The Rise of the Posh Slobs

According to scientists in Australia, The Queen’s English is drifting down the social hierarchy. After trawling through archives of Her Majesty’s annual Christmas messages since 1952, they conclude that the royal accent is becoming less ‘posh’. The experts, based at Sydney’s Macquarie University, believe the vowel sounds of Queen Elizabeth II have been influenced by subjects who are of ‘lower social standing’ (1).

Well the researchers don’t have to look too far down the ladder. Perhaps such developments are a consequence of when her Grandson, Prince William, comes over to visit dressed in an Ali-G tracksuit from Pound stretchers. After all, with his night outs down the Mecca Bingo hall, he has probably perfected glottal stops and staccato slang by now anyway. Like some over-eager Johnny-cum-lately, it seems the House of Windsor are keen to show they’re – hey – ‘cool’.

In the recent past, it was the insecure middle-classes who’d often affected the ‘common touch’. When Britain was an outwardly meritocratic society, and the working-classes had real clout in society, it was de rigour for, say, art-school fops like The Who to cultivate mockney accents and geezer charm. Sounding like you were born with a plastic spoon in your mouth, as Roger Daltrey sang on The Who’s ‘Substitute’, was a sure fire way to earning a crust and credibility.

These days, though, dropping your aitches and cranking up aggression is no longer good enough. In the case of Tory Colonel’s son Pete Doherty, a full-blown smack habit, ABH and regular stints inside is now the acceptable roughneck benchmark. Pop music’s ephemeral natures means its long equated rootsy ‘authenticity’ with substance and even ‘spiritual’ meaning. No self-respecting indie band can get through an NME interview without swapping the perfectly legible ‘I’m going to’ for the faux-moronic ‘I’m gonner’.

Trouble is everyone else is getting in on the act, too. Novelist Stewart Holmes, installation artist Damien Hirst and gravely voiced actor Keith Allen have variously affected the mannerisms of a Dickensian vagabond (albeit from the safety of a Soho members-only bar). In the case of Allen, his privately educated daughter Lily is following in the family steps. Her public persona is a stage-school version of adolescent delinquency, knowwhatImean?

Currently on BBC 2, wine buff Oz Clarke is trying to cultivate Top Gear presenter and all round Petrolhead, James May, in appreciating fine wine. The latter’s bluff; belligerent response is supposedly a manly cheer for the joys of cheap lager and unwashed T-shirts. Leaving aside the obvious contrivance here, its clear May really does not want any public associations with anything ‘posh’ or ostentatious. When asked to cook for their rather fragrant French hostess, May opts for a dish familiar with war time rationing or crackheads: spam and beans. As when Vic Reeves ordered egg on toast at Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant, this is supposed to be a blow against puffed-up food snobs everywhere. In actual fact, it smacks of petulant, bumbling adolescents unable and unwilling to grapple with grown-up settings. “This is all getting too poncey for me,” said May at one point. Just to prove that he does know better, his withering comments were said in a voice more commonly heard cheering on Tim Henman or commentating for the Chelsea Flower Show.

Now it’s one thing for pop musicians, artists and TV presenters to feign blokish bonhomie for the press and cameras. It’s another thing entirely when both the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the leader of the Parliamentary opposition, David Cameron, do the same. Previously, former Eton and Oxbridge students would battle in Parliament over which ideas could provide the most effective stewardship of Britain, George Bernard Shaw Vs Edmund Burke. Now it’s over which leader can display the most affecting ‘common touch’, a sort of heat magazine Vs Closer. Of course, Blair has been way ahead in this field for a good ten tears. Last we’d heard, he was praising comedy-metal goons, The Darkness. Cameron, meanwhile, declares a lifelong adoration to fellow conservative Morrissey and reveals what’s on his iPod. While Blair was (un)fortunate to have the Britpop roadshow briefly decamp at Number 10, Cameron has to make do with waving at the YouTube generation (see A Blogstandard Leader by Neil Davenport).

All this hasn’t gone unnoticed. In New Elites: A Career in the Masses, George Walden correctly points out how this debased process, this ‘ingratiation to populism’, is not a clumsy attempt at ‘democratisation’, but the elites old habit of condescending the masses. Hey, we’re just like you – honestly. Now there’s nothing wrong with popular culture in itself. It’s often influenced by and dependent upon higher art forms. But a populist impulse is rather different. It suggests a lowest-common-denominator measurement falsely projected onto what the masses are supposedly interested in. As with those well-educated journalists behind The Sun and News of the World, there’s a sniggering but genuine belief that the masses can’t possibly understand anything more, can they?

Nevertheless, there’s more going on here than old fashioned snobbery disguised by new populism. There’s a genuine, palpable sense the elites aren’t overly enamoured with high-brow culture any more. For them, its become an awkward reminder of their isolation from wider society and an apparent barrier to connecting with and running the country. As those Australian academics point out about The Queen’s changing accent, ‘it demonstrates that the monarchy, at least as far as the spoken accent is concerned, isn’t isolated from the rest of the community’ (2).

Ironically enough, it was precisely such knowledge on Latin and Greek, classical music and fine art that partly endowed the elites with the moral justification to rule. Even such paternal displays, such as the building of museums, galleries and concert halls, was designed to showcase their leadership and authority; particularly against those with competing ambitions to run society. In the absence of social and political alternatives banging on their mansion door, there isn’t a pressing need for learning and showing-off demanding and superior culture.

Instead, inertia, laziness and self-justified slobbery, rather than self-satisfied snobbery, has slowly crept in. Whether the Queen will be high-fiving ‘Yo! Blair’, though, remains to be seen.


1. The Queen is becoming less posh, BBC newswebsite, Monday 4th December 2006
2. The Queen is becoming less posh, BBC news website, Monday 4th December 2006