'The Westminster elite' is not'London'. Indeed, a cursory look at the political messages sent by 'London' & 'Londoners' over the last few years will demonstrate how at variance they are.
As the 'London is Open' campaigns are at pains to emphasise, 'London' is radically diverse.
'Austerity' has been delivered largely by way of local council/authority cut-backs, with the withholding of central government funding at the local level. An inequality in regional funding has been the necessary corollary of this. And, of course, those regions with the least ability to raise local funding anx the greatest need of central government funding have been hardest hit.
It has been devastating to see this turned into an anti-London rhetoric/discourse - utilised brilliantly during the Brexit campaign.
Blame - and political action - should have been directed where it was due: with a government that was pursuing an ideology of draining money from public goods and services.
The awful thing about the 'othering' of London - a large, diverse city - is that it has led to a weird rendering invisible of the many, many poor and marginalised 'Londoners'.
That has been horrible to watch. Even in discourses that purport yo care for the disenfranchised, if all the disenfranchised are those not in yhe'rich' South, where, ontologically, can the poor of London and the South be placed?
And they DO exist.
I'm tired of being told the poverty I deal with doesn't exist. Because all Londoners are an elite.
It's lazy, divisive thinking.
I'm tired of it. Really tired.
I also have s suspicion it is deeply xenophobic: poor, non-elite Londoners can be rendered semantically and ideologically non-existent because they are not the 'authentic', 'native' working-class. And that fantasy of s native, authentic working-class is implicitly coded white & non-immigrant.
Personally, I think that fantasy is as racist as it is old-fashioned & lacking contact with the reality of modern demographics.
But it has a real emotional pull for some people. On the Left as much as the Right.
Honestly, if you catch yourself falling into the anti-London thing, I would urge you to slow down, examine your thinking, and really scrutinise whose game you might be playing.