Class politics is back, as if it ever went away. Robert Jenrick declares that Tories are toffs and “the divide in British politics has become Reform’s workers party versus the Tory posh party”. He says the Tories are so “out of touch” they are no longer “the party of working people, of provincial Britain, of the towns and cities”. He’s not wrong, says Prof Tim Bale, political analyst: “Reform can claim to be a disproportionately working-class party.”
Considering the social class difference between the two rightwing parties, where does Jenrick belong? As a private school and Cambridge-educated former director of Christie’s auction house, is he too posh for Reform, even though he’s the son of a small businessman and first in his family to go to university? Hardly, since it’s a party founded by zillionaires. It’s a forever political mystery that low-paid/working-class voters will opt for the very wealthy with contrary financial interests. Bale points out that the Tories’ grip on power always relied on backing from a third of working-class voters.
Populist demagogues of the Jenrick/Reform stamp seduce with appeals to “anti-elite” emotions, only to betray supporters as cannon fodder once in power. As money flows to the hyper-rich in the US under Donald Trump, the trickery in Reform’s tax-and-spend policies would similarly reward better-off people most. But Nigel Farage is adept at the theatrics of class, brandishing a pint and last week opposing a tougher drink-drive limit as an assault by Labour’s “Islington, north London, bicycling classes” on British pub culture in rural areas. The irony is that this Labour cabinet, as it earnestly strives to save lives on the road, has the most working-class origins ever, but it lacks that bogus working-class blokey swagger of the Dulwich College city trader.
Class always matters. Tomorrow’s report from the National Centre for Social Research shows education has become an even stronger class proxy and predictor of voting. “A person with education below A-levels or no educational qualifications had about two times the odds of voting for either the Conservatives or Reform UK than someone with a university degree or higher,” it finds. The more educated join the liberal-left side of the great line, the least educated vote most right. That’s a long tradition. Over 150 years ago the political economist John Stuart Mill said: “Stupid people are generally Conservative.” Tories were often called “the stupid party” – even by themselves sometimes, approvingly, as a sign that they are closer to public sentiment than liberal pointy-heads. Before that, the Know-Nothings in the US in the 1850s were a nativist, anti-immigration, anti-Irish Catholic movement. Education humanises, which is why the right wants to reverse the trend of more learning.
Class may shift and morph, but gross inequality is more pressing than ever. Narrowing that class gap is Labour’s founding mission: its governments always make some progress. How it hates the “metropolitan elite” tag, trying to cling to the identity of its name and old roots in the north and Midlands. That nostalgia is an error, says Bale: even in red-wall marginals the votes it can win are not now the old working class. Although Labour at the last general election won most working-class votes, it has to face up to its definition by Prof Sir John Curtice, doyen of psephologists: “Labour’s core vote is now the young middle-class professionals in London. That’s a stereotype, but that’s who they now are, mainly.”
That’s hard to accept for middle-class Labour people who see themselves as on the side of the working class, committed to improving the lot of those with the least. The mortal blow to their self-image was the Brexit vote, when so many working-class voters they thought they stood with shoulder-to-shoulder marched away in the opposite direction. That hurt, viscerally. Yet the class mission is just as pressing as ever when the top 10% owns five times the wealth of Britain’s entire bottom half and, well educated or not, 84% think the income gap is too wide.
The great rise in education is a Labour success, with half of working-age adults having a degree or level 4 equivalent, increasing with each age cohort. Only around 7% of my generation went to university. All of the cabinet and shadow cabinet have degrees, but only four out of seven Reform MPs. It’s quite a class divide that only one in five Reform supporters are graduates, partly because they are older.
Britain’s failure has been leaving behind the one in five who have no qualifications, worse than in similar countries. An unintended consequence of better education for most has been “credentialism”, making qualifications obligatory, barring the old tea-boy-to-boardroom route up the ladder. In trying to prevent any more left-behind children, Labour’s education funding priorities go to early years Best Start hubs, further education and apprenticeships, as ever putting class first. Will well-intentioned middle-class Labour be rewarded for that? In the long run, yes, as more educated people are less likely to vote right.
For a crumb of comfort in facing the hard right, Curtice reminds me that Reform voters are a lot older, as are Tories. “They remember primary schools with world maps coloured British empire pink, those values are unrecognisable now.” Brexit was their last hurrah, now widely rejected. Unless Reform swerves in new ways to attract the young, this rising up against the socially liberal “elite” may be a dying gasp, not a rising force. If Reform wants class to be the battleground, that’s Labour turf – so bring it on.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
