authenticity’ backfires against real constituents.
• XREF: connects to: Parties converge, absorbing the working class that once opposed the system — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 155; Political figures who mock power while holding it normalize class rule — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2263

Broader Connections

• Parties converge, absorbing the working class that once opposed the system #corroborates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 155