Serious question: why is it bad to be a champagne socialist?

[JawJaw]

Being a champagne socialist is apparently a bad thing. I am mystified about this. Can someone explain why?

Exactly or no one would ever change class. Your lifestyle determines your class not your upbringing. My father was brought up northern working class in a small mining town . His Parents were Immigrants plus manual labour jobs. About as stereotypical working class as you can get. He became a London lawyer- he was completely comprehensively educated and went to a Russell group uni. It would be ridiculous to describe him as working class.

They don't though. They may have gone to, and benefited from, public/grammar school but they believe they should be subject to VAT/scrapped.

They may have benefited from vast generational wealth, but now they want huge taxes on that wealth.

They may live in a predominantly white, quiet, leafy middle-class suburban area but think those in Dover complaining about immigrants are nasty racists.

Bloody marvellous!! 👏👏👏

( the only point I disgree with is that it's definitely way over half of mumsnet! )

Without even noticing, £200 a month off my take home pay.
I could easily cope with £500 off my take home pay.
I'd need to make changes for anything more than that.

Yes this. There are lots of arguments against faith and grammar schools (and DS went to both) but selection by wealth and house price is apparently fine and dandy?

I work with champagne socialists. People who bray loudly about social justice and virtue signal at every opportunity but make sure they live in leafy enclaves where they or their kids never have to brush up against actual working class people. They would be actually horrified to have to deal with the problems caused by the policies of mass immigration but they insulate themselves with middle class postcodes, executive non-jobs and private education/healthcare. They don’t understand how anyone could vote for Brexit because they sneeringly dismiss the poor as thick and bovine and yet they angelically claim to stand for social equality.

They are massive, patronising, insufferable hypocrites.

👏👏👏

At least half the Labour government as well then!

I am middle class and would call myself left wing but none of those things apply to me.

I went to the local comprehensive.

I did not benefit from generational wealth. I am comfortably off now and would be happy to pay more tax.

I do not live in a white, leafy suburb. I live in the inner city in a multicultural area.

If you don’t live in a large city you might only have come across left leaning people in comfortable areas, which perhaps you think is incongruous. Where I live in London inequality is staring me in the face every day and I don’t like it. Socialism isn’t an airy fairy ideal, it’s a real solution to what I see all around me.

I'm a working class person living in an area with refugee hotels and have no issues with it at all. What does that make me?

I said "Over half of mumsnet"??

Lol. Half the red wall voted for Brexshite and subsequently Johnson and the bloody tories who ransacked our industries and neglected us for years. Happy to blame the EU for the Tory government’s absolute incompetence, so yes they could be seen as bovine and thick. And I bet your bottom dollar that some of the same posters on here were first in the queue to ridicule Angela Rayner the day for being brash and common and thick because she’s the wrong kind of wc.

Oh god you’re so funny. Hardly anyone voted for the Tories because they are so out of touch. Rishi man of the people 😂

Well you might be socialist - that’s fine. The ‘champagne’ bit is about wealthy people who patronisingly think they’re ‘right on’ but their whole lifestyle and life choices suggest that they still endorse and prop up a class system that keeps the working classes subjugated. Hence ‘champagne socialist’ i.e. not a real socialist.

Yes, I see. I would like to know if many of the people on this thread are actually working class, living in these areas though and presume to speak for us any more than the "champagne socialists" do.

Champagne socialists seem to me to use poor people for their own virtue, their own identity. They don’t actually want to solve poverty at any systemic level, they just want small wins which keep people in their place, so they can continue their FIGHT.

Small wins would be a charity ball, a 5km charity run, a direct debit to a cool charity. That’s enough to have the ‘upper hand’ against ghastly right wing people who may believe that handouts don’t actually benefit poor people over time as they never feel their own sense of achievement because all of that went to the champagne solicalist who’s bragging about it at their Friday night bbq

.

@hamstersarse charity is the antithesis of socialism.

I am comfortably off now and would be happy to pay more tax.

Op you can pay more tax if you want. This is from the Guardian:

Susan Reynolds (Letters, 28 September) says: “I want to pay more tax for the public services I enjoy.” She might be relieved to know that she may do so simply by sending a cheque to HMRC. I understand that you can even specify where you would like to see that money spent. Interestingly, the government releases those figures on an annual basis, and it appears that 15 people have done so in the last two years

Are you going to voluntarily pay more tax now you know it’s possible

Sounds like you’re all socialism and no champagne.

Or maybe you’re a Lambrini socialist.

Either way, good on you.

Hypocrisy is why.

Not RTFT to see if anyone else has replied to you @Drfosters but this is such bollocks!

Thinking and saying and voting for a higher tax rate is all about a belief that if everyone earning above a certain rate paid more tax then the revenue would be high enough to make some real changes and do real good. This is entirely different from expecting an individual to pay extra, which is unlikely to make any difference unless they're Sunak level of wealth.

I will always vote for parties which want to redistribute wealth and would happily pay a few pennies extra tax on the understanding that everyone at my income level will too

Otherwise of course i won't elect to give the gov a few K more than I need to. I'll use it to treat friends and family who earn less than me and donate to charities of my choice

See my recent post - this is such a disingenuous point to make.

I want everyone at my income level to pay more tax because that will lead to proper change. Not just gift the government my money to have zero impact.

If it were voluntary only then higher income people who believe in paying more to make a better fairer society would be subsidising richer people who don't give a stuff about fairness, likely to minimal effect

Including me. I agree with you about the Tories.
Unfortunately this is also true of the Labour government and has been at least as far back as Blair.

Is she the MP who might not have paid the correct tax when she sold her council house as she lived at a different address? She must be the only higher up Labour MP that genuinely had a working class upbringing.

What's your basis for saying Labour are as out of touch with normal people as the Tories?
Keir's cabinet contains only 1 privately educated person. All the rest, including Keir himself, were state educated.

Granted that doesn't mean FSM working class, but it is a world apart from Rishi's cabinet of privilege

I believe the term to refers to wealthy people who are completely out of touch with the experiences of the less well-off but nonetheless insist that they know what's best for them. I haven't seen the demographics of this election yet but unless there's been a massive shift. the Labour vote will have been mostly well-off people wanting to 'help the poor' whilst the poor themselves were much more likely to vote Reform. I feel that if you want to help the poor, ask the poor how you can help - and if you find you keep voting in direct opposition to them, you're probably not helping. No matter how smug you feel about being a goodie.