'The trouble with politics is that the arena is populated exclusively by the middle classes' - Your Letters plus a Picture from the Past

Politics is too middle class

The trouble with politics, or so it seems to me, is that the arena is populated exclusively by the middle classes. This a truth that really cannot be challenged with any credibility.

I’m talking about British party politics of course and I am talking about those who finally achieve success, position, power and influence in that sphere.

I am talking about people of all political persuasions, whether left, right, centrist, up, down whatever. That isn’t to say that many in politics don’t originate from working class backgrounds but the very term: ‘originated from’ is a telling one. It implies a radical shift in circumstance, in position and in areas of experience.

Traditionally, for the working class individual such a shift is usually driven by education. A brighter child, whether by nature or nurture applies herself or himself at school. The child’s enthusiasm and willingness to learn, In turn enthuses the teacher - themselves middle class, either by birth or aspiration, and the child, in short, succeeds.

The child, the youth, the adult has been exposed to all kinds of cultural phenomena and intellectual concepts and ideas on their educational journey, a journey that inevitably opens up a wide fissure between them and their roots and origins. They are ‘from’ the working classes but no longer ‘of’ the working classes and this is more or less an inevitable process. They are now, whether they like it or not, a member of the middle classes. They now have social mobility. Well educated, cultured, confident. Politics comes a calling. Who was it who said, ‘if you’re not a socialist at 20 you haven’t a heart and if you’re not a Conservative at 40 you haven’t a brain’?

So let us say our subject opts for the left, for Labour, a chance to fight for ‘the people’. ‘This is where I came from’ our subject says. But things have changed. Sensibilities have altered. ‘Came from’ means no longer ‘being there’. ‘Working class’ is now an abstract concept to our subject and not a life lived. So with the best intentions, our subject begins to ‘fight for the people’. But what does this mean? A fight to uphold working class traditions, the working class lifestyle, the working class experience, and its enjoyments? Not a bit of it! It is a fight to ‘improve’ the lot of the working classes. To educate them, to make them literate and culturally aware. To, in short, bring them into the middle classes!

‘The working classes is not where you should be’ our middle class, political classes seem to be saying.

So the question is: who can really represent the working classes when those who have the power to represent, have gained that power by abdicating their class origins in the first place?