If liberalism has a tendency to misrepresent the world by ignoring fundamental inequalities of wealth and power; conservatism seeks to actively subvert that reality and to turn it on its head.  It invites us to imagine the powerful as victims; to ‘pity the billionaire’ in Thomas Frank’s pithy phrase. 

It is in this context that we should understand David Cameron’s much publicised speech this afternoon in which he will reportedly complain of ‘snobbish attitudes’ towards business.  To use the word ‘snobbery’ in this context is as audacious as it is absurd, but it is no accident.  The right has always sought to appropriate the language of the left in an effort to deflect criticisms of power and privilege.  Indeed, the use of the term ‘wealth creators’ in Cameron’s speech is similarly intended to invert the long held contention on the left that it is labour not capital that creates value. 

Returning to the much reported use of the phrase ‘snobbery’ in Cameron’s speech, the word of course implies an antipathy or condescension towards those of a lower class.  Yet the speech this afternoon is to members of Business in the Community, which includes Aviva, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Standard Life – all of which according a study published in the New Scientist comprise part of ‘a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions’ ‘with disproportionate power over the global economy’. 

It may seem desperate to portray the world’s most powerful institutions as an oppressed group, but for conservatives these are increasingly desperate times.  In the same speech Cameron will apparently refer to ‘dangerous rhetoric’, and no doubt he means it.  With resistence to neoliberalism and public outrage over banking bonuses and other conspicuous excesses of corporate capitalism growing only stronger, you’d better believe they are feeling the heat.

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