In an interview with BBC 1’s flagship morning programme, BBC Breakfast, actor Danny Dyer has hit out against the elitism of UK politics and argued that we need more working class people in public life.
Speaking from his home, he said: “My one rant would be we must learn now that the people who went to Eton can’t run this country. I feel like some working class people, people who have lived a real life, people that are in touch with what is going on with reality, to maybe come to the front now and start getting involved in how this country's run."
Given that cabinet ministers are nine times more likely to be privately educated than the general population (two thirds of Boris Johnson’s cabinet went to private school, while Johnson himself is an old Etonian), Dyer is absolutely correct that British political life is unfairly skewed towards people with elite educations.
When asked if he would ever consider becoming a politician himself, however, he replied, “No darling, I'm too busy. I've got a gameshow on at the moment, I've got a podcast with my daughter and of course I'm in the greatest soap that's ever been.”
This is not the first time that Danny Dyer has expressed left-wing views. In 2018, he was praised by Jeremy Corbyn for a savage attack on David Cameron, in which he called the former PM a “twat” and accused him of “scuttling off” after plunging the country into Brexit chaos.
In his autobiography, Straight Up, he wrote sympathetically about poverty in the UK: "If you're working forty hours a week and you can't cover your bills, that ain't your fault. It's the fault of the slags paying you. [Employers] pay you shit all and expect the state to pay the rest of the tab." Given how often poverty is viewed in the UK is a kind of moral failing, it’s refreshing to see statements like this from high-profile, widely-loved celebrities.