Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Valmy]

Here is what I know: She was one of the Merseyside scene back in the 1960s. One of Brian Epstein's other clients. Rather mediocre but Lennon and McCartney wrote some songs for her.

The idea she is still around thinking she is hot shit cracks me up.

[Sheilbh]

Oh she's dead now.

But yeah after the Merseysound years (she also did the version of Alfie in the movie later and better covered by Dionne Warwick) she moved into TV and was a feature on British TV for about 40 years hosting light entertainment. Saturday night shows like Surprise Surprise or Blind Date with huge audiences back when we only had three channels. So she was a big deal - but very specificaly in Britain and particularly in Liverpool

[garbon]

Oh she's dead now.

But yeah after the Merseysound years (she also did the version of Alfie in the movie later and better covered by Dionne Warwick) she moved into TV and was a feature on British TV for about 40 years hosting light entertainment. Saturday night shows like Surprise Surprise or Blind Date with huge audiences back when we only had three channels. So she was a big deal - but very specificaly in Britain and particularly in Liverpool

She also got too many shout outs in the otherwise lovely Last Night in Soho

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally on Cilla - her reputation also set up this great Dame Edna gag:

[Josquius]

Yeah I don't really agree. This is the line Keir Starmer used to make (thank God Shabana Mahmood always gently pushed back on it so it was only used in private) that his was the most working class cabinet ever. Which is fucking mental

I think it was basically grounded on the fact that they all went to state schools and some of them had working class family backgrounds. By that metric until Starmer the most working class cabinet ever was Theresa May's To an extent I would argue the opposite - it is the least working class cabinet a Labour government has ever had (basically only Angela Rayner as far as I'm aware). Many are stories of social mobility (including Starmer himself), from a working class background who went to a state school - and then, crucially, went to universities (mainly Oxbridge) and became professionals. I think it slightly perverts their sense of class politics and the politics of respect as I worry what they mean by that is that people don't show sufficient deference to Sir Keir Starmer, knight of the realm who did a BCL at Oxford and is a King's Counsel.

But if you compare that with previous Labour government who had people who had literally been ship's stewards, worked as deckhands in the merchant navy, been dockhands, worked in the mines or factories or on the transport network as hauliers and longshoremen. I think the nature of working class jobs has changed over time, but these are people who often absolutely have experienced social mobility excelling at school, going to elite universities and then (broadly speaking) working in politics and the NGO sector - they are not people (with the exception of Angela Rayner) who worked in care homes, or on the shop floor, or in a call centre, or in precarious gig work like Deliveroo.

They are not and Andy Burnham isn't working class - but may have a working class background. I think the snobbishness to him and Badenoch is more just an indicator of how distinctive a class background our media has. You may be one of them in some ways but not really in others.

It was a fine line IMO.

It is something very much vibes based rather than on hard and fast rules. Though the general 'rule' I'd usually go with its what you spent the majority of your life under.
i.e. 60 year old who has been rich and successful for 40 years... not working class despite his dad being a miner.
30 year old who has just stumbled into success a few years back? Remains working class due to the first 21 years of his life being under his postman dad.

I do think its fair to say Oxbridge cuts things dramatically- get that bit of paper and life suddenly becomes a lot easier. But I'd never say a working class person cannot graduate from Oxbridge.

[Richard Hakluyt]

There are so many intermediate cases these days though. The BBC, recognising this, introduced a new classification system that probably makes more sense for 21st century UK. It hasn't really caught on though.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm

Fun little calculator for anyone who wants to see where they might fit in here.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm elite these days it seems 

[garbon]

I'm elite these days it seems 

[Josquius]

I like that it puts me into established middle class or rising middle class depending on how much savings I say I have, but if I say I know nobody socially it puts me into technical middle class 

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think I might have managed to have been in just about all the groups at some time in my life. There is a strong dependency on age I think,anyone with a half-decent career will move up through the groups as they age 
 

[garbon]

I don't think most will become elite.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It does get a lot easier when the mortgage is cleared. Just imagine what it will be like with a couple of promotions and no rent/mortgage to pay. Though it is very true that a large proportion will not get to experience that.

[garbon]

It does get a lot easier when the mortgage is cleared. Just imagine what it will be like with a couple of promotions and no rent/mortgage to pay. Though it is very true that a large proportion will not get to experience that.

Personally, I already qualify as elite on that test. But yes, as I live in a neighborhood on the outskirts of London, where in 2011, owner-occupied properties were at 20%, I think even the assumption of property ownership is a tough one.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think most will become elite.

The economic indicators for household income and savings were not that large. Pretty much every household in Canada, where there are two professionals will surpass that and I'm guessing the same is true for the UK.

The savings threshold is also not back big and assuming people are not spending everything they make and are investing every year, as they should, the net assets in the survey would also be pretty easy to meet.

The more interesting parts of the survey were I thought the non-economic factors.  I socialize with a wide variety of job holders. That is the marker in the survey for being elite.  That seemed a bit counterintuitive to me. I thought the definition of elite would be socializing exclusively with people holding higher prestige jobs.

