Fear and loathing

Many people have asked how it can be that Iain Duncan Smith keeps his job.  Perhaps the answer lies here, in a survey of how Tory party members rate the cabinet.  As you see, IDS is top.  Overwhelmingly, Tories approve of Smith and what he is doing.  So he can mess up one project after another and it doesn't matter.  He can be astonishingly rude to the select committee (to which only Labour members bothered to turn up) and it doesn't matter.  The right-wing love him, because he's engaging with the enemy, poor people, and trouncing them.
But why does the right hate the poor so much?  I've come to the conclusion that what lies behind it is fear.  Consider the case of Jack Monroe.  On paper she ticks all the boxes to attract the contempt of the comfortable.  She's young, didn't do all that well at school, became a single mother, is a lesbian and was unemployed.  How's that for a stereotype?  But Jack set up a blog about food; basically, how she fed her child on £10 a week.  Not only does she give wise advice on how to eat very cheaply; she talks eloquently about her poverty and the system which trapped her in it.  The blog became hugely popular, and Jack committed the cardinal sin; she emerged as an individual.  The media took her up.  Sainsbury's employed her in a marketing campaign.  (She has made it clear that she takes only the living wage from this work and the rest goes to various projects.)  When Channel 5 planned the wretched "debate" following Benefits Street, they invited Jack Monroe onto the panel.  And there she met the stark hatred of the right in the shape of Edwina Currie.  Jack's response can be read in this open letter, published in the Mirror.  The other spouter of vitriol was Katie Hopkins.  Both of them were reacting to an individual who challenges the stereotype.  Between them, Currie and Hopkins did the right no favours, but they showed the true face of hatred - fear.
From the late eighteenth century in Britain the elites feared the Mob.  (It generally had a capital letter because it assumed the shape, in their minds, of a single monstrous creature.)  The poor could be suppressed, but when they combined their sheer numbers made them terrifying.  Riots happened frequently, and the Mob could unleash violence and destruction which was ruthlessly put down.  Remember what happened in 2011.  Rioting broke out in a few places in Britain.  The elites reacted with courts handing down brutal sentences way in excess of what the actual offences warranted.  The position hadn't changed - the Mob must be dealt with severely before it can challenge the established order.
The right cannot deal with poor people as individuals in any way like themselves, so it demonises them.  And then it fears what that demon could do.