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A "champagne socialist" is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom. The phrase is used to describe a Labour Party politician, or other Socialist self-proclaimed advocate of the poor or working classes, who claims to support a form of socialist ideology, but who might disregard socialist ideals in their daily life. Champagne Socialists may claim to be against the Capitalist system but will still happily function in it and prosper from it. The term is sometimes used as an attack by opposing politicians to portray and ridicule their opponents as hypocritical.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] History and origin

The label arose from the perceived activity of proposing toasts to famous socialists with champagne. A similar concept, with aristocracy in place 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'.^{[citation needed]} A comparable term in the first half of the 20th century was "parlor pink".^{[citation needed]} The term Bollinger Bolshevik is used in the same way.

[edit] See also

• Liberal elite
• Limousine liberal
• Chardonnay socialist
• Chattering classes

[edit] References