Class politics lingers in UK

LONDON: A quarter of a century ago then British prime minister John Major spoke of forging a “classless” society, yet Britons appear peculiarly wedded to their tribal identities.
Traditionally, it was a simple equation in general elections: the middle class broadly voted for the centre-right Conservative Party and the working class overwhelmingly supported centre-left Labour.
“Class is the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail,” political scientist Peter Pulzer wrote in the late 1960s.
The picture in modern Britain is more nuanced, highlighted by former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s successful attempt to woo traditional Labour voters and ex-Labour leader Tony Blair’s reaching out to “Middle England”.
Yet even in the 2015 election campaign the issues of class and privilege are never far away from the surface as politicians strive desperately to show they’re in touch with the “ordinary” voter.
Anti-capitalist comedian Russell Brand this week lampooned Prime Minister David Cameron on Twitter over his membership of the elite Bullingdon Club when he was at the University of Oxford.
Cameron was roundly mocked again when he failed to remember the name of his favourite football team — seen as a badge of working class identity.
In a YouTube interview with Brand the normally well-spoken Labour leader Ed Miliband — derided recently for having two kitchens in his London home — adopted a slangy accent that mirrored the comedian’s Cockney tones, apparently an effort to appeal to young voters.
But Professor Geoffrey Evans, official fellow in politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, believes class is now less of a defining factor than it once was in determining voting choice.
“The parties now no longer compete on platforms that appeal to working and middle-class voters, so the incentive has weakened,” he said.
Joe Twyman, head of political and social research for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at market research firm YouGov, agrees that social class — in Britain defined by factors such as occupation and education rather than just money — has waned as a factor in elections.
“The old divisions of working class and middle class have largely eroded over time and the big, heavy industry that used to provide so much of the core Labour vote doesn’t exist any more,” he says.
Britain is now a strikingly different country from the more monochrome nation that struggled to get back on its feet after World War II.
Grimy smokestacks in northern towns reflected a strong industrial base that has been replaced by a service-driven economy, while large-scale migration has irrevocably changed the country’s make-up.
Yet the trappings of the class system remain very much in place.
The royal family sit prominently at the top of the social pyramid and the social “season” for the moneyed elite still revolves around events such as Royal Ascot, the Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge universities and Henley Royal Regatta.
Many elite positions remain dominated by people who went to grand private schools such as Eton, where Cameron himself was a pupil.
Paula Surridge, senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, said it would be premature to discount class, expressing the view that it continued to influence life chances and lifestyles.
“While there has been some social mobility, this has only slightly narrowed inequalities relating to education, occupation and health,” she said.
So why are the British so reluctant to let class go?
“Now it’s more about tribal identities rather than necessarily class distinctions,” Twyman said.
“My personal belief is that it’s to do with the royal family,” he said. “We still have the royal family, we still have an established social order, we still talk about the Boat Race.
“I would say the class system is part of our British cultural identity. We like traditions and we like pomp and circumstance.”