(a game plan for the Tories to win an overall majority in 2015) found that 46 per cent of the public believe themselves to be working class, including 75 per cent of skilled blue collar C2s, 48 per cent of white collar C1s and even 25 per cent of professional/managerial ABs. It says class is still a major determinant of voting, with 61 per cent of those describing themselves as working class voting Labour in 2010, and 60 per cent of Tory voters describing themselves as middle class. This difference is too great to just be a statistical variation and there needs to be some rigorous analysis to ascertain the correct figure. Until then it would be dangerous if Mattinson’s figures led Labour to adopt a strategy that downplays the electoral significance of the working class just as Ashcroft’s Tories target them.
If we allow ourselves to believe that only 24 per cent of voters identify as working class – a figure which is clearly at odds with a commonsense view obtained by walking round the average town looking at the houses people live in and the jobs they do – we risk detaching Labour from its basis as a party of the working class which exists to articulate their concerns in parliament, such as being tough on crime, sound on defence, focused on work and housing, sensible on immigration, and improving the fairness of our welfare system. Sticking close to the values of working class people will not just help us reconnect with the five million C2DE voters we lost between 1997 and 2010, who should be part of our bedrock vote, it will actually help us win the votes of swing middle-class voters who may not call themselves working class, but share many common concerns and values.
The risk inherent in believing Mattinson’s figures is that we decide that instead of being a traditional social democratic party with a unique role, we should just be another elitist ‘progressive’ party alongside the Greens and Lib Dems, with vague middle-class liberal policies – soft on crime, soft on defence, obsessed with environmentalism and constitutional reforms – which has limited appeal outside the six boroughs in central London and four university seats that voted Yes to AV. That way lies electoral euthanasia. Others will seize on her numbers as fuel for the myth that we can ignore the people who founded our party and who our party was set up to represent.
WOW I don’t think for one minute that Deborah has suggested we adopt vague middle-class liberal policies but what she has done or at least tried but failed, as far as the author is concerned, is suggest that the working class bracket has moved on from what is seen as the traditional voter. That has nothing to do with developing values associated just with the other party’s. At the last locals I was told not to deliver leaflets in a nice area “because it would be Tory” and advised that my so-called safe ward couldn’t be won for similar reasons. The ward with no delivery surprise surprise remained Tory where my ward was won. If I had stuck to the terrace houses Spellar appears to assume we all live in that ward would also not have been won.
working class/middle class bit like Oasis/Blur innit,there’s Damon, gone all Kabbalah (too much spliff Dame?) but Liam out there in his union jacket ,rah da Brits! “in the eye of the storm/there’s no right and no wrong” …..”somewhere in my heart the beat goes on” …… “I’ll throw it away just to prove I can” . John Lennon may be mine not yours Li, but I forgive you.
John’s final paragraph sums up succinctly the key challenge facing Labour. One would have thought the likes of Progress would get it too. Instead we are fed a diet of metropolitan hand wringing over electoral reform, environmental politics and civil liberties. I suppose that is tolerable given we are a few years away from an election but we had better get our act together soon or it will be more than a few years that we spend in opposition.
“If we allow ourselves to believe that only 24 per cent of voters identify as working class – a figure which is clearly at odds with a common sense view obtained by walking round the average town looking at the houses people live in and the jobs they do…” This is the author judging people to be working class, rather than the people themselves identifying as working class. I think it is obvious that the middle class is growing (and has been for the last 60 years), and I fail to see why this is a bad thing. Labour had this exact problem in the 1950s and it is shocking that things haven’t moved on. On my first trip canvassing I was told not to bother with ‘big’ houses as they would certainly vote Tory, but this attitude is doing those people a disservice. Why should class (or income) be a determining factor in how you vote? Also, I disagree with the stereotyping of liberal middle class voters as “soft on crime, soft on defence, obsessed with environmentalism and constitutional reforms”. I am middle class but I don’t consider myself any of those things. I understand what the author is saying but the truth is people are middle class if they believe they are middle class. Income is a factor but it is not the only factor.
News that Progress hand wrings over civil liberties. not heard that one before.