Tristram Hunt v nuns: snobbery and vanity are destroying Labour

What has Tristram Hunt got against nuns? Was he once trapped in a lift with a dozen of them? Or was he subject to a brutal rapping of the knuckles with a ruler at an impressionable age?

Whatever the truth, his apparent view on BBC Question Time that a panellist’s experience of education was irrelevant because she was taught by the sisters is an indictment of modern Labour's elitism. If I was a nun, I’d run against Hunt at the next election. And my party would be called “Nun of the Above.”

Snobbery is fast becoming a nasty habit for Labour.

It wasn’t long ago that Emily Thornberry tweeted a picture of house festooned with England flags and had to resign. Why? Her defenders argued that it was just an innocent pic of an unusual house – much like Hunt’s friends will doubtless say that he was simply pointing out that nuns are an unusual class of teacher.

But if Thornberry and Hunt (which sounds like the worst TV detective show on ITV4) were innocent of elitism then why did Thornberry have to go and why is everyone up in arms about Hunt? Because the public knows when a politician is laughing at them. In Hunt's case it helps that 9 times out of 10 he's physically laughing at them: his default face is a raised eyebrow and a fixed sneer.

The dislocation between his socialist words and having the expression of a Tory squire bemused to find people begging on his land is at the core of why many folks just don’t trust him.

Tristram Julian William Hunt, FRHistS, is the embodiment of the worst qualities of Fabian socialism: people who get a kick out of authority. Hunt is every self-important teacher, nosy social worker and contemptuous bureaucrat that you’ve ever met.