Champagne socialist

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A "champagne socialist" is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom. The phrase is used to describe a politician, or other self-proclaimed advocate of the poor or working classes, who claims to support a form of socialist ideology, but who appears to disregard socialist ideals in their daily life. The term generally is used as an attack by opposing politicians to portray and ridicule their opponents as hypocritical.

1 History and origin
2 Notable champagne socialists
3 International
4 See also

[edit] History and origin

The label arose from the perceived activity of proposing toasts to famous socialists with champagne. A similar concept, with aristocratic privilege in place of the benefits of capitalism, comes from the 19th-century philosopher Alexander Herzen, who in From the Other Shore (1855) wrote "It is they, none other, who are dying of cold and hunger...while you and I in our rooms on the first floor are chatting about socialism 'over pastry and champagne.'" Readers of the Daily Mirror, a tabloid newspaper whose left-leaning views have been criticised^{[citation needed]} as somewhat half-hearted, are sometimes referred to as 'cava socialists' or 'asti socialists'. A comparable term in the first half of the 20th century was "parlor pink". The term Bollinger Bolshevik is used in the same way.

[edit] Notable champagne socialists

Those who have been labelled champagne socialists include Charles Clarke (former Home Secretary) [1], Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lord Chancellor) [2] and Respect MP George Galloway [3]. In the film The Aviator, Howard Hughes labels the whole of upper-class left-wing Americans as champagne socialists. Geoffrey Robinson, (ex-Paymaster General and chairman of Coventry City Football Club) has been labelled the "ultimate champagne socialist" [4]. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is frequently criticised for his champagne socialist lifestyle [5] . Diane Abbot, current (2006) British MP on the left of the Labour Party, sends her children to an independent school.

Tommy Sheridan, former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party has earned himself the label of a 'sunbed socialist' in the tabloids due in the main to his fake suntans.