It's by an ex-academic on X, about posts on Reddit over the last 48 hours but is equally applicable to Mumsnet, where I can seeing posts stating things like:
"How stupid are Reform voters? Don't they realise they'll get fewer benefits?!"
The irony is of course that it's those posters who need to be educated, not the working class voters they mock because they think they're thick.
Here you go:
Reading through Reddit threads in which leftists/progressives express their bewilderment/confusion/fury at working class English voters for casting their lot in with Reform, one of the things I'm starting to understand is this:
They simply do not understand how a government could help working-class people in any other way besides giving them benefits, handouts, and other free things.
Their entire mental architecture is premised upon the premises that
- Working class people are poor
- The only way for them to not be poor is for the state to give them free stuff
- So left-wing parties need to promise them lots of free stuff
Then, when these working-class voters instead vote for right-of-centre parties who instead promise an economy in which they can build a career, start their own business, make a financial success of themselves and start a family, they're confused.
Because, again, in their mental architecture, what the working class are supposed to want is free benefits from the state.
But what they actually want is a fair shake at making their own way in the world, making money, getting on in life.
And the left simply doesn't understand that what these voters want from the state is an economy in which they can actually do this.
x.com/i/status/2053073719086469193