I'd rather be a pleb part 2

The Mitchell saga continues, and so shall I.

The most offensive thing about Mitchell calling a policeman a pleb is that he obviously lied when he denied doing so.  He is a politician. They lie. Get over it.

The second most offensive aspect is that Mitchell is giving himself airs and graces.  He is quite definitely a pleb himself, not the patrician he would have us believe.

He is an MP, and the son of an MP, albeit a largely undistinguished one, and his father was a wine merchant, which is definitely plebeian, which paid the fees for the younger Mitchell to be schooled at Rugby (a step or two up the ladder from his father's Aldenham), which is a bit grand, but a notch or two down from my own school where fewer than 1 in 10 classed as a patrician.

True enough Mitchell worked at Lazard, but in London that is a little boutique in a'60s concrete building above the escalators at Moorgate tube station, so still plebeian.

The distinction between patricians and plebeians in Ancient Rome was based purely on birth. Although modern writers often portray patricians as rich and powerful families who managed to secure power over the less-fortunate plebeian families, most historians argue that this is an over-simplification. As civil rights for plebeians increased during the middle and late Roman Republic, many plebeian families had attained wealth and power while some traditionally patrician families had fallen into poverty and obscurity.

Better to be a pleb than a prole.