Alice Thomson on Class and Society

After the shooting of United Health's CEO, this image has gone viral. Like most people, I saw it, and laughed and moved on. But after seeing a remix today of it, and I was curious about what the underlying context of it was. Alice Thomson is a journalist, as is her husband. A quick google search reveals the journalist's squalid living conditions:

_{"Chevithorne Barton" was taken by Alison Day and licensed to use under Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 2.0}

Thomson lives in this run down shack (featured in House and Garden) with Edward FitzGerald Heathcoat Amory (of the Baron Heathcoat Amory clan). Thomson explains why hardy, down home folk like themselves are concerned with the coming class war:

Voters appear to have had enough of distractions and division; the majority, I suspect, just want a pragmatic government that’s going to get on with the job of sorting out education, the NHS, transport and social care rather than stoke any more discord. Most say they hope for a more equal society, but they espouse meritocracy and aspiration rather than Jeremy Corbyn’s politics of envy and redistribution.

Labour needs to be clear about its motivation. Its policy of putting VAT on private school fees may be a practical measure to find more money for the state sector but they shouldn’t be doing it if it’s also about punishing the rich.