We can see the same shamelessness in the recent Tory decision to raise the threshold for death duties to £2m for a married couple. They do this while both promising to be "the party of fairness" that stands united in its horror at the yawning gap between rich and poor, which New Labour has done nothing to narrow, and at the same time telling the poor that they have brought their troubles on themselves.

We see it everywhere these days, these New Bullies, these Green Snobs, these smilers with the Sabatier knives, these people who sneer at "chavs" while themselves committing the most breathtaking discourtesies; social racism, I call it. Hip credentials are no bar to verbal yobbishness with snobbery. Listen to one Guy Watson, of Riverford Organic Vegetables, who has made £40m from flogging boxes of obscenely shaped swedes to suckers with more money than sense, talking about Tesco to the Sunday Times: "They are what they are. You know you're dealing with out-and-out barrow boys."

Literally; in 1919, 21-year-old Jack Cohen, after serving in the RAF, invested his £30 demob money in surplus food stocks and a stall in the East End. On his first day he had a turnover of £4 and made £1 profit; now £1 in every £8 spent by British shoppers is spent in the shops he started. So much for the Green Snob lie that Tesco sprang into life as a fully formed small-shop-crushing colossus.

We can see it in the words of Lily Allen - the public-school "educated" pop star who found fame and fortune posing as "street", and Boris's adviser on street crime, no less - retaliating against criticism that she is -middle-class: "So what if we're middle-class? Just 'cause your mum was too lazy to get her fat arse up off the sofa and make some cash, I shouldn't be able to make tunes, yeah?"