Jeremy Clarkson has launched a scathing attack on modern British politics — and he’s laying the blame squarely at the feet of late TV icon Cilla Black. In a typically unfiltered column written for The Times, the outspoken broadcaster claimed that whether they’re Labour or Conservative, today’s politicians are more focused on proving their humble roots than demonstrating ability — and he thinks Cilla started the trend.

“As I’ve explained in the past, Cilla Black is to blame. Because on Blind Date, she became the first television host ever to sneer at educated, well-spoken contestants and give a comforting hug to idiotic shop assistants who couldn’t string a sentence together,” Clarkson wrote. “This caught on and now, in politics, education and erudition are seen as a bad thing. ‘I left school at three.’ That gets the voters onside in a heartbeat. Muddle up your ‘was’ and your ‘were’ and you’ll be in the cabinet by Tuesday afternoon.”

Clarkson pointed to figures on both sides of the political divide — from Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch to Angela Rayner and even Keir Starmer — accusing them of playing up their working-class credentials while downplaying their actual intelligence.

“To win hearts and minds now, you must explain, as Jenrick has, that your dad was a gas fitter or that you have an understanding of the working-class mind because, as Badenoch has pointed out, you once worked in McDonald’s.”

He continued, “We see a lot of this on the government benches, because they’re full of people whose dads used to make them eat gravel.”

Rayner, he argued, may be savvy, but her appeal is built on her backstory. “I don’t think she’s thick. She’s actually quite savvy. But her grammar is all over the place, probably because, as she constantly reminds us, she left school at 16 and had a baby.

“That makes her a superstar in Cilla world, but do we want her representing us on the world stage?”

Even Starmer came under fire. “We are led to believe he’s bright because he rose through the ranks to become head of the all-powerful Crown Prosecution Service. But hang on a minute. A lawyer who’s any good will make a fortune in the private sector. Only the hopeless ones end up working for the government. Unless they are deranged in some way.”

Clarkson saved his most brutal criticism for Foreign Secretary David Lammy, mocking his disastrous celebrity Mastermind appearance and questioning why someone educated at Harvard could get so much wrong — unless, he suggests, it was on purpose.

“Much better in this day and age to seem thick, because then you’re a man of the people and Cilla’s going to put her arm around you. Something she’d never have done with Lord Carrington.”