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. His columns in the Times these days can be unsparing in their dissection of the shortcomings and failures of left-liberal ideology. ‘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. Most of the detractors of ‘liberal cosmopolitan London’ would not count him as one of their number, and perhaps would be surprised to hear Phillips still describe himself so. by acknowledging the ‘arrogance and cocooning’ of this coterie, and how many ‘liberal policies have brought havoc in their wake’.