I just made it into the elite category for the cultural measure because I enjoy listening to classical music.  I don't go to stately houses or Galla events and so I'm a bit on the outs as an elite on the cultural measure.  Also gasp, I listen to jazz.

[Sheilbh]

It was a fine line IMO.

It is something very much vibes based rather than on hard and fast rules. Though the general 'rule' I'd usually go with its what you spent the majority of your life under.
i.e. 60 year old who has been rich and successful for 40 years... not working class despite his dad being a miner.
30 year old who has just stumbled into success a few years back? Remains working class due to the first 21 years of his life being under his postman dad.

I do think its fair to say Oxbridge cuts things dramatically- get that bit of paper and life suddenly becomes a lot easier. But I'd never say a working class person cannot graduate from Oxbridge.

So this slightly ties to your vibes point - I am very very glad that every time Starmer said to his cabinet (and it seems like something he was very proud of) that it was the most working class cabinet ever that Shabana Mahmood was there to ask "does the country see us that way?"

I thin that, as a matter of fact, the line is nonsense. There was a fantastic book a couple of years ago on the centenary of Ramsay MacDonald's first ministry called Wild Men (before MacDonald became the great betrayer of the Labour movement). And it captures the shock of Labour coming to power - and the background of the cabinet minister.

MacDonald himself was the illegitimate child of a housemaid and farm labourer at 15 - who became a pupil-teacher, then a teacher and clerk and socialist activist. His Deputy and the previous leader of the Labour party, JR Clynes was the son of a labourer who started working in a cotton mill at ten - using his money to save up to buy a dictionary, the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible etc and coming into socialism via the intellectual Fabian wing. Arthur Henderson, the Home Secretary, worked in an iron mill from the age of 12 and came into the Labour movement throuh that almost totemic route of non-conformist (Methodist) lay preaching and the unions. The War Secretary was from Liverpool, was an orphan put into an industrial school in Kirkdale () and then became a miner - he rose up through the unions. And on totemic Labour-ish issues - the Labour Minister worked in a textile factory from 10 while taking evening classes to learn German and French, again he came up in the union movement (he was very involved in the internationalist wing of the trade union movement). And the Health Minister was also a miner from the age of 11, he grew up in a one room cottage without dranage or running water shared by him, his parents and their seven other children - he came up more from things like renters unions and rent strikes (as well as opposing Britain's entry in WW1) and the British equivalent of Catholic Workers movemnt. I think that gives a sense of men of those backgrounds entering the highest offices of state had that sense of "wild men" and completely new territory - and I think it's the last genuine contribution of the Royals to politics, which was positive.

I would add from that book (and so many other fantastic books on this) and those stories, that this is a bit why I slightly push back on Raz's suggestion that the working class and union movement of the 19th century weren't reading Marxists or theory - because I think in so many of those stories self-education, self-improvement, reading groups, workers' libraries plays such a huge role. Brains and interest has always been equally distributed in the working class and they need rescuing from the condescension of posterity - which I think can include the contrast between them and middle class "intellectuals", the working class has always been replete with intellectuals too. You know Tom Shaw learned German and French and was participating in international trade union meetings with German and French socialists on the correct attitude to the Bolsheviks - these are not naive rustics.

But that was a ministry that also included hereditary peers like Lord Haldane and (as is often the case with Labour and Liberal cabinets of that era) a representative of the Wedgwood family. But I think it is absurd to describe a cabinet as more working class in which everyone has a degree (often from elite universities) and often then have a professional background working for NGOs, charities, political organisations or the public sector (not in frontline roles). 50% of the country do not go to university and there are very few people with that background in Parliament - in fact, I think there's basically zero MPs with a professional background in manual labour for the first time in decades (since before universal suffrage). Even Blair's cabinets had people like Alan Johnson or John Prescott. I think it's why I (and many others) like Rayner so much is that she comes from that type of background - working in social care, then doing a part-time degree in it and getting into politics through the union movement. I think it's partly why I liked the Green candidate for Gorton and Denton as well.

The working life of more than 50% of the country is profoundly under-represented. The jobs have changed - it would be people from hospitality, retail, tradespeople, construction, railways, busdrivers, postal workers, care homes, Deliveroo riders etc - rather than the mills, the mines and the factories (though factories, oil and gas workers etc all still exist). I actually think the arguments among and between Oxbridge and Russel Group graduates over their class has a slightly unreal, slightly Four Yorkshireman quality - and slightly erases the actual existing working class, for something resembling a working caste status even when it's reached a fairly homeopathic level (my favourite was a successful Labour candidate's campaign video citing that, I think it was their great-grandfather worked in the mines in that area ). I think it's absolutely fine for them to consider that they have a working class background that is profoundly important to their identity, but their class position is not the same as the 50%+ working in those other sectors and is basically indistinguishable from very many Tory, SNP, Lib Dem MPs (which is, I think, a problem in a party of labour and the trade union movement).