The Masque of Anarchy

Five years ago, if you’d heard that a politician had quoted from Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy, you’d have laid money that would be Jeremy Corbyn. It is very much his kind of poem - a powerful vision of extremes, with the oppression of the poor by the rich eloquently calling out for justice.

So it’s something of a surprise to find that Suella Braverman quoted from the poem, in her tirade at the Conservative Party conference. I don’t know if she’s a regular reader of Romantic poetry, but it’s not hard to imagine some young aide sniggering at the cheek of adopting one of the great radical poems, just to wind up the opposition.

In Braverman’s vision, there are the many and the few, but “the many” are her and the other downtrodden Tory members, suffering from the impact of a hurricane of migration, while “the few” are the woke intelligentsia, in their ivory towers, who preach decency and humanity while not actually having to suffer the consequences. There’s no recognition that she and her party are in power, having totally failed to deal sensibly with immigration for the past decade.