Have they though? Both Reeves and Philipson went to Oxford, both have been steeped in politics from a young age. Since the age of 18 or so, their lives have been very similar to people with more privileged childhoods. They may have a recollection of working class and lower middle class upbringings, but they only ever seem to use them as prolier than thou cred when it suits them. Starmer is the same.
Good for them for having got to where they are, but let's not pretend they spent any part of their adult lives cleaning or working in warehouses.
I don't think the working class are any more fooled by any of this than they were in 1995 when Pulp released Common People. Amusing watching the crowd of contemporary middle class 'left wing' people singing along to this at Glastonbury, when the song is clearly aimed at people like them.
The Labour party has a sentimental affection for its historic base, belied by its middle class membership and increasingly middle class voters, and not reciprocated by the actual current working class.
While the attachment to the 'working class' voter makes cultural sense it cannot be an adequate guide to economic policy. Those blue wall constituencies were culturally isolationist and culturally anti-Continental. Growth can be more rapidly achieved by an economic alignment with the EU. So the task is to 'think and act EU' while exuding a cultural alignment with those in the North and North East. Umm
Please tell Will that there are an estimated 90,000 Tax Accountants in the UK. That is the starting point for any assessment of the taxes paid, evaded and avoided by the millionaire class. I did my A level GCE in Economics in 1961. The Observer Sunday paper ran a column by Andrew Shonfield, who worked for the Chatham Trust, and moaned that many of the Company Directors who ran the economy paid the same tax as a plumber. Sort out the tax accountants and you will sort out the bias in the HMRC system in favour of the rich.
Have they though? Both Reeves and Philipson went to Oxford, both have been steeped in politics from a young age. Since the age of 18 or so, their lives have been very similar to people with more privileged childhoods. They may have a recollection of working class and lower middle class upbringings, but they only ever seem to use them as prolier than thou cred when it suits them. Starmer is the same.
Good for them for having got to where they are, but let's not pretend they spent any part of their adult lives cleaning or working in warehouses.
I don't think the working class are any more fooled by any of this than they were in 1995 when Pulp released Common People. Amusing watching the crowd of contemporary middle class 'left wing' people singing along to this at Glastonbury, when the song is clearly aimed at people like them.
The Labour party has a sentimental affection for its historic base, belied by its middle class membership and increasingly middle class voters, and not reciprocated by the actual current working class.
While the attachment to the 'working class' voter makes cultural sense it cannot be an adequate guide to economic policy. Those blue wall constituencies were culturally isolationist and culturally anti-Continental. Growth can be more rapidly achieved by an economic alignment with the EU. So the task is to 'think and act EU' while exuding a cultural alignment with those in the North and North East. Umm
Please tell Will that there are an estimated 90,000 Tax Accountants in the UK. That is the starting point for any assessment of the taxes paid, evaded and avoided by the millionaire class. I did my A level GCE in Economics in 1961. The Observer Sunday paper ran a column by Andrew Shonfield, who worked for the Chatham Trust, and moaned that many of the Company Directors who ran the economy paid the same tax as a plumber. Sort out the tax accountants and you will sort out the bias in the HMRC system in favour of the rich.