For decades now Trevor Phillips has been one of the most astute and unusually self-aware members of the liberal establishment, becoming in recent years one of its sternest critics. That trajectory began with his call in 2004, when he was chairman for the Commission for Racial Equality, for the term ‘multiculturalism’ to be scrapped for being divisive. His columns in the Times these days can be unsparing in their dissection of the shortcomings and failures of left-liberal ideology.

Conservatives, old-school liberals and Red Wall Labour voters have either known of this anti-metropolitan sentiment or felt it themselves

Conservatives, old-school liberals and Red Wall Labour voters have either known of this anti-metropolitan sentiment or felt it themselves

Phillips’ perceptiveness owes a great deal to the fact that he speaks as a veteran semi-insider. And it’s in keeping with his unique vantage point that we read, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, more words of candour regarding his own tribe.

‘Liberal cosmopolitan London and its suburbs – Brighton, Oxford, Cambridge – have only recently become aware of how much the rest of the country hates us,’ he says. ‘We are in a tiny minority who have been the beneficiaries of globalisation because we’re clever, we’re mobile and we have skills that are useful. Much of the........

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