While I'm not really a great admirer of Richard Burgon (nothing much against him either) the Burgon Is Thick stuff makes me side with him a hundred per cent: utterly dripping with the sort of snobbery many professional-class people can't help from spilling out of their mouths.

The joke, and it's not a very funny one, is that in terms of his educational qualifications he's absolutely what the same professional-class people think is important about People Like Them: he's got an Oxbridge Degree.

So of course has Diane Abbott (and as it goes, so do I) but just as she's not treated as People Like Them, because why do you think, nor is Burgon, because he's Northern and a socialist.

The first of these doesn't really matter *until it's accompanied by the second*, when of course it does. That's how these things work. Everybody's fine with everybody until somebody steps outside the lines. (That's a lesson I learned at Oxbridge, by the way.)

Compare and contrast Keir Starmer (who I don't like or dislike, in principle, any more than I do Burgon) who is hailed as "forensic", not as far as I can see from any obvious talent he displays, but because he's a barrister. But he doesn't step outside the lines.

Do some people maybe find Burgon's manner a bit curious? Fair enough, so do I. But then again people find my manner curious too (I'm pretty inattentive and abrupt) but I don't let people call me thick. And I'm not minded to let professional-class people call anybody thick.

At the very least it should be said that this kind of thing isn't professionally acceptable. But it's not personally acceptable either. https://twitter.com/ejhchess/status/1247105988890710016

I mean everybody says things they shouldn't and we all call other people stupid sometimes. But if you're in the habit of calling other people stupid - *you're a snob*. Full stop. A bully, quite likely, but also a snob.

Anyway I shall wrap up before I lose my temper, but the things that are said against Burgon are almost entirely snobbery. The things said about Abbott are of course worse. And the people who say them should be told what they are, directly.

They don't expect that, though, do they? They just expect to dish it out. And that's what it's really about, who thinks they're above whom. It's poison. Recognise it for what it is.