This is away from the nitty-gritty counting the bawbees article.
It’s food for thought and for that reason at least is well worth the ponder!
Christina
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THE ECONOMIST 10.12.09
Class war III
From The Economist print edition
Gordon Brown has attacked both the posh and the rich. He may ignite another sort of class war
Illustration by Steve O'Bri
NO TWO ways about it, David Cameron is posh. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is posh. On the other hand Lord Sugar, a recently ennobled businessman, is not. Nor is David Beckham: both are rich, but neither is posh. Get it?
If you are British, and especially English, you will. In Britain, class and money overlap, but only partially, like circles in a Venn diagram. Not all posh people are rich (some are shabby genteel, scrimping and saving for the school fees), and vice versa. Class is a magical amalgam of education, occupation, accent, vocabulary (“lounge” or “sitting room”), outlook and habit.
All of which is by way of saying that, properly speaking, Gordon Brown has launched not one grudge-based political campaign, but two. One is against the toffs, epitomised in a recent swipe about Eton, Mr Cameron’s old school. The other is against the rich, beginning in last year’s pre-budget report (PBR), when the government invented a new top rate of income tax. That has continued in Mr Brown’s incessant criticism of Conservative plans to raise the threshold for inheritance tax, and, stealthily, in this year’s PBR on December 9th. Neither will help him much.
Consider the offensive against the toffs first. There is no denying that class is alive and potent. The structure of the British economy has changed, with the proletariat shrinking and the middle class bulging; celebrities have ousted aristocrats in the gossip columns. But most Britons still instinctively filter themselves and others into social classes, with attendant suspicions and snobberies. In recent decades the Conservatives have been as attuned to these nuances as anyone, preferring humble leaders to pukka ones; as far back as 1923 they picked Stanley Baldwin above Lord Curzon (“a most superior person”), partly for that reason. When the Tories installed the fearsomely well-bred Mr Cameron, and he then kept George Osborne, another toff, as his shadow chancellor, party and leader bet that voters would no longer hold a penchant for shooting grouse against them.
Mr Brown is now betting the other way: that toffiness, with its connotations of dilettantism and frivolity, is still offputting enough to sway votes. The prime minister hopes the Eton references will persuade voters that the senior Tories are somehow different, a breed apart, and will never be able to understand how the rest of the country lives. But—even leaving aside the inconveniently privileged upbringing of some members of the Labour cabinet, and the open question whether Eton and Oxford is a weirder background than a Scottish manse and a lifetime in Labour politics—Mr Brown’s salvo risks backfiring. It is negative and retrograde; it makes him look distracted by antiquated obsessions. Eton gibes might just work as knockabout humour; but Mr Brown doesn’t seem to be joking.
On the face of it, targeting the monied looks more promising. “Good luck to him” was once a characteristic British attitude to self-made wealth; a more prevalent view now seems to be “hand over your bonus”. The recession is part of the explanation: when most boats were lifted by the rising economic tide, the yachts didn’t seem so galling. Polls suggest that lots of voters want the rich to pay more tax. So, in political terms, it is understandable that Mr Brown’s government is obliging, at the same time portraying the Tories as guardians of the wealthy. The party’s controversial link with Lord Ashcroft (its very rich but definitely not posh vice-chairman), and the unfortunate case of Zac Goldsmith (a parliamentary candidate who turned out to have been non-domiciled in Britain for tax purposes) have boosted this attack.
But there are problems with this theme too. The first derives from what was once a basic New Labour insight: that, beneath the current bitterness, Britain is a more aspirational, capitalist country than old Labour gave it credit for. The Tories insist that, despite Labour’s onslaught, their inheritance-tax measure remains popular for that reason. Another obstacle is that the Tories are not stupid enough to die in the ditch for the rich. They have swallowed most of the government’s rich-squeezing policies, albeit reluctantly. At the election, the rich will have no champions.
But the real trouble with both campaigns is psephological. Yes, some people hate Etonians and bankers. But, as pollsters also attest, they would probably have voted Labour anyway: they are not the suburban floaters who decide the outcome of British general elections. Class for Mr Brown is a bit like immigration for the Tories: the people who are pleased to hear him talk about it were already listening to him.
So rather than being a formidable barrage, Mr Brown’s double declaration of war looks instead like a white flag: an admission that he urgently needs to shore up Labour’s core vote. It is a strategy designed to deny the Tories a majority, not a way to build one for Labour. Nevertheless, Mr Brown may yet succeed in stirring up an important class struggle—just not the one he intended.
Devil take the hindmost
When people contemplate class war, they tend to think of hostilities flowing in only one direction—that is, upwards, from the plebs to the toffs, the poor to the rich. The need to salve this sort of resentment and maintain social solidarity is the best justification for the government’s rich-bashing. Less attention is given to the possibility of a different sort of rancour: when the well-heeled get angry, and take against the plebs.
Britain has seen that kind of downward hostility before, in the 1980s, for example. Those at the top end of the scale become cross about their tax burden, and doubtful of the value of state services (which they often don’t use much anyway). They start to think of the poor as scroungers and cheats; good works are abandoned; the social contract frays. Mr Brown’s two other conflicts may fizzle out. But this one might just take off.
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