A Classic Conservative

Taki writes:

"The study of those two languages [Latin and Greek], with their illuminations on morality and philosophy, reached a nadir during the greedy Eighties and Nineties, when students said to hell with the ancients, let’s all become investment bankers and high-tech millionaires. The good news is that the present mess might see their return. Just imagine, 20 years down the road, Nat Rothschild hosting a Corfu party with Amo Latinam as the theme. (Keep imagining because it ain’t gonna happen.) Still, avaritia mala est, and the classics are staging a small comeback right here in the Big Bagel. Enrolment is rising because some young people are seeing the light, Corfu or not Corfu, that being the question."

Taki is, however, wrong to suggest in this article that, among British MPs, only the Tories ever used to speak to each other in the Classical languages.

Back when Labour MPs were Labour MPs, those who were not toffs (and quite a few were) were either products of the grammar schools and of an Oxbridge system that still required Latin even for admission to read Physics or Chemistry, or else had come up through the subcultures that included such organisations and institutions as the Workers' Educational Association and the Miners' Lodge Libraries.

Ave-ing each other and such like might very well still go on among Labour Peers.