Stella Creasy MP

The G2 section of the Guardian today had a big four-page article on Stella Creasy MP. 

Stella Creasy is Labour MP for Walthamstow.

Yet another "rising star" in the political elite who has an Oxbridge background.  The article mentions her father was an opera singer.  Her Wikipedia entry mentions she has aristocratic relations.

And yet the article includes a full page full colour photograph of her sitting in a pie and mash shop (with what suspiciously looks like a cafe latte ). 

This member of parliament is entitled to have a comfortable middle class background, a la-di-da Oxbridge degree and to slurp cafe lattes while being interviewed by the high-brow press.

What she is not entitled to do is pose in a pie and mash shop as if she was working class.

Pie and mash shops are part of MY culture not hers.  My father wasn't an opera singer he was a welder.  My grandfather didn't have aristocratic relations he was a refrigerator engineer (and before that a porter for a coal company).

I mention this because people like Stella Creasy, by posing as working-class, are appropriating a culture they have no right to.

There was nothing romantic about working class poverty, and thank goodness my grandparents and parents managed to get out of the East End, but that doesn't mean their past can be colonised by cultural tourists such as Stella Creasy.

And on the subject of Oxbridge, how is it that these two institutions have such a stranglehold on the "glittering prizes" (to quote Adam Raphael)?

Oxbridge graduates are not noticeably more intelligent than other graduates. 

And yet this finishing school for the elite grabs every position of power and influence that's going.

It matters little that half the entry every year comes from "bog standard" comprehensives - the Oxbridge experience will co-opt these people into the elite.

I'm not complaining about this.  I know that life is not fair.  But I do object to Oxbridge graduates sitting in pie and mash shops, or queueing up at Greggs, or drinking from enamel mugs as if they were mere hoi polloi like the rest of us.

It's the hypocrisy that is so objectionable.