I have often wondered where the historian David Starkey’s political loyalties lie. He has always played the conservatard while nodding and winking to proper Rightists. Indeed, one of his more explicit outbursts got him in quite a bit of bother. In 2011, during an episode of Newsnight, Starkey pronounced:
"What has happened is that the substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black. The whites have become black; a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion."
Of course, Starkey crumbled under pressure during the inevitable media backlash, retracting everything he said and making grovelling apologies, which usually makes no difference, but as a homosexual and disabled man (tick two boxes), he retained his employment and social standing in a way that people like Ron Atkinson, Danny Baker and John Torode never managed.
