We’re all in the Roller together

The royal family seemed keen earlier this week to emphasise that the car in which Kate Middleton will travel to her wedding is the same Rolls Royce that was attacked in student protests.

No doubt this was intended as a heartwarming “good news” story, but something about it left me feeling uneasy, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what at the time:

Thinking about it further today, I think it’s the “Britain Can Take It!” tone of the coverage. We’re invited to think “Isn’t it great that those ghastly students haven’t succeeded in spoiling Kate’s special day?” At the very least, it’s hard not to see this as the royal family in some small way taking sides in a political issue.

(Not that I’m defending the students who attacked Charles and Camilla’s car. It was worse than a crime – it was a blunder, because it gave the media another excuse to focus on “violent students” rather than “violent police officers”.)

This particular story is only a straw in the wind, and I’ll cheerfully admit that I may be “over-reading” it. However, we do seem to be moving back towards a rhetoric of “the enemy within”: students, public sector workers (a.k.a. “enemies or enterprise”), lead-swinging benefit cheats, and so on.

In the light of that, it’ll be interesting to see how the phrase “we’re all in this together” develops over the next year or two. As coined by George Osborne, its avowed intent is to express how we are all one country, rich and poor, united against the common enemies of financial, economic and fiscal crisis, sharing its burdens fairly.

However, it won’t take much for it to become a slogan, not of a country united against external enemies, but of the middle and upper classes – “decent, respectable people” – united against internal enemies.

Which would at least have the benefit being more honest and accurate, given how this government has been acting to date.

Harman on equality and social class

Harriet Harman’s speech to the TUC sounds to have been pretty good. If the Conservatives are accusing her of “re-opening the class war” then that can’t be all bad, eh?

Nick Robinson has an interesting post about the speech, but I’m puzzled by his statement that Harman didn’t mention the word “class” in her speech. The report linked above quotes her as saying:

Equality matters more than ever and it is necessary for individuals, a peaceful society and a strong economy. We have made great progress on tackling inequality but we know that inequality doesn’t just come from your gender, race, sexual orientation or disability. What overarches all of these is where you live, your family background, your wealth and social class.

Perhaps the “c” word was in the written text but not actually delivered from the platform. Anyway, it’s positive to have a government minister willing to talk about equality as a desirable goal, and about “people’s life chances” are affected by “where they were born, what kind of family they were born into, where they live and their wealth”.

“Fairness” is clearly a key Labour theme for the autumn. Gordon Brown’s recent email to party members (see preceding post) majored on this topic and, as Robinson points out, its an issue that energises Labour for several reasons:

Belief – that this is what Labour is for.

Anger – that the Tories are “getting away” with presenting themselves as the party which will reduce inequality.

Hope – that this is a theme which will allow others to highlight David Cameron and George Osborne’s privileged backgrounds given that Labour’s crude attempts to exploit the “toffs in top hat” factor played so badly in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

Pure class

Polly Toynbee hits it out of the park with her latest column, looking at how talk of a “classless society” has masked the continuing class divisions within Britain.

After a brief sortie against idiotic so-called “Christians” who have been sending her hate-mail – hate-mail is so very Christ-like, don’t you think? – Toynbee starts with an account of how “class and misogyny fuse together” in the viciousness of right-wing attacks on middle-class left-wing women (such as Toynbee herself or the likes of Harriet Harman and Margaret Jay), and continues:

Rightwingers have long used class against any middle-class leftist, a bullying that sidesteps the real political argument. It implies anyone middle class is a traitor to their own by supporting fairer shares. The abuser never explains what’s hypocritical about those born privileged arguing on the side of those who are not.

As a result, the idea is promoted that:

Only those on low incomes are entitled to speak up for themselves – which is convenient, since almost by definition, fewer low earners have access to political platforms. If they did, they’d earn political or journalistic salaries and get the same contempt for “hypocrisy”

Meanwhile, the Tory front-bench – stuffed with Old Etonians – prepares self-interested plans to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £2m, tilting the tax system in favour of their own class interests while proclaiming society now to be “classless”.

Toynbee marshals a few facts to highlight the class divisions that remain:

• 50% of all employees earn less than £23,000, but “the low-paid imagine they are nearer the middle-income range than they are”.
• “Half the population has seen very little real growth in recent years, and the bottom third has suffered an absolute fall in income for five years. People feel it, yet no one says it.
• The benefits of “high GDP growth” over the past decade were enjoyed by the top 20% of the population, and mostly by the top 5%.

As Toynbee continues:

By sleight of hand, Britain abandoned class politics in a still deeply class-bound society. The illusion that anyone can make it is created by fixating on a few who do – or an older generation who did in the 50s and 60s. … Gut resentment rankles, but since Labour is silent on obscenely ostentatious wealth, there is no coherent political channel for it.

And she concludes:

The right spits venom at talk of class, except to sneer at middle-class leftists, but avoids hard facts: a working-class child is 15 times less likely to move upwards than a middle-class child is to stay put. This is no classless society, but a society whose politics conspire to deny it.