This article argues that politicians' class origins matter and should be discussed openly. It criticizes right-wing media for attacking Labour MPs' backgrounds while ignoring the privileged origins of Conservative politicians.
The rightwing press will always try to pick apart Labour MPs’ origin stories . Far better to be honest about your roots’m not working class any more,” Keir Starmer told LBC’s Nick Ferrari this week. Of course that’s the case. As the, he has just paid off his mortgage on a £2m house, and earned a lot as a barrister and as the director of public prosecutions. The right loves to probe the hypocrisies and the “champagne socialism” of Labour people.
This cabinet is the most working-class in history, with some from backgrounds of grinding hardship. Wes Streeting’s remarkable autobiography tells of a family where neglect and crime were commonplace. He came up via good teachersand there was no looking back from there. Angela Rayner’s story is harsher: a single mother at 16 in Stockport, no qualifications, she worked as a carer before rising up through the trade union movement. Bridget Phillipson’s single mother was poor in Sunderland.
These days, among the successful there is often a hankering to inflate your authentic working-class roots. I enjoyed a recent LSE survey of those in professional or senior managerial jobs that found an astonishing. Starmer is right to avoid that trap. A quarter of those in the survey actually had parents in middle-class occupations yet they still called themselves working class, referring back to grandparents or even great-grandparents’ occupations.
Britain wants spending and a better NHS, not this obsession with growth. That’s why there’s big trouble ahead | Aditya ChakraborttyThis cabinet takes over a country in which social mobility has gone backwards and the gap between rich and poor keeps widening. People arethan when I was born. Starmer and all of the new government talk earnestly of opportunity and fulfilment for every child, and they mean it.
Labour Conservatives Class Origin Stories Privilege
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