One of the peculiar things about the British aristocracy is that the culture looks entirely different depending on which side of the class divide you look at it from. This article looks at it from the outside, and mistakes the chattering classes for the upper classes.<p>What the author describes (the genealogies, the oneupmanship, the keeping up with the Buckets, the airs and graces) is upper middle class behaviour, aspiring to be part of the aristocracy.<p>The truth of the matter is that none of them ever had a hope - the aristocracy is a closed circle, and you don't even get in by marriage. Your children do, but you, no.<p>As a result of the incredibly close nature of the aristocratic circles in the UK, practically everybody knows everybody, and any outsider or imposter is usually very swiftly seen for what they are. That said, the close nature also fosters a relaxed social approach in general - you'll never meet people who F and blind as much as the old families. Feet up on the table after the hunt, crack out the cigars, pass the facking port, I'm dying here. You're constantly being judged - but not how you'd think. Nobody cares if you know your silver service (although it's a shibboleth, to be sure), nobody cares if you're well spoken or who you know, or where you schooled - all they typically care about is that you're not an arsehole, and that you're not going to try to nick the silverware or trade off their name.<p>Most of the time, in the UK, if you encounter an aristocrat, they'll look like they just clambered out of a hedgerow (because they probably did), and will be pleasant, amiable, and engaged in what you have to say - because they have absolutely nothing to lose by engaging with you, and you are possibly going to be an entertaining story over supper later.<p>I've hung out with enough aristo friends' families and enough friends' upper middle class families to know which I prefer - the middle class families are suffocating affairs with dinner gongs and rules around shoes and no swearing in the house. The aristos are... relaxed.<p>So. If anything, the upper middle classes are the dangerous cult, trying to impersonate the faded glory of a generally toothless propertied and titled class, and generally getting it utterly wrong. The aspirational class is the one that now stands on heads.<p>Also, virtually literally every aristo I know votes Lib Dem or Green. They've hated the tories since Thatcher, and countryside issues are of prime importance to most of them.